Soviet plan to build twin-barrelled, streamlined amphibious monorail

The July, 1934 ish of Popular Science reported on this wonderful plan to exploit Soviet Turkestan by means of twin-barrelled, streamlined amphibious monorails to "whiz above desert sands on an overhead rail, or plunge into the water to ford a river."

A single overhead rail on concrete standards could be erected at low cost along these routes, engineers estimate. Air-propelled cars with twin, cigar-shaped hulls could straddle the track and glide along it, at speeds reaching 180 miles an hour, according to calculations based on tests of models at Moscow. The cars would be equipped with Diesel-electric drive, and each one would carry forty passengers or an equivalent freight load. Where the longest of the projected routes crosses the river Amu-Daria, a mile and a quarter wide, it is proposed that amphibian cars be used. On arriving at the shore the cars would leave the overhead rail and cross the river as a boat. Soviet engineers are reported already surveying the route.

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