These atomic-themed toy trains are part of ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity.
While researching items on display in ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity and looking through atomic toys, I paused when I got to the trains. Our collection includes children’s novelties from the 1950s that are themed around nuclear power. My little boys love trains, so I thumbed through the associated files that accompany our large collection.
Popular Mechanics (August 1949) cover and pictures from an article about toy train carrying radioactive sources at Cleveland Clinic to minimize exposure to workers.
The curator of our museum, Paul Frame, Ph.D., is a retired ORAU health physicist and has taken great interest in documenting all that he has found pertaining to nuclear science in connection with items in ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity. In a file folder, I came across old, printed advertisements for toys marketed with key words like “atomic” and “nuclear.” This is where I came across information about radioactive trains, but it wasn’t what I anticipated. In an August 1949 Popular Mechanics magazine, Dr. Frame had flagged an article titled “Radium Train.”
Picture that accompanied June 1949 Popular Science magazine article.
Here’s the excerpt:
“Highballing ‘hot cargo’ from one station to another, the “Radium Limited” is the only train in the world to carry exclusively radioactive materials. It’s a model train installed in the radiation laboratory of Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Otto Glasser, medical physicist, conceived the idea of using a model railroad to carry radon, a radioactive gas produced by radium, from part of the laboratory to another. The gas, which is dangerous because of its radioactivity, is used in treating cancer and in research work. Until the railway was installed, the clinic technicians carried the gas by hand in lead-lined containers. The railroad includes only a locomotive and a flatcar carrying a lead-lined container and is operated by remote control. Eventually, Dr. Glasser wants to load and unload the flatcar with automatic devices providing further protection for the workers.”
Technician hauls a kiddie cartload of radioactive chemicals, Life Magazine (March 28, 1955).
I was fascinated. So, I did a bit more digging. According to the book “Toys! Amazing Stories” by Don Wulffson, Dr. Glasser did rig the automation he hoped for:
“At the Cleveland Medical Lab, the ore-dumping car of an electric toy train is used to transport radon, a radioactive material. Using remote controls, the operator brings the train from the storage room, stops it at the right spot, then tips the ore car to drop the radon capsules down a chute.”
A Popular Science magazine article from June of 1949 explains the process in more detail through pictures and captions: “In the measurement laboratory, a technician checks the radioactivity of the radon-gas capsule with this instrument. The capsule itself is still in its lead-lined flatcar about six feet away.”
And, it turns out, Cleveland Clinic wasn’t the only facility to employ toys for the dirty work. In the March 28, 1955, edition of Life Magazine, there’s a similar story entitled “‘Hot’ Work for Toys”!
Here’s what that one says:
“Hanford playthings carry radioactive burdens.
Anybody who is admitted behind the barriers of the Hanford, Wash., plutonium works is likely to witness the incongruous sight above. Under the cold eye of security guards, technicians are happily dragging around toy wagons loaded with ‘hot’ chemicals. This is not furtively snatched diversion. Toys, the scientists find, are often better than expensive specially designed machinery for transporting chemicals too radioactive to be carried by hand from one laboratory to the next. But the toy which really makes every scientist’s eyes light up is an electric train which faithfully winds its way through a labyrinth of equipment hauling a payload of radioactive chemicals.”
Affectionately called the “busy little railroad,” the transport system was built with toy trains to haul chemicals on flatcars through Hanford Site from one research point to the next, Life Magazine (March 28, 1955).
Though we have these documented uses for transporting radioactive sources via toy trains, it is not a current practice today. Dr. Frame tells me, in modern medical and nuclear facilities, the handling and transportation of hot materials are subject to strict regulations and guidelines.
I thought the trip down the rabbit hole was worthwhile. I hope you learned something new, and I hope you check out our atomic toy trains and shielded forceps in the ORAU Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity. See the physical collection in Pollard Center on the main campus of ORAU beginning in January 2025.
Diesel locomotive car with a machine gun turret. See this toy in ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity.
Flat car carrying atomic cannon. See it in ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity.
Shielded forceps are essentially giant lead tweezers used to handle small radioactive sources. See this tool in ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity.