On the Track

An eleven-car train painted Air Force blue highballed down the tracks of western railroads last week, stopping and starting without warning, ducking in and out of sidings and delaying the crack transcontinental limiteds. In many ways it was the most important train in the nation. Instead of cash-paying passengers or revenue freight, it carried 45 hand-picked officers and men of the Strategic Air Command and enough communications gear to put them in instant and constant contact with SAC bases around the world. Ranging from the deserts of Nevada to the plains of Wyoming and the mountain country of Montana, they shook down the train that in three years will be operating over 100,000 miles of U.S. rails with the Air Force's second-generation, solid-fuel, 6,300-mile Minuteman missiles and launchers. Train-borne and mobile, Minuteman will be virtually invulnerable to enemy attack.

The train carried enough technical gear to stock a sophisticated physics laboratory. To test how the jolts, noises and vibrations of railroad travel will affect the warheaded Minuteman, sensitive oscilloscopes and oscillographs registered every rock and wriggle. Loudspeakers and telephones linked the communications HQ with the other ten cars (one boxcar that housed a jeep, two tank cars for water and diesel fuel, seven air-conditioned "quarters cars"--including one with stereo set, radio, TV). When the train stopped, crewmen stepped out and limbered up, but could wander no farther than 150 yards--earshot range. A sharp command from the single "exit-entrance" brought them scrambling back.

When the blue-yonder airmen first learned that they were to be grounded into train duty, the inevitable cry was, "It's a helluva way to run an air force."

But in an age of Mach 3 jets and deep space probes, the oldfashioned, slow-moving train has won a new-fashioned respectability among airmen. "In the Air Force," says the train's commander, Lieut. Colonel Carleton V. Hansen, "the key thing is to feel that what you are doing is important. We all know that Minuteman counts."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.