If it’s a plain plane on the plain…but only if it’s not raining in Spain.
We need someone to explain that Spain thing.
Even if you could, you’d then be trading an issue with horizontal clearance for an issue with vertical clearance. In addition to tunnels, train tracks often run under bridges, viaducts, power lines, etc., most of which are going to have a vertical clearance of much less than the 40-ish feet you’d need to account for both the wingspan of the MiG, and the flat car on which it’s being carried.
That is the speed record for a train in the USA? I’m not impressed.
But what if the train is on a treadmill?
Yeah, the U.S. has never invested in high-speed rail the way that Japan and portions of Europe have. Probably the fastest regularly-scheduled trains in the U.S. today are the Amtrak passenger trains on the “Northeast Corridor” (between Boston and Washington D.C.); the Acela trains which run in that corridor are capable of 150mph, but due to track conditions and traffic, average well under that (more like 70-80mph).
There have been numerous proposals to create and improve more high-speed rail corridors in the U.S., but most haven’t gotten off the ground, or remain fairly small-scale.
Then the plane never takes off, evidently.
How about having My Fair Lady ex-plain it?
M-497 continued to run – sans jet engines – until 1977. At least one engine went on to be used here:
The mechanism rotates; when operated in the “down” position, it clears snow. Like this:
It takes nothing away from the brilliance of Galaxy Quest by noting Sam Rockwell totally cribbed that from stand-up comedian Kevin Meaney.
They shipped the shuttle SRBs by train, one of those should have a good 3 million pounds of thrust.
Alas they transported them in peices , which is far less exciting.
What you’re describing is called loading gauge - the overall maximum width and height of rail cars and their cargo. In the US, the standard is 10’ 8" wide and 15’ 6" high in urban areas and 20’ 3" high in more open areas. It takes some planning to move exceptional loads like 737 fuselages, which are almost two feet wider, but I can’t tell from the pictures above if the width of the wing box is within that or not.
In the pic running_coach posted, it looks like the car carrying the fuselage has a clearance gauge at the front. I would assume the train moves very slowly for that to be useful. Likewise the train carrying the Shuttle SRBs - those three yellow rings on the first boxcar. Hit that and you’ll hit the rocket, which will really spoil your day.
Doh!
I think these points are meaningless. Putin needs no pretext to expand the war to Poland. If he’s willing to attack a NATO nation he’s gonna do it. He’s already targeting hospitals and refugees. If Ukraine can’t safely fly planes from Polish airfields to Ukrainian airfields then this exercise is pointless, there’s little indication that Russia has complete air dominance right now. They aren’t staging attacks from Poland, that would be a different issue. And Poland is already the staging ground for mountains of materiel being transferred to Ukraine including Stingers and Javelins, the planes wouldn’t change that status.
Or if you packed a fighter jet on a train (whether in landscape or portrait orientation) and accelerated it to near-c speeds, you could sometimes get it through tunnels, bridges, power-lines, etc., by quantum tunneling. Sometimes.
So your contention is “he hasn’t so he won’t”?
If we’re straying this far from the OP’s topic, then I’d suggest the US rail speed record was set by this hypersonic sled traveling (yes, on rails) at about 6600 MPH:
79 mph, same as in town.
(In the US, federal regulations limit trains without automatic train controls to 79 mph.)
According to this article from Politico, at one point, that actually was the plan:
A Ukrainian government official told POLITICO that Ukrainian pilots had even traveled to Poland to wrap up the deal and bring the planes back over the border.
As to why that didn’t wind up happening, from the reasons I suggested in my first reply, it appears 2) making Poland and NATO more directly involved in the conflict was actually a major factor in the plan being scuttled, especially once the idea of a transfer became public. Also apparently a major factor was U.S. military and intelligence assessments that transferring the aircraft wouldn’t actually do the Ukrainians much good.
I don’t think Ukraine really needs the Migs, but you might be able to ship them via rail. The Russians took the wings off and shipped one in an An-22 cargo plane in this youtube video. I don’t know how close the wing stubs are to the walls but the cargo bay of this aircraft is 14ft wide so it’s less than that. The width of a Ukranian DPKr-3 train coach is 11.4ft wide. Assuming they have flat railcars the same width, the plane would probably hang over the side by a foot or so on each side.
I don’t think they have many train tunnels, Ukraine is fairly flat. They wouldn’t have to go far anyway. And the train measurements are for a passenger train. They also have industrial rails which may or may not have more elbow room on the sides of the tracks. You wouldn’t have to take the train through a passenger terminal at least.