There was in fact another, different Army concept for nuclear power on land but used in “trains” – tanks. At one time the Army had a concept for cutting the diesel fuel use that resulted from tanks driving from rear areas all the way up to the front lines – a nuclear mobile power station that would drive along with the tanks. Each tank – of very conventional design – was to have included an electric drive motor on its transmission and a sturdy pole on the top rear of the tank. Cables would have strung together a dozen or more tanks with the nuclear unit in the middle; the whole line would then have moved along from the rear up to relatively near the combat zone (but out of danger) where the cables would have been taken down and the tanks dispatched on their own. The power unit would then return to ferry more tanks. Obviously, this concept was fraught with problems. For example, the extremely heavy tracked power unit would not have been able to go through terrain that tanks might well have been forced to cross – and even some bridges would have been too light for it. Not surprisingly, ferrying tanks simply under their own power was found to be much better and this non-solution was never applied.
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