No, I think they would have to go by rail, just not on their own wheels. Break it down into the four major parts and load those onto flatcars. The same way several steam locos have moved in recent years. Once you put them on a flatcar, it's a whole new game and the railroads, while not exactly happy to see you, (they prefer unit trians thank you very much) are perfectly willing to haul the load.

Update from the field..... well, the ground--Aberdeen Proving Ground, that is.

A cursory inspection reveals some apparent attempt to convert it to air brakes, or at least a through air brake pipe, but said pipes/etc. would have to be completely rebuilt for a movement to be considered--lots of rust and missing "glad hands."

A representative of the Ordnance Museum said that the media articles vastly misstated the pending move schedule, and that "Annie" couldn't even be considered for movement down there until late 2010.

Meanwhile, an associate at Amtrak is telling me that Amtrak's "clearance manager" does not believe ANY railroad will touch this load with a proverbial ten-foot poling pole because of the friction bearings (which aren't American design as well). We shall see if the Department of Defense is indeed mightier than the Department of Transportation......

They are not illegal for special moves at all. Friction bearings are only not permitted for revenue interchange service. It is up to the railroad as to what to do with special moves.

I'm sure some of you remember back in the 1980's when Conrail was not very steam friendly and Dupont told them they wanted to run a steam train to a celebration at it's nylon plant in Seaford, DE and Conrail responded with "what time would you like it to arrive?"

As I understand the latest BRAC plans, The US Army's Ordnance Center and School moves to Ft. Lee, but Aberdeen Proving Ground will remain in place, although perhaps with a smaller footprint. There will be a small museum left at APG, but as mentioned above the bulk of the Aberdeen-Ordnance Museum's major artifacts will move to Ft. Lee.

I agree that "Annie" will most likely move in parts. But as for routing, let's not forget moving "her" straight down the Delmarva peninsula, float across to Little Creek in Norfolk. Then Ft. Lee is only about 80 miles to the west. In other words, let's just bypass Washington and the NE corridor trackage and avoid the muss 'n fuss.

Thanks!

I am a victim of the BRAC involving Aberdeen. Fort Monmouth up here in NJ is closing under BRAC 2005 and moving to Aberdeen. As indicated before, the Ordnance school is moving out of Aberdeen as are some other organizations. This is all to be completed by September 2011.

> As I understand the latest BRAC plans, The US Army's Ordnance Center and School moves to
> Ft. Lee, but Aberdeen Proving Ground will remain in place, although perhaps with a smaller
> footprint.

Aberdeen will not be any smaller physically as a result of BRAC. In fact the number of people on Post will grow from about 14,000 people up to 22,000 people. Some major construction is ongoing building over one million square feet of lab and office space. This will house Team C4ISR which is here in NJ at Monmouth. Contract awards by Fort Monmouth come in around $13Billion per year. Yes, that's Billion with a B.

> There will be a small museum left at APG, but as mentioned above the bulk

I believe this will house the Fort Monmouth museum. Monmouth is best known as a developer of radar and communications for the US Army. There is also a heroic pigeon, stuffed of course, that is in the museum. It was responsible for saving many lives during WWI by carrying a message to headquarters. The first man made contact with the moon was by Monmouth engineers via radar. It would make sense that the Monmouth stuff would move into the current Aberdeen museum but with BRAC little makes any sense.

> I agree that "Annie" will most likely move in parts.

I took a look at the gun last Tuesday. Was kind of surprised by how small it really was. Looks fairly easy to take it apart and move in chunks. Its not a GG1 or anything like that.

I was also surprised to see how good the tracks on Post looked.

Of course I had no camera. Generally the Army frowns on such things so I did not push my luck. The cell phone camera took a crappy picture. The gun as on a track by itself. I should be back there in a week or two.

J.R.

Cameras? Come on, there are military buffs taking photos of that gun and the other weaponry all the time--I spoke with 3-4 in only fifteen minutes.

Insofar as the car float across the Chesapeake Bay, long story short, that's out for now, maybe forever--the normal car float has a terminal leak, last I heard, and no money to put her in drydock, while their reserve car barge won't line up with the aprons anymore.

Let's just say that in my line of work I avoid taking pictures on military bases. In many cases I can not even have a cell phone in certain buildings or areas.
JR

JR is right. There are plenty of sensitive areas at APG which are pretty close to the places tourists to the museum can be found. I have been on the other side of "the fence" at APG more than once in years past and you do not wanna get caught with a camera in some spots there....

An Eastern Shore route from Aberdeen Proving Grounds will still involve the NorthEast Corridor as far a Newark, Del., including the Susquehanna River bridge.

More details please...

http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/2009 ... 303/-1/ESN


More at the link. The car float in question is the Nandua, a conversion of the former PRR ferry Captain Edward Richardson. See Trains, Nov. 2005, for an article by some regular here.

Exactly! Also, what is the biggest issue with loading things up on a flatcar? The cost of crane rentals. Well, that probably won't be a problem in this case.

I was recently involved with re-railing a flatcar at a military facility. They told me they'd provide a crane, and so I was planning on lifting up the car a bit, blocking it up, pulling out the truck that was derailed etc etc, so as not to exceed the capacity of the crane.

Then the crane showed up on site. 100 ton capacity... They have it on site for doing odd jobs like this one. Made it a lot easier, I just chained the trucks to the body and lifted the whole thing in one pick, like putting an HO train back on the track.

I'm guessing that facility may also have similiar units available for their use. If so, a couple of cranes, a couple of flatcars, load it up, tie it down, and you're all set to go down any mainline you'd like. No muss, no fuss, no special trains, no 50 year old bearings, no messing with air lines, no worry about couplers.

Update:

60 pieces were reported as shipped out in August, with a reported 180 pieces yet to be transferred. Two more relocation "phases" are slated for 2010 and 2011.

I'm being told by more than one e-mail associate, one of whom is a rail historian and a military history buff, that the move of the Museum from Aberdeen, Md. to Virginia is, shall we say, not going well.......

If this thing does move by rail on the NEC (big if), you're making a big assumption in thinking you're going to get to see much. Remember, Amtrak does not usually allow freight moves on the NEC during daylight hours. Most freight moves at night, with a 35 mph speed limit. My guess would be that if Annie moves on the NEC, it's going to be at 0200 on a Sunday morning.

Another point about interchanges. The old connection between the B&O and the Port Road line at Perryville was cut several years ago for an expensive housing development. The little piece left at West Aiken on CSX is used for MofW equipment storage occasionally. There is also no connection left between the NEC and CSX at Bay View. The "new connection" off the Sparrow's Point branch by the yard office connects directly to the NS yard trackage to Consol Coal. I suppose it would be possible to zig-zag from NS Bay View yard to the CSX "new connection", but you might as well just keep going slowly down the NEC as to do that, assuming that Annie fits through the Union and B&P tunnels.

Once you get it to DC, then you could switch it to CSX in Washington Terminal. If it can fit in the First St. tunnel, at least one tube of which has been undercut to accommodate Superliners, it would make the most sense just to do that. If not, it would still have to move through the M. St. tunnel on CSX, which absolutely will not accommodate anything over 17' 3" high. Believe me, that limit is burned into my memory after having to stop and inspect I don't know how many double-stack garbage cars with flapping tarps that set off the high-car detectors.

As for cooperation from the railroads in moving it, from what I saw at CSX, they are usually very cooperative with the DOD in working together to move materiel for them. So, I would guess that they will not balk much about moving the gun, other than to make sure it fits all the clearances. Whatever crews get the move will probably have a big pay-day, because every leg of this is going to take close to 12 hours, maybe more on the busier parts of the Capital and RF&P subs.

If it can be broken down onto several conventional flats and move without clearance implications, that's probably the way they will do it. DOD has lots of six axle flat cars for moving big things like that.

Gee whiz, why would tunnel clearance be an issue? If the big gun won't fit thru a tunnel, just load 'er up and blast a new clearance.

Charlie