Transport
Discover facts about transport. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Transport
When passenger planes landed on frozen lakes
Norway's post-war infrastructure was so rugged they briefly abandoned the concept of runways. In 1948, Fagernes Airport decided it was perfectly normal to…
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Norway’s uphill bike lift carries cyclists
Trondheim realized that absolutely nobody wants to pedal up a steep incline in the freezing cold, so they installed a street-level conveyor belt. Cyclists…
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The bizarre pedal-powered pods that never caught on
In a desperate bid to combine the exhaustion of cycling with the claustrophobia of a coffin, the Shweeb was born. It’s a human-powered monorail system where…
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The train that ran on sails
In the early 1900s, someone in the Bohemian region looked at a train and decided coal was overrated. The 'Böhmischer Windwagen' was a literal railcar equipped…
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The flying-car scam that fooled investors
Long before Silicon Valley bros were promising flying cars, Clifford C. Brooks was out here running the ultimate aeronautical grift. In the mid-20th century,…
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Why nuclear trains never made it to the tracks
Handing out mobile nuclear reactors to freight companies sounded like a brilliant atomic-age dream until engineers remembered physics. Studies during…
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One cow needed two calves to ride this railway
Physics is an unforgiving mistress, especially when your transit system resembles a giant iron sawhorse. The Lartigue Monorail draped passenger cars over a…
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The proposed subway that would work like a roller coaster
Elfric Wells Chalmers Kearney was an eccentric visionary who firmly believed the London commute needed more theme park energy. In the early 1900s, he pitched…
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The plane that drove through Paris
In 1921, René Tampier decided the transition between driving and flying was simply too much of a hassle. He invented the Cyclomer, a bizarre biplane with…
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One TNT blast redrew London's tram routes
Running a tram network is hard enough without nearby munitions factories spontaneously turning into craters. In 1917, the Brunner Mond chemical works in…
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A foot injury helped create the snowmobile
Necessity might be the mother of invention, but profound laziness is absolutely its father. In 1924, Carl Eliason had a foot injury that made trudging through…
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Why high winds can stop trains on Barmouth Bridge
Wales boasts a wooden railway viaduct so precariously positioned that the local wind regularly threatens to yeet locomotives into the sea. The Barmouth Bridge…
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When Londoners turned the Tube into bunkers
When the Luftwaffe started dropping explosives on London during WWII, the government initially told people to stay out of the subway. Londoners ignored this…
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New York erased a street after a deadly train crash
When you spectacularly crash a train and kill 93 people, the easiest fix is apparently just changing the map. The 1918 Malbone Street disaster was the…
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The Sailboat You Steer Without a Rudder
Steering a boat with a rudder is apparently too mainstream. In the 1920s, Catalan beachgoers invented the Patín a Vela, a wooden catamaran completely devoid…
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The London Underground train named Sarah Siddons
Naming a heavy-duty maintenance locomotive after a legendary 18th-century tragic actress is peak British humor. No. 12 'Sarah Siddons' was built in 1923 for…
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The trailer that tried to be a truck and a train
Freight companies looked at trains and trucks and decided to aggressively mash them together into one incredibly heavy compromise. The Roadrailer system…
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The hydrogen balloon that made flight steerable
In 1852, long before the Wright brothers, Henri Giffard achieved powered, steerable flight by strapping a literal steam engine to a hydrogen-filled dirigible.…
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The bus that could switch from roads to rails
In the 1930s, the German Schienen-Straßen-Omnibus attempted to solve the 'last mile' problem by being an awkward chimera of a train and a bus. It was a…
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The 62-day military road trip across America
The US Army sent a convoy of trucks from DC to San Francisco in 1919 just to see if it was possible. It took 62 agonizing days of sinking into mud and…
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The flying car with detachable wings
Clifford Harper Jr. looked at rush hour traffic and decided the only logical escape was a roadable aircraft. His concept featured a street-legal automobile…
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Alexander Winton invented the first semi-truck car hauler
In 1898, Alexander Winton realized that driving his newly manufactured cars to customers put unnecessary wear on the tires. His wildly cynical solution was to…
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Brunel conceptualized tunnel shields via the Portland Vase
While most engineers looked at rocks, Marc Isambard Brunel allegedly found structural and conceptual inspiration for his groundbreaking Thames tunneling…
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Doctor Yellow tests bullet train tracks at 170 mph
Japan built an exclusive, bright yellow high-speed train that runs track diagnostics at 170 mph, but ordinary commuters can never board it. Its rarity has…
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