Friday, September 2, 2011

Praxis courtesy of Global Guerrillas: Repurposing abandoned railroad tracks with a DIY bamboo train.

Incredible "Bamboo train" in Cambodia from vibert on Vimeo.



The amazing thing is the common-sense way they handle traffic control moving both ways. Be sure and watch the whole thing.

12 comments:

Mark Matis said...

I think you'll find that Stateside, with metal prices being what they are, abandoned railbeds have been stripped of their tracks. Hell, there are even track thieves stealing ACTIVE rails
http://www2.turnto10.com/news/2011/jun/03/pieces-steel-track-stolen-rail-portsmouth-ar-518771/
!!!

greenmeanie said...

Mindbogglingly resourceful! If we tried that here any number of agencies would come screaming in to bring the "offender" to "justice".

Bad Cyborg said...

That definitely looks like something that could work post SHTF. Reckon how hard it might be to acquire (fabricate) one of those rigs that the RR companies use to run regular pickups on tracks. Reckon you could use regular steel wheels and just run them without tires? Carry a set of bare wheels, swap them in/out and use the tracks. Course if you're gonna do that might as well use the roads. Also, post SHTF, where you expect to get fuel? Feds will have it for sure. Not sure about rebs.

One thing they have going for them is the narrow gauge of their railroad tracks.

Anonymous said...

Amazingly simple and efficient.

In the US, there would be eighteen redundant and incompetent bureaucracies involved from point A to point B.

Chaplain Tim said...

Somewhere there is a government regulator having a series of heart attacks after watching this video. How dare they make their own form of transportation, without safety regulations and other "oversight" for their own good.

Alvie D. Zane said...

Awesome! I wonder how long it will take for the government to come along and tax it so they can improve it? (And ultimately ruin it.)

Anonymous said...

Nice video.

However, any party who wishes to limit the use of railroads takes out one rail someplace on the line and users are stopped at that point. And railroads tend to be well known landmarks on maps.

One more reason railroads are limited to "safe" areas or CONUS; they can carry a lot of items (kilotons per train), but are very vulnerable to interdiction from the air and sabotage.

Gunner

JoeFromSidney said...

That's not the Cambodia I remember, from 1962. And watch your fingers as you connect the V-belt to the flywheel.

Anonymous said...

For Bad Cyborg, I have a video showing WWII jeeps and a bunch of GI trailers all hooked together with a jeep on each end (facing opposite directions) going back and forth on some trax ferrying troops. They ran on the rims and I measured local trax and they match the wheel spacing on all my vehicles. In case of the SHTF, the interstates will be deadlocked, the secondary highways will have roadblocks but the trax might be overlooked. If your vehicle is a diesel, the locomotives have saddlebag fuel tanks on each side with 3500 gallons of diesel each that might be siphoned if needed. Boy Scout motto, BE PREPARED.

Anonymous said...

Use of railroads or railroad beds is a good idea in a lot of areas. Most railroads built their track beds high enought to prevent flood problems and you can avoid a lot of towns and roads. Look at railroad maps you can cover a lot of territory and not run into much in the way of people and hazards. Good job on the video. 74

Big Al said...

When the Zombies come, I'm grabbing a CSX truck and heading off the on the rails whilst the rest of you are stuck on the interstate!!!

Al III

Anonymous said...

At the www.stevequayle.com web site, under the section 'Prep Tips" is a link to the 1948 US Railroad Atlas. Some of the lines have been removed but one can see where there are a lot of railroad lines still in use, or waiting for us to use them when the SHTF. They aren't listed on the AAA road maps but they sure could be added to the road maps to make it easy to find access points to jump from a paved road to the rail road. Suggest getting the scanner frequencies for the RR to add to your monitoring to get a handle on their schedules.