Not every debut is under the brightest of lights. 

You might be Alan Rickman in Die Hard (NOT a Christmas movie). 

But sometimes you’re Leonardo DiCaprio in Critters 3—a sequel no one remembers.

Most big movie stars got their start in overlooked projects, yet those first experiences offset the stage for brighter moments. 

The McElroy Tritan 560 fusion machine made a similar debut in November 2024, quietly taking center stage in North Dakota just south of the Canadian border on the vast prairie grasslands on the Missouri Plateau. The Tritan completed the final fusions of a three-mile line of a high-density polyethylene (HDPE) natural gas pipeline.

On a 19-degree morning, not long after sunrise, with little or no pomp and circumstance outside of the buzz felt by those who were present, the Tritan rode in on a flatbed trailer.

Specializing in land reclamation, pipeline, and oil field services, Land Restoration Specialists (LRS) became the first company in the industry to purchase and own the innovative Tritan 560—acquired through ISCO, the first to bring this groundbreaking machine to market. The LRS team fueled up the highly mobile unit and drove it directly onto the fusion site to complete the final welds, connecting the natural gas line from the extraction site to the Alamo Compressor Station (an easy name to remember).

The majority of the three-mile line faced geographical challenges, requiring 10 separate horizontal directional drill installations.

As the Tritan moved into position to make the first weld, it quickly demonstrated three key advantages, which all adhere to the adage that time is money: a carriage that loads pipe from the ground up without the aid of extra pipe-handling equipment, a faster cooling process for fused joints and rugged dual rubber track system that allows the machine to easily move from one weld to the next.

McElroy combined the strengths of its other fusion machines: the TracStar® iSeries, the Talon™ 2000, and Acrobat™ QuikFit® carriages, and married them into the innovative Tritan 560.

If it isn’t the Tritan’s mobility that catches your attention, it might be its quiet as a church mouse (by worksite standards) operation, or the intuitive wireless DataLogger integration, which is like watching a professional gamer sliding through some instructions on an iPad.

The Tritan nudged along the pipeline effortlessly, weld to weld. Without missing a beat, it smoothly navigated changes in direction and terrain, rolling down into a ditch to cap an elbow with precision. It then climbed back up the slope with ease, completing the final welds as the low-arching path of the sun dipped toward the horizon. Job finished, the Tritan returned to the flatbed, ready for its next assignment.

No spotlight, no audience, no standing ovation.

But for those of us in the industry—McElroy, the crews in the field, the engineers, the contractors, the pipeline owners—it’s a moment worth applauding. The Tritan 560 proved its mettle with a flawless performance when it mattered most.

Because in our world, it’s not about the size of the stage—it’s about the impact of the work. And this debut? It was nothing short of a showstopper.