The Army hired a Detroit subsidiary to evaluate and price the rail project. A 1965 report, including a map of the stations and tracks where the trains were stationed when not in use, concluded that contractors could build a 35-kilometer-long railway on land and 222 kilometers in the ice sheet at a cost of $47 million (about 470 million make today’s dollar).
The study company suggested nuclear locomotives because they would reduce the risk of heat from diesel engines that might melt ice tunnels. It didn’t seem to matter that nuclear locomotives or rails had not yet been built. Ultimately, the ice cream was reduced to a rail car, 396 meters of rail and an abandoned military truck on railroad wheels.
The dual nature of Arctic glaciers frustrated Army engineers. Glaciers were stable in winter; But digging them was difficult. On the other hand, in the summer under the 24-hour heat of the sun, a few centimeters above the frozen ice would melt and create a swamp impassable for humans and vehicles.
As the frozen layer of soil below the runway melted, its floor would bend and the resulting pits could damage the landing gear. In response, the military wanted to paint the runways white to reflect the sun’s rays and keep the frozen layer below cool, but the fact that the paint reduced the aircraft’s braking ability prevented the plan from being implemented.
Military engineers, ever the optimists, took a more positive view of the permafrost. They tried to use native materials available in the Arctic to reduce the cost of transporting materials, and made an artificial version of the frozen layer of the soil. They first mixed the optimum amount of water and dry soil. Then they poured the mixture into molds to freeze into solid soil and made things like poles, bricks, tunnel linings and even chairs with it. But their composite material was never used as a building material, as one hot day was enough to turn even the sturdiest construction project into a mud pit.
The army’s most ambitious dream came true in the Arctic. In 1958, engineers began to build Camp Century, which was also known as the city under the ice. A 222 km long ice road led to the camp and was about 161 km from the edge of the ice sheet. Almost 1.6 km of vertical ice separated the camp from the rock and soil below. The century camp had dozens of large trenches over 300 meters long, all of which were dug into the ice sheet by large snow plows and then covered with metal arches and snow.
Inside the camp were heated sleeping quarters for several hundred people, a dining hall and a portable nuclear power plant. The reactor provided facilities such as unlimited hot showers and plenty of electricity.
The camp was temporary. In less than a decade, melting ice destroyed it, but before that, scientists and engineers drilled the first deep ice core, penetrating the entire thickness of the Greenland ice sheet. In 1966, the last season the army was stationed at Qarn Camp, diggers removed more than 3.4 meters of frozen soil from under the ice, another unprecedented achievement.
