We have been having an interesting discussion on the Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society discussion website about gun turrets shipped over the old Monon Railroad. The discussion has now evolved into the shipment of large caliber guns, such as those used on battleships. One of our members submitted a photograph of two short Milwaukee Road flat cars, and also a drawing of a F22 class Pennsylvania Railroad car, which is a similar car. Two of these short flats, coupled together, apparently carried one large gun using cradles on each of the two cars. There was no dimensional information with the photo of the two Milwaukee Road cars (one was MILW 67102 and the other one MAY have been MILW 67103) but the PRR drawing included this info:

length of car - 30' 2"
coupled length - 32' 0"
capacity - 150,000#
wgt of car - 41,500#

With the drawing was a photo of a F22 class Pennsy car carrying the number 435303. The car had arch bar trucks and the drawing was labelled circa 1912. The photo of the Milwaukee Road cars showed more modern trucks, perhaps Bettendorf.

My question is this, did any of these short gun flats survive in a museum somewhere? If some museum had two of them, perhaps a good display could be set up with some type of replicated 12" or 14" or 16" gun barrel included in the display. If only one was preserved, a replicated cradle could probably be fabricated explaining the usage of the car.

Les

I believe there has been past discussion of one (or two?) PRR short gun flats in the shop area of the Iowa Traction west of Mason City, Iowa. Why the car(s) ended up there is unknown to me.

Alex Huff

Anybody got any photos of them there?

Les