Invisible Themepark

Category: Cutaway Drawings and Cross-Sections

Cutaway and cross-section drawings of vehicles, weapons, submarines, airplanes, buildings, and more.

  • Two Story Trailer Cutway, 1952

    Two Story Trailer Cutway, 1952

    From the magazine, we’re told that this trailer, from Holan Engineering from Elwood, Indiana, has two stories and an attic, a plastic-tiled kitchen and bathroom, and a living room with a picture window. The trailer is 8 feet wide by 40 feet long.

    What they don’t tell us is that this is a mobile home, not meant to travel any farther than from the dealer’s lot to the mobile home park or vacation spot near the lake.

    The trailer blog Portable Levittown states that this trailer later took the name Ventoura Loft-Liner.

    Source:  Popular Science, June 1952

     

  • Idlewild (JFK) Airport Air Traffic Control Tower, 1952


    Originally called Idlewild Airport, it was renamed JFK Airport in 1963, after the President’s assassination.

    This workman-like, competent but hardly spectacular cutaway illustration by Sloane shows the 11-story so-called “supertower” that allowed air traffic controllers in the early Fifties to track and guide up to 1,000 aircraft a day (real capacity was likely much less).

    At the time, Idlewild was nine times larger than its sister airport, La Guardia.  It became so difficult for controllers to maintain control of air traffic at the massive 4,900 acre Idlewild that sometimes, Popular Science reports, a jeep with a tw0-way radio would be sent out to the runways to communicate with controllers at the old tower.

    Source:  Popular Science, June 1952

  • Golden Gate Bridge, 1968

    It’s a pretty fanciful look at a double-decker Golden Gate Bridge that never happened.  The neighboring Oakland Bay Bridge is double-decker, but not the Golden Gate Bridge.

    No information about this cutaway found on Flickr than the artist is Michele and the date is 1968.

    Click to Enlarge to:  1211 x 792 px

    Golden Gate Bridge 1968

    Source:  JoeKane17

  • Turtle Personal Tank, 1952

    As far as I know, this one-man tank never left the mind of Les G. Scherer.

    Scherer designed this personal-sized tank to weigh 7,000 pounds, pack two .30 caliber machine guns, and have 650 ports arrayed around the driver with each port containing a shotgun shell that could be electrically fired.  Main selling point of the Turtle Tank was its low center of gravity.  Like its terrapin namesake, this tank would have been difficult to turn over.

    Click to Enlarge to 934 x 682 px:

    Turtle Personal Tank 1952

    Source:  Popular Science April 1952

  • Atomic-Powered Heating System for Building, 1952

    This was real, not Fifties fantasy:  a building heated by atomic energy.

    Appropriately enough, the building, located in Harwell, England, was the center for that nation’s atomic research.  Waste heat from the nicknamed “Bepo,” one of the atomic piles, was diverted to heat the 330,000 cubic foot/80 office building.  The system cost $42,000, but it was estimated that it would save $7,500 per year in heating bills.

    Click to Enlarge to 850 x 693 px:

    Atomic-Powered Heating System for Building 1952

    Source:  Popular Science February 1952

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