Their goal was to build “mine resistant “ railroad cars for their personnel. With this in mind the directors at TCDD (State Railways Authority) knocked at the doors of Nurol Machinery, a company established 33 years ago, and has been manufacturing defense products for the last 14 years. The management at Nurol Machinery with the Deputy General Manager Tanju Torun present among them listened carefully to what TDDD really needed and came up with the following plan: “ We can also apply the method we used in the armored vehicle Ejder which we have developed just recently to the custom-built railroad cars. This way, the TCDD personnel will be better protected in case of a mine attack.” And they set out to manufacture the mine-resistant railroad car named “Furgon” developed for TCDD personnel. An agreement has been reached to make the first delivery in March 2009. 21 of the mine-resistant railroad cars will be manufactured by Nurol Machinery for the Rairoad Authority. Tanju Torun stopped by the office the other day. We talked about both Ejder and the point reached by the companies serving the Turkish defense sector. Apparently, Nurol Machinery has developed Ejder completely on its own. After completing the building of the 18 ton vehicle, test dummies were placed inside of it, and a considerable amount of mines were detonated underneath. In a sense, they have actually tried to blow up Ejder. But, Ejder apparently proved to be much sturdier than stipulated NATO standards. According to what Torun said, the floor sheet of the vehicle did not get torn apart. This situation is the most important aspect of the vehicle since it is essential to prevent the passengers (military or security people) from getting harmed. Also, customized car seats have been developed in order to protect the internal organs, the lower backs and the necks of the passengers from getting hurt.The car seats hang down from the ceiling. Apparently, this configuration is intended to protect the people inside to a large degree in case of a mine detonating underneath the vehicle. Tanju Torun who is an army veteran sighed deeply while talking all about this and added: “ We wish this technologies had been developed earlier so we would not have had so many martyrs fallen to the heinous and cowardly mine attacks.” Nurol Machinery is shipping armored vehicles to Georgia and Saudi Arabia on the one hand while getting ready to sell tecchnologies to the United States on the other. While doing all of this, it also follows very closely the tenders already announced or to be announced by the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF)