Today's Baltimore Sun has an article on the relocation of much of the US Army's vintage ordinance/weaponry collection from difficult-to-access Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland to Fort Lee in Virginia:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryla ... 4684.story

Relevant passage:








Okay, not only are they going to have to move a GIANT rail gun through Baltimore and D.C. by rail, not only are they going to have to rebuild a bunch of trackage so that it can be rolled off the base (last time I saw it it was sinking into what ballast it had)............. but the only rail connection this place has is by the Amtrak Northeast Corridor..............

I'm going off to load up my lawn chair and popcorn. This could be a HOOT. <:-]

If it came from Europe, it probably shrinks down to a fairly low clearance.

But I'm with you. I want to see this.

Sure wish that had to move over Navy tracks. Might just have to arrange an official visit if it was. :-)

Greg

Hard to image Anzio moving down the NEC.

For the record, there are few surviving large rail guns, three are in the US mid-Atlantic:

14-inch Naval gun at the Washington Ship Yard:

http://tinyurl.com/q5nrd5 (Google Maps)

This is one of five that were built in a month by Baldwin in 1918 and shipped to Europe where they fired 700+ shells in anger.

12-inch gun at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgen (VA):

http://tinyurl.com/r8chhz (Google Maps)

Reportedly French built, and reportedly last fired in the 1960's to test guided missile warheads against various target types.

The Anzio weapon is supposed to have been assembled from parts from two different guns used at the beach but destroyed by their crews before capture.

Bob

This is your tax dollars at work under Base Realingment and Closure (BRAC) 2005. Perfectly good museum at Aberdeen is moving (along with other base functions) so that the mission of Fort Monmouth here in NJ can move to Aberdeen. The Monmouth piece is about a billion dollars over initial estmates. I'd assume the Fort Monmouth museum will move to Aberdeen. Monmouth is known for radar development and communications equipment for the US Army. Mostly small stuff compared to the museum displays at Aberdeen.

Nothing is moving into Monmouth.

Amtrak does run right past Aberdeen, but there is some CSX or NS close by.

Seems odd that few federal dollars support civilian transportation museums, yet the DoD BRAC budget can support something like this.

I wonder if "move by rail" means "we'll dis-assemble it and put the components on flatcars with fancy things like roller bearings, air brakes and US style couplers..."

Looks like you could break it down into 4 pieces pretty easily, the barrel, the body, and the two truck assemblies. Load them onto railcars and ship it out. Probably still a special move, but one that's a lot more likely to actually occur.

There's a big difference between "move by rail" and "on it's own wheels".

A short snippet about GUSTAV.....


Marengo Soldier Finds Gustav

Somewhere perhaps on Fort Eustis or perhaps Dahlgren I've seen cars with European couplers on one end and american knuckles on the other end to mate with and adapt equipment like this just for these kind of moves. So in theory, the move can be made on US commercial railroads. It is going to cause the mechanical inspector fits, and will require waivers from God himself, but from my experience, a request from the DOD carries a bit more weight than from your local non-profit RR museum.

Greg

Here are some photos of the Dahlgren gun. Not "French built", just "French type" (Marion, class of 1920). And I think the last photo is the one used in the 1960's experiment; same chassis, different gun.

Steve

NS runs on the NE Corridor. CSX is across town, but the nearest possible connections are either Wilmington or via some convoluted route in Baltimore--I don't even believe they can possibly use either the "emergency" connection near the Susquehanna River bridges (via the Port Road) or that supposed connection between the two Bay View Yards in northeast Baltimore.

One plus to all this--the consolidated museum at Fort Lee will put all these massive relics under cover, just like what we fantasize about for our major collections like the B&O Museum, etc.

First off, there's no "I" in Ordnance. Sorry, a pet peeve of mine as I was an Army Ordnance Officer back in the day.
I was stationed at APG in 97 and 98. I hated to leave the area. For the first time in 11 years, I was in the area last month and had to see the museum one last time. They told me then that moving Leopold was a given. They have two other guns just as large, and a MK III 16-inch Naval rifle on a fixed carriage that would make this look like moving your daddy's shotgun across the street in comparison. At least Leopold has wheels. I guess the whole "No friction bearings" thing will take a pass the day that she takes to the iron heading south, huh?
Interesting to hear that something else will be moving into the old APG center. I haven't kept track of what was going to happen, but I had thought they'd just turn APG and Edgewood Arsenal over to the state. I'd wondered if that would happen as there's a massive Hazmat danger the likes of which few could even imagine!

Chalk that up to an honest typo--I knew that spelling as well, being an editor with much military exposure, and have no idea how I got distracted enough to misspell it (I had about 5 windows open on the same topic at once, so....).

> I guess the whole "No friction bearings" thing will take a pass
> the day that she takes to the iron heading south, huh?

I'm still trying to figure out why they'd even want to try and move it on it's own wheels!?! Wheels that apparently haven't turned in who knows how long and have bearings of a type that would probably be quite rare.

So, you've got two options...

1) Inspect and repair the wheels, chassis, bearings, brakes, etc etc. Retrofit couplers or make an adapter car. Get permission from Amtrak, CSX, NS, and probably God... Run this whole thing as a special move.

The only good thing about that approach is that you would get a lot of publicity when you move it through B'more...

2) Get a big crane or two. Dis-assembling the car is probably easy. It obviously wasn't shipped over from Europe in one piece. The barrel is supported at one point so it can change elevation, so that should be fairly simple and the truck assemblies should also be easy to remove. Granted, there will probably be bolts rusted in place etc, but you'll have the same problem trying to get into the bearings and truck assemblies to get her ready for rail shipment, only with more of them to do...

Load the barrel on one car, the frame on a second and the two truck assemblies may even fit on one car, or two if needed. The barrel might be over length, can't tell from the photos. But even so, if it needs an idler, not a huge deal.

Call the railroad and say "Hey, I've got some flatcars ready for shipment..."


So, those are your choices... Why would you suggest trying the first one?

As for moving friction bearing cars, I moved 3 of them yesterday, between two points that were connected by the UP/BNSF mainline. It was simple, it went great, was all done in one day, and the UP/BNSF didn't say a word about the bearings...

After all, why would they care what I truck down I-5 on lowboys? :)

I found some decent photos of Leopold today, including photos of the running gear and the proximity to the spur into the post: http://www.williammaloney.com/Aviation/ ... /index.htm I doubt given the highway bridge and tunnel clearances between Aberdeen and Ft Lee (and yes, I’ve driven directly between the two places when I was in the Army) that Leopold would fit on a tractor trailer, even broken down. I once talked with one of the Ordnance guys from 5th Army who loaded her onto the ship at Naples, but for the life of me I cannot recall how he said they shipped her. I would assume they broke her down into components (along with parts off of the other K5 gun that was used to eventually restore Leopold to firing condition), but I’m pretty sure you could have put RR tracks into a LST (Landing Ship, Tank, designed to carry a small unit of armored vehicles) and wheeled it into one of those ships through the front doors without taking anything apart. A K5 gun is about 100 feet long and about weighs about as much as 4449 does. It could have been lifted disassembled into a Liberty ship as well and would have been a far safer method of transport. I have read that at least another K5 was brought to Aberdeen and that Leopold was actually test fired after the war, but details on that are very sketchy.Hey, you’d know better than me on that. All I know is what I read here and elsewhere about how supposedly RR’s won’t move stuff with friction bearings. God knows I’ve never tried, it’s just what I keep reading.

They won't touch 'em. You can't interchange them, at least not without a huge hassle and all kind of paperwork. It's not worth the effort, if it's even possible at all. I do recall a few very special moves, like the CP's 2816, so it apparently can be done in extreme circumstances, but basically it's not practical for most moves.

Thus the very last line in my comment: "After all, why would they care what I truck down I-5 on lowboys? :)"

i.e. I shipped them on a lowboy tractor trailer, not by rail.