Design Challenge - June / July 2011

POPE DESIGN

In Northern Canada’s winter, frozen rivers become highways to hundreds of trucks shipping huge oversized loads. So it would seem appropriate to create a train of sorts with no tracks to take advantage of this fl at highway made of a low-friction material – ice. As the roadbed is ice and/or snow or water, the train would call for very low ground pressure and good water buoyancy to carry large amounts of cargo all at once. The payoff: one operator transporting large amounts of cargo without the need for a ploughed and maintained highway. The Ice Train would make its own trail.

My solution was heavily influenced by Daire McCabe’s Snow Motor in September 2010’s iVT. I have been fascinated by the screw drive since I saw an original Armstead Snow Motor mounted on an old Fordson farm tractor many years ago, so it seemed like the perfect low ground-pressure drive system for my concept. The screw-drive drum is hollow and fabricated from aluminium. An axle is suspended in a rubber airfilled bladder inside the screw drive hollow drum. This provides a few advantages – it isolates the aluminium screw drive drum from the box frame that holds the entire drive assembly, so acts like a shock absorber. The rubber bladder helps lighten up the screw drive assembly as well as making the locomotive more stable and buoyant, with a watertight chassis, providing the ability to travel over water.

Each screw drive’s box frame has a centre-mounted trunion, allowing the entire screw drive to oscillate, helping keep more even contact to the ground. Instead of one long screw drive on each side, it’s broken up into four shorter oscillating assemblies, each powered by its own motor to help with traction.

The deck can be loaded with stacked shipping containers. To make for easy access to the operator’s cab, it lowers from the top of the superstructure down to the ground. The entire locomotive can be operated by a remote control, enabling the operator to assemble it while standing on the ground, with the best and safest view of the cars to be coupled. The low-friction ‘freight cars’ are actually more like barges – the chassis is an inflatable hull, with three runners mounted to it to help the cars track straight on the ice and in the water. The runners are divided into individual sections, which are hinged to each other, allowing them to flex and move on the infl atable hull. A fl exible runner helps keep more ground contract and a smoother ride.

One locomotive with a power output of 1,000hp could haul several freight cars at the same time. Like a railroad, the ice train can pull a lot more freight efficiently with less fuel and horsepower then trucks hauling the same amount of cargo. On larger trains, an ice locomotive can be added as a pusher in the rear and the entire setup could be all controlled by one operator.

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BIOGRAPHY

I would have to say just about 100% of my Matchbox and Tonka toys were trucks and construction equipment. Basically I have been fascinated with heavy equipment for as long as I can remember.  I received a B.S. for Industrial design at University of Bridgeport and I have been an industrial designer for 15 years. The last 12 of those years have been specializing in heavy equipment. I have worked on projects for several different OEM’s while I was employed at Teague and later as a design consultant. I’ve had the pleasure to work on projects from a 400 ton dump truck to a powered wheelchair. I also have a bad habit of designing conceptual construction equipment in my spare time.

CONTACT DETAILS

Email: contact@pope-design.net Tel: +1 201 343 9065