Lionel 3665 Minuteman Car: Fantasy Or Reality?

Was this Lionel rail car based on a real U.S. Air Force weapons system? A closer look at the post-war number 3665 Minuteman missile car on this episode of Toy Train Tips and Tricks. Now, from the top secret car barns of the Lionel Corporation comes the most advanced military train ever developed. It's the new Lionel Minuteman car. Yes, Lionel had indeed developed something special for its 1961 product line... the number 3665 Minuteman missile firing box car. Based on the tooling of the number 3530 General Motors generator box car, this neat car was cataloged from 1961 through 1964 and has been reissued numerous times since. When activated by the magnet of a Lionel uncoupler or manually by a manumatic uncoupler or by other means, the roof of the car opens as a missile appears from the bowels of the car and, several seconds later, launches across the room. The action is reliable and fun, as attested to by the difficulty in finding original versions that do not suffer from signs of heavy use, scratches, scrapes, and broken or missing parts. That's why I was able to acquire this reissue of the car, new in its original box, for much less than I might have spent on an operable original car. The 3665 was unique in a number of ways, not because it was Lionel's first missile firing car. That honor goes to the number 6650 IRBM, or Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile, launching car in 1959, with which the Minuteman car shares many parts, followed by the number 6544 missile firing car in 1960, and then later several versions of the Turbo Missile Car arrived on the scene. These missile cars, along with other military and space-themed trains, were a sign of the times in post-Sputnik Cold War America. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were in a race to conquer space and the technology to deploy nuclear warheads via missiles instead of bombers. Meanwhile, American citizens were instructed in the location and use of civil defense shelters, and how to duck and cover from a nuclear attack. The number 3665 Minuteman car differed from its fellow missile cars, not only in the means of launching its payload via a hidden box car compartment rather than an open flat car, but the name was also significant. While the other cars were simply missile cars, or IRBM cars named after a class of weapon, only the Minuteman car displayed the name of an actual U.S. Air Force weapon system, the Minuteman ICBM, or Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. So what was special about this Minuteman program? The U.S. Air Force began developing the Minuteman system in the late 1950s, and by 1961, the system represented state-of-the-art technology as the USA's first operational solid-fuel ICBM. Solid fuel allowed the missile to be stored ready to fire for prolonged periods, and thus be ready to fire immediately in response to a Soviet missile launch. The Minuteman system became fully operational in early 1962. While Lionel may have been interested in the Minuteman name because of its media exposure at the time, there was likely a different reason for Lionel's use of the name, and the unique method of firing its toy payload. On June 21, 1960, a special 14-car train left Hill Air Force Base in Utah as part of Operation Big Star. This was the first of four test trains operated to test the feasibility of launching Minuteman and other missiles from mobile, railroad-based launchers. In total, the four test trains operated over 21 railroads in the Northwest and Midwest in the summer of 1960. Part of the train was a special pre-prototype, 80-foot-long, 127-ton launch car carrying a simulated missile load. The car had a special shock absorber system that would allow a Minuteman or other missile to launch from inside a railcar. Of course, in the real world, such an operation required more than a single stealth boxcar, but a trainload of support personnel and supplies. In fact, the third test train carried a crew of 35 Air Force personnel and 13 civilian technicians and observers. The Air Force hoped to have operational train sets ready for deployment by July 1962, but in the end, the cost and complexity of the system was determined to be too much in relation to the minimal strategic advantage of a mobile system. And funding was pulled for the rail-based system on December 14, 1960. Most of the already built cars from the test trains later found use in the so-called RBS Express, a train of mobile radar and detection equipment used to measure the accuracy of Air Force bombers from 1961 through 1970. Undoubtedly, the Air Force's plans for mobile ICBM launching trains led to Lionel's development of the Minuteman car and the use of the Minuteman name as well as the unique through-the-roof launching technique. In fact, the original Lionel service sheet for this car states, quote, based on a similar railroad weapon developed by the U.S. Air Force, unquote. And the original instruction sheet packed with the car states, quote, a real-life model of the Minuteman with Strategic Air Command markings, unquote. Let's take a look at the operation of these cars and the similarities and differences with the IRBM launching cars. Oh, by the way, the concept of rail-launched ICBMs didn't end with Operation Big Star and the Minuteman trains. The Soviet Union, China, and North Korea also experimented with rail-launched missiles over the years. And the Pentagon itself revisited the idea in the 1980s with the Peacekeeper missile rail garrison car. As with the Minuteman, the added cost of a mobile system eventually ended the program. But you can view an actual Peacekeeper rail car today at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. So here's my version of the Minuteman car. This is a reissue from 1995 and new in the box. And so we're going to unpack this and let it see the light of day for the first time in over a quarter century. Boy, am I old. 1995 seems like just yesterday to me. All right, so as we take this out, we'll notice that some of the markings are different. It no longer says Minuteman because, well, while Minutemans are still deployed today, they are old news. And, you know, being in this post-Cold War era, the Berlin Wall came down. And so we're thinking about 1995, the big thing in missiles was the Patriot missile system, anti-missile missiles. This box car is marked appropriately as an anti-missile system rather than an ICBM. So we take this off. Very well packaged. Here we see I think I'm past my one-year warranty and our original instructions. Oh, we need to remove the foam. And here we go with our original instructions and a list of 1995 service stations. I wonder how many of those are still open. All right, so let's continue opening. Let's get it out of the plastic. And here is the foam insert it was talking about. More instructions. Danger, use only official Lionel missiles. There it comes. Okay, so I think that's all of the packing material. Yes, all of the packing material is now out of the way. So first looking at the markings, and again, this is now a land-based anti-ballistic missile system, much like the Patriot missile system. Danger explosive. So we've lost the strategic air command markings. It's now marked U.S. Army. Here's our built 1995. A couple of access doors here. Danger explosives. And then should be the same thing on the other side. Yes, indeed. Okay, so when the car is activated, the roof will open and this will work its way up and launch the missile. Okay, we are down. We take the missile in. Now, the post-war missiles were two pieces, usually red and white. The new versions, whether it's on this one or here's one off of the IRBM car, you can see where it used to be two pieces, but now it's molded together as one. If you can take these apart without cutting it apart, I think it's bolted as one piece now. In any case, so we push the mechanism down, it clicks, we slide the missile on so that the slot goes in the fin, and then we're going to push it back into cocking position, click, close the roof, and it is ready for launch. As the car passes over a magnetic uncoupling track, we activate the magnet, which pulls down on the plunger underneath the car. The door's stuck there. Okay, boom. All right, hopefully that was just first time jitters with the door getting stuck there. Let's try this again. So, we're going to push it down, it's cocked, slide it back into firing position, close the doors, and we're going to try this. Whoops, rolling away. Try this again, and click. There, that was much better. So, to see from the side, here is the activating plunger. Now, the cool part that accounts for our movement is this rubber diaphragm piece. This basically is what pushes the whole mechanism into firing position. So, the plunger releases, the rubber diaphragm starts pushing it upwards. Eventually, when the firing ramp gets high enough, it pulls on a pin which releases the spring which fires the missile. The firing mechanism itself is very similar to the one on the IRBM car. Now, obviously, the difference, one, this is not located within a boxcar, and the one in the boxcar obviously has less detail to it. Basically, it is this portion right here of our mechanism. This part swivels. This was also used on the Lionel, I believe it was number 404 missile firing platform, and also on a rail car. And again, this is a reissue as well. Same idea as with this car. I was able to pick up a new in the box reissue for much less than finding a good operational original. So, the difference in operation between the two, while the Minuteman car uses the plunger with the electromagnet to operate this one, the IRBM is totally manual operation. This lever here pushes everything down, and you hear it click in position. You again slide the rocket on, we cock the missile into position, we press the firing pin, and the rest of the operation is the same. It lifts and eventually fires when it pulls the pin. Let's see if I can do a little side-by-side comparison and see if one fires faster than the other. Three, two, one, and they're off. Later on, Lionel used the design of the Minuteman car for other operations as well, including the reconnaissance helicopter car, where as the arm lifted up instead of firing a missile, it activated the launch of a helicopter. And there's also a hard-to-find version that instead of a missile actually has a cannon. As always, I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I enjoyed making it, and if so, please share the love by liking, subscribing, sharing, and telling your friends and neighbors. Keep the trains running, and the missiles firing, and we'll catch you next time on Toy Train Tips and Tricks.