Wasn't sure where to put this, so decided this is as good a place as any. If anyone is thinking about building a troop train or putting some HO scale military equipment on flat cars, There's a decent amount of information out there. If you want some photos, reply to the post or message me and I'd be glad to upload or send you what I found. Attached are a few photos of the military flats / gon I've done so far. Tom Holley and I e-mailed and talked over the course of the week and exchanged numerous ideas. Thanks, Tom. Yes, there is photographic evidence of CCKWs loaded on a mill gon. Paul Moore
Paul et al, take look at my newest thread; http://www.frisco.org/shipit/index.php?threads/modeling-freight-car-loads.13671/
Looks good Paul. I like how you secured them. My only thought is that the machine guns would probably be removed. Maybe not from the Quad but the single ring mounted ones. Ft Leonard Wood branch in your layout next?
There are several things about the Roco minitanks that don't lend themselves to shipping on a flatcar. The Sherman tank needs a travel lock (might scratch build it); the quad 50 wouldn't be aimed skyward; etc. Oh well...And there's nothing you can do about those items short of massive remaking of the model itself. There are some final details that might be attended to. The single .50 M2 on the ring could be removed and I could have a shipping crate somewhere on the flatcar with removed items stored in it. I cheated on the cable attachments on the front of the Sherman tank. There should be tie down lugs similar to the large lift lugs on the nose of F units. After scratching my head and thinking of several impractical options, I gave up and glued the cables to the front of the tank in a recess that it came with.
I agree, the Roco stuff is lacking sometimes. But some of their tooling on some stuff is 60 years old or more so we shouldn’t complain right? HA. I think your setup looks believable enough. Nice job
Agreed on the value of the Roco / Herpa military vehicles. For the age, they're pretty good. Especially in light of what the currently manufactured 3d printed and cast resin kits cost. Way more than I am willing to spend. And it's just a model!!! Sometimes you have to see what you want to see and not be too picky. Remember being a kid and watching those tinplate Lionel and American Flyer trains go around the track and imagining the real thing?
They look good to me Paul. I would give you this one but it doesnt fit your era. Can you imagine what the Germans would have thought if they saw this beast show up. they would have turned white as ghosts. But I bet that German 88 might have put a hurt on it. I had to scratch build the travel lock for this on too. I have enough M60 A1's and Abrams M1's and other Roco stuff to outfit a few cars. Yours certainly look the part. It was not fun to get a cut of military vehicles, I dont know why but the doors on a lot of those things would fly open and set off high/wide detectors. Used to try and wire them shut. Saw some pretty shot up stuff come thru too. It doesnt take too many of those DODX 6 axle flats loaded with tanks to weigh a bunch. Man did they use a lot of chains to hold all that stuff down.
Doing fine Tom. Thanks for asking. I'm doing a lot of reading; but not much modeling. Also have developed a bit of arthritis in my right knee. Doc stuck a shot in there last Wednesday - has helped. I'm no longer on our condo Board here after three terms, so I have time for reading instead of putting up with all the condo stuff. We have just finished a total exterior paint job of the building. Looks great! I'm now reading Larry's TRRA 2021 publication on "The Golden State Route" (thick book!), plus Craig Miner's book on "The St Louis-San Francisco Transcontinental Railroad", a book I've had for years but never read. Both good reads. How are you coming along? Is that Alco S2 you did on my model you bought? Nice job - looks great! K
The troop train is nearly done. There's one more Sherman tank to mount on a flat car and it will be complete. This weekend the weather was pretty lousy so I took an old, ratty 50' flat and put the two remaining 2 1/2 ton trucks on it. The cable tiedowns had to be modified. The prototype photos showed a cable attached to a wheel lug and the other end to the stake pocket. Apparently they had a small, flat piece of steel with the cable attached to one end and a hole in the other end. One lugnut would be removed, the hole in the piece of steel placed over the lug, and the lugnut replaced to hold the cable to the wheel. There was no way to do that in HO scale I could figure out so I attached the cable to tiedown holes on ears on the truck front bumper. All of the photos I have found showed agriculture loads and military loads with what looked like brand new wood for the blocking. It would look better to me somewhat weathered, but the new stuff is what they used. If anyone has the inclination to do a troop train, respond or message me and I can send you numerous photos and save you the time doing research. A few troop train / Frisco photos attached.
Don't know if this will help or not, but here's some info from the tech manual for the MB and GPW. I couldn't find the deuce and a half with the quad mount listed in the standard catalogue of military vehicles, however. '
Two points come to mind about use of new ("non-weathered") wood for blocking. The first is military "spit and polish" to make the load look good. The second point is that use of fresh material provides a guarantee of strength thereby giving some quality control over load security. The latter point applies to agricultural equipment loads. It is a bit of a surprise the instructions in the attachments to the previous post do not specify fresh wood for blocking. The loads in the photos certainly look nice with the fresh wood.
Good points on the possible reasons for new wood used in blocking. The idea of confidence in new wood occurred to me, but the military mindset didn't. Here are a couple of photos showing prototype loads.
A scanned pdf copy of the AAR Rules for Loading Open Top Freight Cars, 1960 which includes Rules Governing the Loading of Department of Defense Materiel on Open Top Cars, can be found here: http://www.frisco.org/shipit/index....-for-loading-open-top-freight-cars-1960.6123/
Every time I look at those Sherman tanks I think about how tiny the main guns were on those things and how many of them would be destroyed. And the crewmen that died.
It's hard to believe that there was such a substantial difference between our 75mm gun and the 88mm gun the Germans had...
The troop train is finally done. This must be how my wife feels when she finishes a quilt. It takes months to complete, but if it turns out ok, it's worth it. The troop train isn't quite as nice as I imagined, but it's ok. The final car was a UP flat that a Sherman tank was mounted on. It was by far the most challenging car to date. The flat came from the group of flat cars previously mentioned that were in pretty rough condition. This one was no exception. The brake wheel mechanism was way too thick, so that took quite a bit of cutting and filing to get it close to being realistic. There were no stirrups, so they were fabricated from brass wire. Drilling the holes in the bottom of the side sills was interesting. Are any of you familiar with a flat car model that came with a load that attached to rectangular holes in the deck? There was apparently an option, if you didn't want the load, to glue little styrene simulated metal plates over the holes. That's what this model came with--the plates glued over the holes. They were way too thick, so I pried them off, sanded / filed them down to a realistic thickness, and painted them rusty before reapplying them. Since the plates had to be there to cover the holes in the deck, I used them to put loops in for tie down chains to attach to. Anyway, it would never win any contests but it looks pretty good in the consist. And the troop train, which was started in February, is finally done...
As a tank crewman, starting as a loader, then driver, short time gunner, and tank then commander, light (2 tanks) and heavy section (3 tanks) section leader. It always confounded me why we Americans were so slow, to learn a few basic fundamentals of tank design. They were called "Zippo's or, Ronson's" after the flip top old fluid filled cigarette lighters known for lighting, first time, every time "I still got one". Even the M26 Pershing, which was a very formidable tank in late WWII had a gasoline engine, now the gasoline engine was not the problem for the most part, it was the 2-300 gallons of high test gasoline storage tanks that was the issue. Many other newer and much heavier tank designs thru the Korean war and into early Vietnam, they still for some confounded reason had gasoline powered tank engines. A lot of good US tank crewmen were incinerated, to this day I have never figured this out. Thats a great military train Paul. After the factories, the steam locomotives, those Studebaker trucks, won the war, all of them were pulled to port by rail. Modeling that is a good thing.
