Hi everyone -- Sean from the Yukon Transportation Museum here. We are blown away by the huge level of interest in 'The Monster' that sits in our little non-profit museum. Thanks to Calum for trekking all the way to the Yukon and telling this fascinating story in the way that it deserves to be told. I just wanted to clarify a few things about our relationship with LCC-1. The Sno-Train is on long-term loan to the museum, but we hope to formally accession it into our collection within the next few years. This will allow us to create interpretive signage and improve the visitor experience around LCC-1 (we are currently fundraising to help speed this process up if you have a few extra dollars lying around!) We have also just received another section of LCC-1 from a scrap yard outside of Fairbanks, which we'll be hooking up to the back of the land train to lengthen the overall machine. Feel free to visit our website or contact me directly if you have any questions about the Sno-Train, the museum, or any of the fabulous merch that Calum is modelling.
A C54 Skymaster aircraft with 44 people was lost on the route to Yukon according to Free Document - History. It last reported in to the Snagg AFB, as it existed at the time. The remains of other crashed aircraft on that route have been found but four others have gone down looking for it. You know what the vegetation is like there and you will understand how easily something can be so close but out of sight. You have seen the v
Please do a public, global fundraise for your museum. All over the world there a people who want to preserve the technical history of mankind and who would support you if they just learn about it. You need to focus on making your fundraise well known globally.
In the game called Snowrunner, someone was actually mad enough to fully replicate and make the Antarctic Snow Cruiser a functional and working mod for players to use and drive around in hehe.
Look up the base she was stranded next to, iceberg. On the youtube clip of this base visit as a iceberg, you can actually see where on a earlier visit, the snow cruiser was buried under the snow. So somewhere on the ocean floor. Question is, where.
I wonder if Dr. Poulter's biggest discovery in his research about polar vehicles was, that tires that should work on snow and ice shold not be in fact, totally smooth.
Its a learning curve - people who drive on sand have found perfectly smooth tires (often with a single rib for steering/tracking) or lightly "paddle style" work the best. Tires with deep tread just dig and sink into sand leaving you stuck. Snow comes in a lot of different styles - hard pack/icy, wet and sticky, and soft and fluffy and dry -- depending on the environment and region its likely different tire styles would excel on the different snows, especially when on top of 3 or 4 meter deep snow. Even snowmobile riders today choose different track styles for different riding and snow styles - similar to sand, flotation is highly important, BUT, because of icy or hard pack snow you have to have more bite - but you still don't want to just "dig yourself into a hole" with deep aggressive mud style tire tread - what I find fascinating is they didn't keep the "rib" often seen in sand tires (for an example look at ITP SandStar tires) to help prevent side sliding.
@@CalumRaasay XB 70 Valkyrie.😂? Say hello and look at the Edison Topsy hybrid logging truck guys in BC Canada ..who have bought electric hybrid torque monsters back to the Canadian west...and 🤞🏼 US roads .? Yes they probably would join up as they are real Canadian truck enthusiast..
hypothesis: the cold war was just a psyop to maintain the federal income tax which was instated to defeat nazi germany. also they got to play with very big trucks.
R.G LeTourneau was an incredible man and I have the amazing privilege to work for LeTourneau since 2009 which is now Komatsu. We are still producing electric drive equipment
At 22:46 you mention Carl Peterson. He was known as Stinky Pete and lived at the surplus yard in almost total squalor. His yard was eventually cleared after he passed away and has taken a lot of cleaning up because of the decades of hazardous materials Pete accumulated.
I knew Carl as Dirty Pete Peterson. He lived off Badger Rd. 95 yrs old . Never took a bath. So much for hygiene. Lived in an old shack. He bought the LeTourneau Land Train, from the go'vt. and drove it across the road to his yard. He said he sold the tires for BigFoot for $12,000. at the time. The scrappers destroyed many ( at least 12) good tires and wheels after he died. In perfect condition. Amongst LeTourneau scrappers and other intriguing stuff. I managed to get 4 tires years later from another scrapper that saved them. I am sure the main power house engine was a Westinghouse.
5:16 It's no wonder that keeping track of this timeline is confusing, they are trackless trains after all. :P On a more serious my hat off to you for actually finding and visiting the remains of these vehicles. It's crazy that they actually managed to survive as well as they did without getting scrapped at some point. Hopefully the Snow Train will be resorted at some point now that it's at a museum.
Completely unrelated fact, the Bigfoot company today builds the internal structure (frame, transmission, suspension) for the majority of the monster trucks in the US competition scene, which means that all the most successful monster trucks are 85% Bigfoot - partially because the regulations require the trucks to be virtually identical. But looking into what happened to the Le Tourneau company, apparently it's been split up and sold repeatedly since Le Tourneau himself sold the company in 1953, so it isn't clear what happened to all the technologies he invented or if any of it is still used in some form
Here's one for ya, from 84 to 86 my best friend un the Army was a guy that was born and raised in the St Louis suburb where the original Bigfoot was built, his house was literally around the corner and right down the road from the guy's shop, he said when the guy was building it everyone in the neighborhood was laughing at him building this big jacked up ridiculous looking thing, you know, because nobody had ever seen anything like that and didn't "get" what he was doing and what was in his head. A couple years after he got it done, and it turned him into a millionaire and a national celebrity, when he was moving out of that neighborhood and into a much more affluent neighborhood in the St Louis area nobody was laughing at him anymore, he was the one that was laughing, all the way to the bank. It just goes to show you, ya never know.
I'm not sure if you'd be able to actually see one in person, but there are self-propelled mobile oil drill rigs that are made by Parker Drilling Company that are used in the oilfields in Northern Alaska! Their tires make the Laterno look tiny.
The Baggers are also self-propelled, though they require an external power source, and they use tracks rather than wheels. The tracks alone make loaders look tiny.
Years ago, as kid, we played on one of these machines that was parked at the air strip outside of Dawson City, YT. Then in the late 70's while working as an industrial electrician I was sent to Longview Texas to the RG LeTourneau plant for a course on one of the loaders. One of the instructors had a little quiz on what these machines were, and he almost fell over when I knew all of them. The actual principle of the operation has not changed, just more sophisticated components.
Can I tell you that your videos are just a joy to watch? (and I don’t really have any underlying interest in anomalous transportation vehicles) The key is honestly your physical research & storytelling: the direct on-site footage, book/newspaper/magazine references, archival photos/footage, the obsession wall (!!!), the sound effects (slide projectors clicking, film stock fluttering, pages turning)…and then all the meta commentary as the topper. It’s a true masterclass in engaging, highly entertaining, do-it-yourself documentaries on neglected histories… 👏👏👏👏👏
If you guys decide to have children, they will be the luckiest kids in the world. Your enthusiasm and your wife’s ability to run with it is impressive. Best of luck to you. Love the channel and I’ve been watching since the beginning. Keep it up!
@@CalumRaasay You just keep telling yourself that. But that's okay, because sane and rational people don't tend to produce such great RUclips content! Don't change.
As a engineer, I really appreciate the deep dive into the unique history of these types of vehicles. It really gives a good snapsnot into how complicated cutting edge engineering can be.
I happened to be working near White Horse and my one day off for the month we went into town and I just about lost my mind seeing a land train! I always thought they were so cool, my grandpa always had the letourno devotionals in the bathroom and I'd look at the cool equipment, but bigfoot 5 was the kicker for me, I have so enjoyed this series, thank you so much!
I remember my dad talking about these beasts. He was stationed at one of the DEW lines when he was with the army. Got to climb on the one when I was a kid. Good memories.
I'm starting to get a sneaking suspicion that Calum likes land trains and arctic behemoths, and I'm all here for it! I doubt I would've known these amazing creations existed if not for you covering them!
What a journey! Hats off to that stubbornness of a bulldog that led you to make a "honeymoon" trip to North America to see all three land trains. And hats off to amazing woman that agreed to make that trip.
I was waiting for when Bigfoot 5 was gonna pop up in these videos. Bigfoot Strikes Again (the video where the interview and Bigfoot 5 footage came from) was my most watched VHS as a young child, and that interview got me interested in the Letourneau Overland Trains and eventually Camp Century. Thank you for the incredible coverage!
I wish I knew you were in town! Would have really enjoyed a chinwag. The transportation museum is AWESOME! A friend I autocrossed with used to work there.
Imagine if someone with money bought them all, restored them all and put them into a museum in a location that would bring people in to watch these relics of a bygone era... in a world with better 1%ers, that would be swell, but... we're stuck with rejects and these machines rot and fade away, and with them, the legacy of a time when humanity dared to dream.
Or better yet, these historic behemoths being restored but actually being driven as if they were being used all over again. At least the LCC-1 and the TC-497 are still intact and decent shape although no longer operational.
So glad you mentioned @bigfoot4x4! As soon as I saw the tires it reminded me of Bigfoot 5 and remembered Bob Chandler referencing these vehicles when looking for bigger tires.
15:50 The Columbo reference was choice. I turn 40 this December and it’s only memorable from childhood, watching so many episodes with my parents. Does the term “Rosebud” in reference to Columbo mean anything to anyone?
I'm not sure if the LCC1 was part of this, but my fathers first assignment after basic training was to test gear in the Arctic by doing a very large scale set of maneuvers with, I believe, a full Division. They were outfitted with different arctic gear, specialized transports and did things as simple as testing the original Tang and heater/cooking stoves, to opening up the ice and dunking troops full clothed into the water for long periods to test the arctic coats, and underwear. His favorite story is when they were crossing a large body of water (over ice) and he lost a Snow Cats (tracked vehicle they were testing) to the deep when the ice cracked and became free floating. Lots of polar bear encounters too. My father hated the cold and retired in Arizona, but Alaska and the Artic was always his favorite place.
TRADOC in the United States Army stands for Training and Doctrine Command. At least thats what is stood for while i served from 1986-1996. I grew up here in Longview, Texas. Maybe someday when you come here, I can turn you on to some more LeTourneau history. I'm friends with RG Letourneau the 3rd. He's got stories for sure.
he made a mistake there, the acronym was actually TRADCOM and it was redesignated several times over the decades and at some point it was redesignated as Research, Development and Engineering Command then the Combat Capabilities Development Command and now under Futures Command. but in a twist that partly makes him right they work with TRADOC in development
An absolute LeTour de force! Thank you for another excellent video documenting these brilliant and obscure machines. Also, I totally recognise your wife's face in the car, it's the same look my wife gives me when she's trapped in the car for hours listening to me infodump about one of my latest hyperfixations...
The sign of a good partner is someone that will do something they dont care about just to spend time with you, your wife seems lovely and we are all better off due to her putting up with this sillyness, thank you both so much for making these videos possible, I enjoyed them greatly!
These things belong in a museum, not rotting out in the middle of nowhere. If these were brought stateside to be put in a transportation museum in a major metropolitan area I could see them generating tons of interest and foot traffic.
These vehicles are fascinating. Almost enthralling. They may not have had much success in the real world, but I am surprised likenesses of them have never found ways into fiction. So many thoughts and emotions are evoked just by looking at them.
In late 2009 maybe early 2010 timeframe I was stationed at Ft Wainwright and saw Carl Peterson’s scrap yard being liquidated. I talked to whoever was in charge of liquidating his estate and asked to tour & photograph the scrapyard and specifically the LCC-1. He heard me out, but in the end refused and said he couldn’t due to liability. I was in AK from 2006 to 2011 and wish I would’ve tried to get in there earlier, but I never took time to make the effort.
I spent a month at Cape Dyer (eastern most DEW site, eastern tip of Baffin Island) leading an enviro assessment. Radar control buildings full of banks of massive vacuum tubes, embedded in ice. Radar (still a north warning site) is on a km high bluff overlooking the ocean. Icebergs floating by, next land is Greenland.
'Also Known As DYE-MAIN! (Cape Dyer, Nunavut) The DYE Sector also originally included the four DEWLINE radar stations on Greenland; DYE 1 on the west coast; DYE 2 AKA ICE Cap 1; DYE 3 AKA Ice Cap 2; DYE 4 on Greenland's east coast; and DYE 5 near Keflavik, Iceland. 🇮🇸 ⛰️ 🏔 ⛰️ 🧊 ❄️ 🧊 🏔 ⛰️ 🏔
I talked with a long-time Bigfoot driver, and he added this. Some of the wheels were magnesium, so you had to be extremely careful, modifying and welding them. Also, the last set of four Tundra tires were found in a box car owned by the Compton, CA Firestone dealer.
Fascinating to think what would have happened if flying did not pick up and the two poles became very important. I mean, the mechanical side is truly fascinating.
I find it remarkable that the orange paint is still so vibrant and intact to this day. As someone who lives in the middle of Scandinavia I would have expected it to be all brown and rusted from sitting outside in the elements during the shifting seasons. That's what most of the machinery and metal equipment I've seen here does if left neglected no matter how well it was once rust-proofed. Excellent video as always! Your interest and fascination is very contagious! I look forward to see what the next video will be about. Perhaps that arctic military base, Camp Century?
Absolutely incredible, Calum! Been here since the start of this series on the overland trains, and extremely delighted to see the amazing finish! What a fascinating piece of history, and, honestly a shame that we don't have vehicles like this anymore. They're genuinely some of the coolest inventions I've ever seen come out of humanity. Thank you for taking the time, effort, and money to organize these trips and give us such in-depth information on these forgotten machines! It's appreciated beyond words by people like me who always fantasized as a kid about owning these kinda drivable homes!
One of the most impressive things in Calum's videos is he's just making videos about his interests. They're all so interesting, informative and so well produced. It always pleases me when the videos get the views they rightfully deserve.
I love this series. I've been fascinated by land trains since reading The Amtrak Wars decades ago. I wish someone would build something along these lines with some of the tech available today.
What an incredible adventure! Thank you for taking us along with you. Meticulously researched, wonderfully presented, deeply interesting - thank you again, from the Kingdom of Fife.
In Jan 1961 the Overland Train as it was called broke down on the Duke River Flats just north of Burwash Landing, Yukon. We lived in Destruction Bay just 10 mioles south of Burwash and went to see the beast. It was a beautiful sunny day and my dad took a few pictures of it. It was impressive!! I don't recall the full story about it and unfortunately my Dad passed in 99 so I can't ask him. I was in Whitehorse in 2022 and saw the museum display there and had a memory or two flash back!! Your video was very informative!! Thank you!!
4:00 I know the music is good and fits the vibe but I watch too much of Dankpods Garbage Time channel and the music just reminds me of a australian kicking various cars.
I remember seeing the snow train as a kind in the junk yard for years and years tell it got hauled off. there is still a few tires left in the yard and first strike auction company took over the yard, never know they might be up for auction soon. thank you for the video and the history of the snow trains!
5:49 it would be very interesting if it was TRADOC given that is now the acronym for the command that covers boot camp and initial job training. I wonder if there were 2 TRADOCs at one point or if there was like a traditional period.
Love it ! It's amazing to see these insane old girls that people built way back in the day where all you needed was an idea an some man power its incredible!!!
Now you’ve got to go further down the LeTourneau rabbit hole and cover the tree crushers! Side note, my little brother lives in Tok, where Mukluk Land is
I actually forgot about MukLuk Land untill you mentioned.😂😂😂 We have passed it several times during our drives from the lower 48 to Alaska. But we were never brave enough to stop😂
This is in fact an obsession, but if it's any consolation, you passed this obsession to me. The real Overland Trains and the hypothetical of what they could have become if they continued to be developed has taken over my brain
There's probably a good reason nobody has done it, but seeing these, I can't help thinking that they, or something similar, could be really useful for rescue efforts in disasters like what happened with Helene.
Some guy on reddit said that top comments are also ranging based on your yt profile interests. This well explains why I have your comment (with 7 likes) first, and THEN a comment with 1.2K likes
That musem need to to rescue the one stuck in the brush, i bet if they made a crowd funding campaign people would donate to see the two beasts together
I heard about that thing early this year, when i was able to visit camp century. Was one hell of a trip, and only possible because of alot of nice people, that got me in contact with a dude living in the middle of Greenland in Dundas to be corretly. Its not much left of the base.. not more then a few barrells the us never cleaned up, and a old almost 100% destroyed hangar. To think that people lived and worked there just blows my mind. So, as i said, i heard storys of this thing. But now with that much more back infos and storys, its even cooler to imagine how they moved shit back then.
FYI, Mukluk Land was a junkyard until 1985 when it was bought by George and Beth Jacobs and turned into a roadside amusement park (of sorts). The site has likely been accumulating Alaskan mechanical junk for a long time before that, hence the presence of the LeTourneau wheels on the random trailer. If you contact the owners I'm sure they can give you more information on the wheels' provenance.
My dad worked for LeTourneau, and I grew up around this stuff. LeTourneau had relocated his company out of California following World War II after acquiring a military hospital in Longview, Texas, which was sold as war surplus, which LeTourneau turned into a trade school, now LeTourneau University. From a manufacturing standpoint, Longview was attractive because of the Sabine river flats, which served as a proving ground for LeTourneau’s giant machines. Weird history, but the Sabine flats are geographically distinct enough that their description in journals of the DeSoto expedition have established the western terminus of that first contact with Europeans with the interior of North America, occurring just 50 years after Columbus first landing in 1492. The survivors of the DeSoto Expedition conquistadors gave up on their quest for gold here, deciding to head back to what is now Florida where they could return home to Spain. So who knows - the tires of a giant LeTourneau snow train may have pressed a discarded Spanish conquistador helmet deep into the East Texas Sabine river mud.
ah, you fell for the old "say the wrong number while showing the correct number to trick people into commenting and driving up engagement" ploy! (just joking)
I wish I knew this is Whitehorse when I was there in 2001 and 2002. I'm glad I got to drive some old Nodwell machines when I did. Maybe that's another neat thing for a video topic? I'm always fascinated by the machines that conquered the unknown and the talent and designs tried to overcome the brutal terrain. Cheers!
I can remember as a child having a Dean's picture book of transport that amongst other things contained a picture of a "trackless train" as it was called.
Thanks man! I have a bit of an obsession with these things too and any looksy inside at the quarters and amenities are really hard to find-great video!
It's possible the toy company that made the Bigfoot model also made a Snow Train model decades before and just reused those molds. The tooling for mold machines is the most expensive part of production, so companies aren't likely to just toss them out when not being used. This series of events makes the most sense to me.
Great thanks. I remember as a kid in the 50s seeing them in my monthly Popular Mechanics when it came. For decades I was fascinated by them. Until i stumbled across your videos it was almost impossible to get a good overview of them. Thanks again
Hi everyone -- Sean from the Yukon Transportation Museum here. We are blown away by the huge level of interest in 'The Monster' that sits in our little non-profit museum. Thanks to Calum for trekking all the way to the Yukon and telling this fascinating story in the way that it deserves to be told. I just wanted to clarify a few things about our relationship with LCC-1. The Sno-Train is on long-term loan to the museum, but we hope to formally accession it into our collection within the next few years. This will allow us to create interpretive signage and improve the visitor experience around LCC-1 (we are currently fundraising to help speed this process up if you have a few extra dollars lying around!) We have also just received another section of LCC-1 from a scrap yard outside of Fairbanks, which we'll be hooking up to the back of the land train to lengthen the overall machine. Feel free to visit our website or contact me directly if you have any questions about the Sno-Train, the museum, or any of the fabulous merch that Calum is modelling.
Would that not be dependant upon ones direction of approach?
@@fm2dmax
I would love to hear stories about the service members who operated or maintained this unique piece, I hope they are not lost to time.
Hey, this is pretty cool.
A C54 Skymaster aircraft with 44 people was lost on the route to Yukon according to Free Document - History.
It last reported in to the Snagg AFB, as it existed at the time.
The remains of other crashed aircraft on that route have been found but four others have gone down looking for it.
You know what the vegetation is like there and you will understand how easily something can be so close but out of sight.
You have seen the v
Please do a public, global fundraise for your museum. All over the world there a people who want to preserve the technical history of mankind and who would support you if they just learn about it. You need to focus on making your fundraise well known globally.
Alright Calum, at this rate, you have to unearth the Antarctic Snow Cruiser buried somewhere in an ice shelf or at the bottom of the ocean.
I'll second this! :)
In the game called Snowrunner, someone was actually mad enough to fully replicate and make the Antarctic Snow Cruiser a functional and working mod for players to use and drive around in hehe.
@@TheSilverShadow17 and its awesome!
@@goosenotmaverick1156 Hell yeah it is!
Look up the base she was stranded next to, iceberg.
On the youtube clip of this base visit as a iceberg, you can actually see where on a earlier visit, the snow cruiser was buried under the snow.
So somewhere on the ocean floor.
Question is, where.
man will not rest until he film all "land trains" still in existence :D well done calum as always ;)
Let's get a crowdfunder going!
@@CalumRaasay do you know if the Snow Buggy survived?
I'm here for it
This really looks like something out of Fallout. How has it NOT shown up in the games?
I think we could get a whole new genre of post-apocalyptic overland train games going!
@@CalumRaasay frostpunk 2 dlc!!!
"That's too unrealistic"
It's not even in snowrunner.
go and read the Amtrak Wars series of books.....
I wonder if Dr. Poulter's biggest discovery in his research about polar vehicles was, that tires that should work on snow and ice shold not be in fact, totally smooth.
I wonder if he visited letourneau and was like… ooooh TREADED tyres
Its a learning curve - people who drive on sand have found perfectly smooth tires (often with a single rib for steering/tracking) or lightly "paddle style" work the best. Tires with deep tread just dig and sink into sand leaving you stuck. Snow comes in a lot of different styles - hard pack/icy, wet and sticky, and soft and fluffy and dry -- depending on the environment and region its likely different tire styles would excel on the different snows, especially when on top of 3 or 4 meter deep snow. Even snowmobile riders today choose different track styles for different riding and snow styles - similar to sand, flotation is highly important, BUT, because of icy or hard pack snow you have to have more bite - but you still don't want to just "dig yourself into a hole" with deep aggressive mud style tire tread - what I find fascinating is they didn't keep the "rib" often seen in sand tires (for an example look at ITP SandStar tires) to help prevent side sliding.
@@offshack Maybe inflatable treads would work to adapt to the environment without changing tires.
i had a damn stroke trying to read this...
@@offshack So True
22:01 "This vehicle was in operating condition when shut down." Ran when parked. No low ballers, I know what I have.
Great comment.
Find another!!
I'M FIRM ON MY PRICE
@@HachiMiura No tire kickers
@@Zyo117In this case, the tyre kicks you
Hypothesis: projects like the Dew Line were just excuses for grown-ups to play with very big trucks.
Hahah don’t mentioned planes and boats too!
@@CalumRaasay
XB 70 Valkyrie.😂?
Say hello and look at the Edison Topsy hybrid logging truck guys in BC Canada ..who have bought electric hybrid torque monsters back to the Canadian west...and 🤞🏼 US roads .?
Yes they probably would join up as they are real Canadian truck enthusiast..
Proof that we don't ever really grow up, our toys just get bigger and more expensive.
hypothesis: the cold war was just a psyop to maintain the federal income tax which was instated to defeat nazi germany. also they got to play with very big trucks.
Could say the same about skyscrapers
I'd definitely watch a TV series about getting these Beasts running and restored, even if just for the museums. Yukon Salvage pls
Hope there's some video footage with Brandon at least.
Pitch this to James May and Amazon.
That zoom to cross dissolve transition at 8:12 was slick
It was an absolute thing of beauty, fantastic edit.
No, really Calum, I'm afraid this really is an obsession. But for that we are truly grateful, and actually a bit jealous.
R.G LeTourneau was an incredible man and I have the amazing privilege to work for LeTourneau since 2009 which is now Komatsu.
We are still producing electric drive equipment
Oh wow in Longview? By the boo bies lol
@davidburke9902.... Mining Equipment??
@@corneliosoria582No boob domes anymore. Hate that they tore the last one down but I understand after the tornado.
Are they buffered with batteries now for short distance battery only options?
@@corneliosoria582 Boobie domes are now all gone, unfortunately. Still get a good look at the new buildings and construction from Estes and High St.
At 22:46 you mention Carl Peterson. He was known as Stinky Pete and lived at the surplus yard in almost total squalor. His yard was eventually cleared after he passed away and has taken a lot of cleaning up because of the decades of hazardous materials Pete accumulated.
yeah it's quite wild just how much stuff was in there - I saw some photos of the cleanup, mad!
I knew Carl as Dirty Pete Peterson. He lived off Badger Rd. 95 yrs old . Never took a bath. So much for hygiene. Lived in an old shack. He bought the LeTourneau Land Train, from the go'vt. and drove it across the road to his yard. He said he sold the tires for BigFoot for $12,000. at the time. The scrappers destroyed many ( at least 12) good tires and wheels after he died. In perfect condition. Amongst LeTourneau scrappers and other intriguing stuff. I managed to get 4 tires years later from another scrapper that saved them. I am sure the main power house engine was a Westinghouse.
5:16 It's no wonder that keeping track of this timeline is confusing, they are trackless trains after all. :P
On a more serious my hat off to you for actually finding and visiting the remains of these vehicles. It's crazy that they actually managed to survive as well as they did without getting scrapped at some point. Hopefully the Snow Train will be resorted at some point now that it's at a museum.
It’s genuinely amazing that despite their relative obscurity and lack of success that they have all stayed relatively intact!
Completely unrelated fact, the Bigfoot company today builds the internal structure (frame, transmission, suspension) for the majority of the monster trucks in the US competition scene, which means that all the most successful monster trucks are 85% Bigfoot - partially because the regulations require the trucks to be virtually identical.
But looking into what happened to the Le Tourneau company, apparently it's been split up and sold repeatedly since Le Tourneau himself sold the company in 1953, so it isn't clear what happened to all the technologies he invented or if any of it is still used in some form
That's really interesting about Bigfoot - quite a clever pivot to move the business to engineering like that.
Here's one for ya, from 84 to 86 my best friend un the Army was a guy that was born and raised in the St Louis suburb where the original Bigfoot was built, his house was literally around the corner and right down the road from the guy's shop, he said when the guy was building it everyone in the neighborhood was laughing at him building this big jacked up ridiculous looking thing, you know, because nobody had ever seen anything like that and didn't "get" what he was doing and what was in his head.
A couple years after he got it done, and it turned him into a millionaire and a national celebrity, when he was moving out of that neighborhood and into a much more affluent neighborhood in the St Louis area nobody was laughing at him anymore, he was the one that was laughing, all the way to the bank.
It just goes to show you, ya never know.
Um, where can i see bigfoot?
I'm not sure if you'd be able to actually see one in person, but there are self-propelled mobile oil drill rigs that are made by Parker Drilling Company that are used in the oilfields in Northern Alaska! Their tires make the Laterno look tiny.
The Baggers are also self-propelled, though they require an external power source, and they use tracks rather than wheels. The tracks alone make loaders look tiny.
Calum going full “Charlie Kelly” with that board full of pins and strings 😂😅
Pepe Silva?! Who is he?!
@@CalumRaasay I hate to be that guy, kidding, I LOVE to be that guy that tells you it's actually Pepe Silvia, better do a reshoot
@CalumRaasay you earned an instant follow for that reference. 👏
@@Simonrosseelput the mail in his god-damned hand
That's how professionals work, right?
Years ago, as kid, we played on one of these machines that was parked at the air strip outside of Dawson City, YT. Then in the late 70's while working as an industrial electrician I was sent to Longview Texas to the RG LeTourneau plant for a course on one of the loaders. One of the instructors had a little quiz on what these machines were, and he almost fell over when I knew all of them. The actual principle of the operation has not changed, just more sophisticated components.
Can I tell you that your videos are just a joy to watch? (and I don’t really have any underlying interest in anomalous transportation vehicles)
The key is honestly your physical research & storytelling: the direct on-site footage, book/newspaper/magazine references, archival photos/footage, the obsession wall (!!!), the sound effects (slide projectors clicking, film stock fluttering, pages turning)…and then all the meta commentary as the topper.
It’s a true masterclass in engaging, highly entertaining, do-it-yourself documentaries on neglected histories…
👏👏👏👏👏
My wife wanted to let you know she stands in solidarity with your wife.
Our wife?
If you guys decide to have children, they will be the luckiest kids in the world. Your enthusiasm and your wife’s ability to run with it is impressive. Best of luck to you. Love the channel and I’ve been watching since the beginning. Keep it up!
Laughed out loud at "definitely not deranged". You keep up the good work mate ;-)
I swear I’ve not gone mad over land trains!!
@@CalumRaasay You just keep telling yourself that. But that's okay, because sane and rational people don't tend to produce such great RUclips content! Don't change.
As a engineer, I really appreciate the deep dive into the unique history of these types of vehicles. It really gives a good snapsnot into how complicated cutting edge engineering can be.
Check out the book Mover of Men and Mountains. He had an amazing life/career that helped technology around the world.
The fact that these machines have a 50% survival rate should say something about how impressive they are
I happened to be working near White Horse and my one day off for the month we went into town and I just about lost my mind seeing a land train! I always thought they were so cool, my grandpa always had the letourno devotionals in the bathroom and I'd look at the cool equipment, but bigfoot 5 was the kicker for me, I have so enjoyed this series, thank you so much!
I remember my dad talking about these beasts. He was stationed at one of the DEW lines when he was with the army. Got to climb on the one when I was a kid. Good memories.
I'm starting to get a sneaking suspicion that Calum likes land trains and arctic behemoths, and I'm all here for it! I doubt I would've known these amazing creations existed if not for you covering them!
What a journey! Hats off to that stubbornness of a bulldog that led you to make a "honeymoon" trip to North America to see all three land trains. And hats off to amazing woman that agreed to make that trip.
I was waiting for when Bigfoot 5 was gonna pop up in these videos. Bigfoot Strikes Again (the video where the interview and Bigfoot 5 footage came from) was my most watched VHS as a young child, and that interview got me interested in the Letourneau Overland Trains and eventually Camp Century. Thank you for the incredible coverage!
I wish I knew you were in town! Would have really enjoyed a chinwag. The transportation museum is AWESOME! A friend I autocrossed with used to work there.
Imagine if someone with money bought them all, restored them all and put them into a museum in a location that would bring people in to watch these relics of a bygone era... in a world with better 1%ers, that would be swell, but... we're stuck with rejects and these machines rot and fade away, and with them, the legacy of a time when humanity dared to dream.
Or better yet, these historic behemoths being restored but actually being driven as if they were being used all over again. At least the LCC-1 and the TC-497 are still intact and decent shape although no longer operational.
So glad you mentioned @bigfoot4x4! As soon as I saw the tires it reminded me of Bigfoot 5 and remembered Bob Chandler referencing these vehicles when looking for bigger tires.
You are the one who burned the phrase "Canadian outback" into my brain. Glad to see you come out and experience some of it for yourself.
15:50 The Columbo reference was choice. I turn 40 this December and it’s only memorable from childhood, watching so many episodes with my parents. Does the term “Rosebud” in reference to Columbo mean anything to anyone?
I'm not sure if the LCC1 was part of this, but my fathers first assignment after basic training was to test gear in the Arctic by doing a very large scale set of maneuvers with, I believe, a full Division. They were outfitted with different arctic gear, specialized transports and did things as simple as testing the original Tang and heater/cooking stoves, to opening up the ice and dunking troops full clothed into the water for long periods to test the arctic coats, and underwear. His favorite story is when they were crossing a large body of water (over ice) and he lost a Snow Cats (tracked vehicle they were testing) to the deep when the ice cracked and became free floating. Lots of polar bear encounters too. My father hated the cold and retired in Arizona, but Alaska and the Artic was always his favorite place.
That sounds familiar, maybe operation willow freeze? What an amazing story though, a cool family connection to have!
TRADOC in the United States Army stands for Training and Doctrine Command. At least thats what is stood for while i served from 1986-1996.
I grew up here in Longview, Texas. Maybe someday when you come here, I can turn you on to some more LeTourneau history. I'm friends with RG Letourneau the 3rd. He's got stories for sure.
Wow, he must have some amazing stories! I’d love to visit one day. Love the states
Yeah, I thought maybe TRADOC got reused but can't find any reference to it prior to 1973.
he made a mistake there, the acronym was actually TRADCOM and it was redesignated several times over the decades and at some point it was redesignated as Research, Development and Engineering Command then the Combat Capabilities Development Command and now under Futures Command.
but in a twist that partly makes him right they work with TRADOC in development
An absolute LeTour de force! Thank you for another excellent video documenting these brilliant and obscure machines.
Also, I totally recognise your wife's face in the car, it's the same look my wife gives me when she's trapped in the car for hours listening to me infodump about one of my latest hyperfixations...
The sign of a good partner is someone that will do something they dont care about just to spend time with you, your wife seems lovely and we are all better off due to her putting up with this sillyness, thank you both so much for making these videos possible, I enjoyed them greatly!
These things belong in a museum, not rotting out in the middle of nowhere. If these were brought stateside to be put in a transportation museum in a major metropolitan area I could see them generating tons of interest and foot traffic.
But you have other priorities, so somebody else should do it?
@@usernamename2978
Museums are usually government owned especially for government contracted machinery you utter spanner
These vehicles are fascinating. Almost enthralling. They may not have had much success in the real world, but I am surprised likenesses of them have never found ways into fiction.
So many thoughts and emotions are evoked just by looking at them.
In late 2009 maybe early 2010 timeframe I was stationed at Ft Wainwright and saw Carl Peterson’s scrap yard being liquidated. I talked to whoever was in charge of liquidating his estate and asked to tour & photograph the scrapyard and specifically the LCC-1. He heard me out, but in the end refused and said he couldn’t due to liability. I was in AK from 2006 to 2011 and wish I would’ve tried to get in there earlier, but I never took time to make the effort.
It's amazing to see history being preserved. This is the first I've heard of the overland trains and now i want to see it in person.
Thank you for these! As a young boy I grew up reading old Popular Mechanics mag and stories on these vehicles fascinated me.
The arctic monster is still up for grabs heck ya
Thanks for all the hard work on these videos!
Glad you like them!
This is the first time I've heard of the snow train. And instantly in love with the notion of barracks on wheels.
22:00 it actually says 20 thousand $'s for spare parts
Oh thats a total BURN!!!
He then corrected himself and said 20k not long after.
I can really see where all the artwork on my childhood favorite "Tom Swift" books drew inspiration.
I spent a month at Cape Dyer (eastern most DEW site, eastern tip of Baffin Island) leading an enviro assessment. Radar control buildings full of banks of massive vacuum tubes, embedded in ice. Radar (still a north warning site) is on a km high bluff overlooking the ocean. Icebergs floating by, next land is Greenland.
'Also Known As DYE-MAIN! (Cape Dyer, Nunavut)
The DYE Sector also originally included the four DEWLINE radar stations on Greenland; DYE 1 on the west coast; DYE 2 AKA ICE Cap 1; DYE 3 AKA Ice Cap 2; DYE 4 on Greenland's east coast; and DYE 5 near Keflavik, Iceland. 🇮🇸
⛰️ 🏔 ⛰️ 🧊 ❄️ 🧊 🏔 ⛰️ 🏔
I talked with a long-time Bigfoot driver, and he added this. Some of the wheels were magnesium, so you had to be extremely careful, modifying and welding them. Also, the last set of four Tundra tires were found in a box car owned by the Compton, CA Firestone dealer.
Wow that’s an amazing insight thanks. Lucky you getting to know a monster truck driver haha!
I love you and your obsessions calum
You sound like my wife!
@@CalumRaasay LOL! HEHEHEHEHEHE! 🤣🤣🙃👍
Fascinating to think what would have happened if flying did not pick up and the two poles became very important. I mean, the mechanical side is truly fascinating.
I find it remarkable that the orange paint is still so vibrant and intact to this day. As someone who lives in the middle of Scandinavia I would have expected it to be all brown and rusted from sitting outside in the elements during the shifting seasons. That's what most of the machinery and metal equipment I've seen here does if left neglected no matter how well it was once rust-proofed.
Excellent video as always! Your interest and fascination is very contagious! I look forward to see what the next video will be about. Perhaps that arctic military base, Camp Century?
As someone living in Whitehorse it’s cool to see some of the history of something I see every other day
22:01 Asking $315k OBO. Ran when parked.
No lowball offers, I know what I got
@@OriginalEric You beat me to it!
And the spare parts are just $20K, not $200K
Absolutely incredible, Calum! Been here since the start of this series on the overland trains, and extremely delighted to see the amazing finish! What a fascinating piece of history, and, honestly a shame that we don't have vehicles like this anymore. They're genuinely some of the coolest inventions I've ever seen come out of humanity. Thank you for taking the time, effort, and money to organize these trips and give us such in-depth information on these forgotten machines! It's appreciated beyond words by people like me who always fantasized as a kid about owning these kinda drivable homes!
i love how you flew from scotland and drove all the way to the museum *before* making sure they'd let you film it
One of the most impressive things in Calum's videos is he's just making videos about his interests. They're all so interesting, informative and so well produced. It always pleases me when the videos get the views they rightfully deserve.
i subscribed from 'secrets of the gas can' 😃
I love this series. I've been fascinated by land trains since reading The Amtrak Wars decades ago.
I wish someone would build something along these lines with some of the tech available today.
Chalk me up as another hooked on land trains after reading the Amtrak Wars in my youth
Respect for the effort put into this video.
What an incredible adventure! Thank you for taking us along with you. Meticulously researched, wonderfully presented, deeply interesting - thank you again, from the Kingdom of Fife.
Nice touch on the rolling R.G. in front of everyone’s name, R.G. was definitely an amazing man.
Sno-Train! That museum looks more pleasant in the summer
It’s an amazing museum!
In Jan 1961 the Overland Train as it was called broke down on the Duke River Flats just north of Burwash Landing, Yukon. We lived in Destruction Bay just 10 mioles south of Burwash and went to see the beast. It was a beautiful sunny day and my dad took a few pictures of it. It was impressive!! I don't recall the full story about it and unfortunately my Dad passed in 99 so I can't ask him. I was in Whitehorse in 2022 and saw the museum display there and had a memory or two flash back!! Your video was very informative!! Thank you!!
Wow what an amazing story! I can’t imagine what it must have been like seeing it “in action!” Sounds like a great memory, thanks for sharing.
19:03 A perfect recreation of the Minecraft grass sound
how did you hear that 😂 Its really perfect lmao
It's almost like the devs recorded irl sound for their game. Weird...
Thank you very much. This epic short film will be part of history forever.
4:00 I know the music is good and fits the vibe but I watch too much of Dankpods Garbage Time channel and the music just reminds me of a australian kicking various cars.
hahaha well any dank pods comparison is a compliment indeed
I remember seeing the snow train as a kind in the junk yard for years and years tell it got hauled off. there is still a few tires left in the yard and first strike auction company took over the yard, never know they might be up for auction soon. thank you for the video and the history of the snow trains!
5:49 it would be very interesting if it was TRADOC given that is now the acronym for the command that covers boot camp and initial job training. I wonder if there were 2 TRADOCs at one point or if there was like a traditional period.
Love it ! It's amazing to see these insane old girls that people built way back in the day where all you needed was an idea an some man power its incredible!!!
Now you’ve got to go further down the LeTourneau rabbit hole and cover the tree crushers!
Side note, my little brother lives in Tok, where Mukluk Land is
'Hopefully, there are no TICKS there! 😟
This entire series was amazing. Living in NP AK, I go past Fox and always see that monster sitting there rusting away.
Thanks for the great time!
Coming 2025:
"I bought a Snow Train!"
A fifth video :)
It's because that old snow cruiser video that made YT recommend more of your videos to me, and thus why I'm here now!
I actually forgot about MukLuk Land untill you mentioned.😂😂😂 We have passed it several times during our drives from the lower 48 to Alaska. But we were never brave enough to stop😂
This is in fact an obsession, but if it's any consolation, you passed this obsession to me. The real Overland Trains and the hypothetical of what they could have become if they continued to be developed has taken over my brain
the real obsession was the friends we made along the way
Upvoting and commenting (for the algorithm) before I've even watched because I know this will be good.
Well done Calum, you got the trifecta.
The definitely not deranged history of overland trains is great.
There's probably a good reason nobody has done it, but seeing these, I can't help thinking that they, or something similar, could be really useful for rescue efforts in disasters like what happened with Helene.
12:06 ohhhhh, Gum dipped... Unfortunate font choice
Some guy on reddit said that top comments are also ranging based on your yt profile interests. This well explains why I have your comment (with 7 likes) first, and THEN a comment with 1.2K likes
@@etorommka I'm just better suited to the algorithm
Hahaha I didn’t want to be too obvious and point it out myself
That musem need to to rescue the one stuck in the brush, i bet if they made a crowd funding campaign people would donate to see the two beasts together
It's a pity that the Snow Freighter isn't being preserved. Looks like it's just being left to rot!
At least with all that aluminium and lead paint she'll be around for a while!
I heard about that thing early this year, when i was able to visit camp century.
Was one hell of a trip, and only possible because of alot of nice people, that got me in contact with a dude living in the middle of Greenland in Dundas to be corretly. Its not much left of the base.. not more then a few barrells the us never cleaned up, and a old almost 100% destroyed hangar. To think that people lived and worked there just blows my mind.
So, as i said, i heard storys of this thing. But now with that much more back infos and storys, its even cooler to imagine how they moved shit back then.
FYI, Mukluk Land was a junkyard until 1985 when it was bought by George and Beth Jacobs and turned into a roadside amusement park (of sorts). The site has likely been accumulating Alaskan mechanical junk for a long time before that, hence the presence of the LeTourneau wheels on the random trailer.
If you contact the owners I'm sure they can give you more information on the wheels' provenance.
That Mukluk Land find was soo fortuitous, I was just checking out the park online - amazing old machines there
I've never seen a US Army machine look so .....Soviet. Incidentally, Raasay looks like a fascinating place to visit.
My dad worked for LeTourneau, and I grew up around this stuff. LeTourneau had relocated his company out of California following World War II after acquiring a military hospital in Longview, Texas, which was sold as war surplus, which LeTourneau turned into a trade school, now LeTourneau University. From a manufacturing standpoint, Longview was attractive because of the Sabine river flats, which served as a proving ground for LeTourneau’s giant machines. Weird history, but the Sabine flats are geographically distinct enough that their description in journals of the DeSoto expedition have established the western terminus of that first contact with Europeans with the interior of North America, occurring just 50 years after Columbus first landing in 1492. The survivors of the DeSoto Expedition conquistadors gave up on their quest for gold here, deciding to head back to what is now Florida where they could return home to Spain. So who knows - the tires of a giant LeTourneau snow train may have pressed a discarded Spanish conquistador helmet deep into the East Texas Sabine river mud.
At 22:02 or so you say two "HUNDRED" thousand instead of twenty thousand (regarding the spare parts listed)
What's $180k between friends?
ah, you fell for the old "say the wrong number while showing the correct number to trick people into commenting and driving up engagement" ploy! (just joking)
@@ThePriestHole ...only one zero.
The last time I made that drive, 1970, a great percentage of the road was unpaved except at Laird Hot Springs and Beaver Springs to Fairbanks.
Could you imagine one of these using todays electric motor technology? Just look what they did with todays earth movers…
I wish I knew this is Whitehorse when I was there in 2001 and 2002. I'm glad I got to drive some old Nodwell machines when I did. Maybe that's another neat thing for a video topic? I'm always fascinated by the machines that conquered the unknown and the talent and designs tried to overcome the brutal terrain. Cheers!
0:54 What was that noise? 😐
Sounds like some people were making porn scene.
Camera child
Right
Camera woman giggles
@@Greg-o1w That is an odd kind of giggle.
I can remember as a child having a Dean's picture book of transport that amongst other things contained a picture of a "trackless train" as it was called.
You have summoned me
Thanks man! I have a bit of an obsession with these things too and any looksy inside at the quarters and amenities are really hard to find-great video!
Too bad there was no platform to look into the cabin.
Hopefully one day!
It's possible the toy company that made the Bigfoot model also made a Snow Train model decades before and just reused those molds.
The tooling for mold machines is the most expensive part of production, so companies aren't likely to just toss them out when not being used. This series of events makes the most sense to me.
3:15 I know you need to advertise to get revenue, but that is a garbage application that I’d never recommend to anyone.
@@Gitbizy you might think so, I really like them. Each to their own 🤷
Great thanks. I remember as a kid in the 50s seeing them in my monthly Popular Mechanics when it came. For decades I was fascinated by them. Until i stumbled across your videos it was almost impossible to get a good overview of them. Thanks again
You cold stand like Vitruvian Man inside one of those tires. Great follow up to the original episode. Thanks for sharing.