Project Carryall: The Time the Santa Fe Railway Almost Detonated a Nuclear Bomb
Save 15 Miles or More Off Your Railroad Mileage By Switching to Nuclear! If you think the words "nuclear" and "railroad" shouldn't exist in the same sentence, you're probably not the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in the early 1960's. When we think of nuclear bombs, we typically associate them as weapons, since the vast majority are used in military circles, but with the nuclear age came the potential to use these weapons not as deterrence or the annihilation of humanity, but rather construction projects. Just one year removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis , in 1963 the AT&SF wanted to harbor this technology to re-align their railroad near Ludlow, CA , as well as Route 66 and the brand new Interstate 40 , and save about 15 miles off of the mainline right-of-way. Map of the proposed nuclear blasting and re-alignments. Public domain image via Atomic Skies The idea was to straighten the Santa Fe mainline between Needles and Barstow, as well as