The above picture shows Rear Admiral Byrd's giant motor vehicle as it was under construction in the Pullman Standard Car Manufacturing Co. Shops. The ship was designed by the Research Foundation of the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Hundreds of Hobart residents lined the right-of-way of U. S. Road 6 this Thursday, from the Gary city limits to the county line, in an effort to catch a glimpse of the 37-ton snow cruiser built by the Research Foundation of the Armour Institute of Technology for the Byrd Antarctic expedition, as it made its way along that artery enroute from Chicago to Boston. The mighty monster chugged along the northern limits of Hobart at about 11:00 in the morning, after its failure to embark on its transcontinental journey as scheduled last Monday. Unfounded reports of its departure daily thereafter, had caused many local spectators to doubt whether it ever would pass this way.
Having stopped in Gary for several hours earlier in the morning to make its final shakedown test by crawling up and down sand dunes, the cruiser was to reach Fort Wayne Thursday night for an overnight rest at the end of the first lap of its trek across the country. The grotesque machine was heralded by a procession of State Highway Commission trucks and State police, and was followed by a two-mile-long procession of irate motorists, many of whom had no idea what was causing the traffic jam on the horizon ahead. A bevy of news reel cameras and a blaring public address system, which announced the advent of the cruiser with martial music, added to the auspiciousness of the occasion.
Because of its extreme size, 20 feet wide, 12 feet high, and 55 feet long, the cruiser travels only by day. It has a top speed of 30 miles per hour, but it is driven usually no more than 20 miles per hour so as to properly break in the power plant. Each state through which the cruiser travels provides highway police as escort, and emergency trucks to haul passenger automobiles out of the ditches into which they may have been forced in order to allow its passage.
Destined to a life of adventure and symbolizing engineering perfection and scientific ingenuity in every respect, the cruiser will carry into the heart of the Antarctic region scientific equipment valued at $50,000, enabling its crew to make observations in more than a dozen scientific fields. Experts predict that during the first month of its operation more territory will be explored than has been covered by the combined efforts of all previous Antarctic expeditions.
The snow cruiser is capable of negotiating the most difficult terrain, and is able to span crevasses up to fifteen feet wide. Two giant Diesel engines hooked to an electric motor in each of the four wheels furnish the power. Its wheels have the largest rubber tires in the world--huge rubber doughnuts ten feet wide-- which can be individually raised, lowered, powered, and steered. A five-passenger airplane, equipped as a flying laboratory which can be made ready for flight in ten minutes, will be moored on the top deck of the cruiser. Its main feature is the fact that it can be provisioned for a period of one year for a crew of five men, and fueled for a distance of 5000 miles.
The trip to Boston is expected to take eight days, with overnight stops, besides Fort Wayne, at Mansfield, O., Akron, O., Fredonia, N. Y., Auburn, N. Y., Albany, N. Y., Framingham, Mass., and Boston. Rear Admiral Byrd will take the ship with him when he leaves Boston about Nov. 1 on a three-year expedition to Antarctic to explore and establish the United States claim to antarctic regions.
