Rail Car Cannon

Back in the day, all US sixteen and fourteen inch gun tubes were manufactured at the Navy Yard so you were looking at something built at the yard even if it didn't go on a BB.  I'm thinking that it was either a shore defense concept or a prototype tube design that was rail transported to Dahlgren for test firing and then brought back to the yard for postmortem.

Poppyl 

Poppyl,  it is a 14in 50 Cal railway gun mounted on the Mark 1 Carrage. The 14"/50 caliber railway guns were spare US Navy Mk 4 14 inch/50 caliber guns mounted on railway cars and operated by US Navy crews in France in the closing months of World War I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1..._caliber_railway_gun

The real question is "Is there one in O-gauge that I can run on my O-36 track on the carpet?"  I so want a couple so my 9 year old son and I can play with his little green army men.

Thanks, Brad, for straightening me out on that.  I was totally focused on WW II and ignored WW I.  Still looking for the picture of the shore defense gun but did find that test gun tubes were barged to Dahlgren from the Yard.  Apparently no rail transport.

Sinclair -- there are plastic military models of the German WW II rail guns that might provide some parts that you could bash with a flatcar to "almost" get what you want.  However, I'm not sure that they are 1/48 scale and I'm also not sure what you could do to easily replicate the wheelsets of the subject railway gun.  Of course, neither factor may be that important for your application.

Poppyl

Ed, any guesstimates as to how much that behemoth weighs? The German's had one twice that size.

Although not a rail car cannon. 

This was a coastal defense cannon near the Chesapeake bay. 

Wikipedia indicates that the gun weighed a little over 142 thousand pounds.  I do not know if that figure included the weight of the breech which may have added another 20-25 thousand pounds if not included in the weight.  That might explain the unique truck arrangement on the railcar.

FYI, the sixteen inch, 50 cal used on the Iowa class BBs weighed in at 268 thousand pounds (with breech).  There were three guns per battery and three batteries on the BB.  That's a lot of weight!

Poppyl

Some videos on You Tube of WW1 railway guns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7al-ZJmSlM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzYlg_a0m40&list=PLucQAb-72I-S2eMGYp_02JS3XK3jBZvEA

This type of gun was in the movie “Battle of the Bulge” in the movie they were trying to move them up for defense of Bastogne. The train was destroyed by a tank as it entered a tunnel.  

At the museum, there is a very nice display about these guns including movies of their being fired (see the you-tube videos above).  Baldwin and the Navy put these guns together in less than three months, shipped them and had them in operation in another three months.  Six to nine months to deploy into operation a new weapons system!  Given that the Navy had the experience because they had dozens in operation on ships that weren't involved in the war, it makes sense they got the job. 

The large guns were a key weapon in the trench warfare of WWI.  At the site of operation, track was laid in a curve; direction of fire was controlled by moving the gun along the track, but the cannon could be trained a few degrees within the mount for fine control.   Once sited along the curve, crews had to dig a pit between the rails for the breech to recoil into when it fired.  As suggested in the movie, each battery of guns was really a mobile team that was self-contained on a number of trains that contained crew quarters, supplies, etc..

I believe there are three rail guns in the US, the one at the Naval museum, there is a gun at Dalgren that is apparently is storage that was last used in the 1960's to test missile warheads.  There is a German gun that was assembled from parts from the famous Anizo Annie guns from WWII.  This gun, named "Leopold" was on display at Aberdeen Proving ground for many years (where it was tested after the war).  It was recently moved to Virginia where the Army's museum is being moved too.  The barrel for Leopold was moved by NS about two years ago.  

More recently, a number of 16-inch gun barrels were moved from Dalgren when they were surplussed to various museums.  At least one of these moved by rail/car float to Delaware. 

OT: the museum in DC, is a real treasure.  My favorite artifacts include pieces of a Japanese Zero that was shot down at Pearl Harbor and a piece of armor that was meant for a Yamato class (18-inch guns) battleship that was tested after the war.  It has a hole punched in it from an American 16-inch gun.

Bob 

A curiosity: why does this railroad gun have wheels with spokes and heat shrunk-on tires?

There is a very good book written in 1922  titled " The United States Naval Railway Batteries in France" chronicling  their history. It is available for free to read on-line or download in various electronic formats at:

http://archive.org/details/unitedstatesnava00unitrich