America’s public transit infrastructure may not be as lauded as Europe’s or Japan’s, but it still has a vast and wide-spread railway system. That system requires protection, which apparently might sometimes include a rail-truck like this full of skull-cracking law enforcers.
This 2006 International medium-sized cargo truck, built out for tactical operations on railways, is the first of such things I’ve ever seen but, dang, it’s pretty cool.
A Jalopnik reader found it for sale at a surplus auction, and as of the time of publication the high bid is $US950 ($1,384).
My cursory research didn’t yield anything about this vehicle specifically, and the auction listing is comically vague. But flipping through the pictures, it’s pretty clear that the truck is set up to carry a large group of people over train tracks and quickly deploy them into a likely hazardous situation.
There’s some kind of crane mechanism, armoring, and big benches that a team could easily get off from. I can’t make out any markings on the truck so I can’t tell what organisation it belonged to, but, I can tell you that both private rail companies and government agencies employ pretty serious security forces to keep the peace on America’s railroads.
If you’re interested in learning more about the history of that, The Railroad Police website has some pretty interesting old photos and info from the days of horses and single-shot rifles to modern mechanization.
Anyway, on to the important stuff: who’s going to buy this and take “tacticool overlanding” to a whole new level?
Hat tip to Todd!