Armoured Train

krasnal

New Member
What about armoured trains ?
I want to present You : Polish prototypical armoured train called 'wz.1928' , Soviet 'Red Star' armoured railway trolley. And finaly Polish armoured train 'Smialy'(Śmiały),fought in Lvov in 1920 against Soviet Army.
 

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MasonJar

It's not rocket surgery
Wow...! That brass beast with the "gun pilot" is fantastic. Are these scratch builds? Great work! :thumb:

Andrew
 

e-paw

Member
All the armored trains had one problem. You could not armor the rail. Wreck the rail and the train could not move. But still a cool idea.
 

green_elite_cab

Keep It Moving!
I don't know you guys, the polish ran an armored train in WW2, and the nazis had a nearly impossible time trying to stop it.

Tanks and infantry weren't enough. They would roll out of thick forests and harrass the germans, then roll back before air support could find them.

Eventually they were all taken out, but they had lasted for so long that it impressed Hitler, who came to personally inspect one of the polish trains. As a result, amored trains were reintroduced into the german military.

I have an article about it somewhere, I'll have to find it.
 

Mountain Man

Active Member
The Soviets built a number of armored trains, which were particularly useful as mobile artillery.

Several countries also had unique trains that serviced large coastal fortresses, too.

That is beautiful work, Krasnal, and highly original, too! :thumb:

A layout featuring military trains working around a military front or a large fortress would be one-of-a-kind.
 

Art Decko

Member
Krasnal, those are impressive! :thumb: Any plans for painting or weathering?

On a related note ...

It's intriguing to me that MRRers seem so uninterested in military equipment or layouts.

If you look at another guy-dominated area of the miniatures world, scale modeling - plastic or cardstock - war machines are by far the most popular subjects, with anything related to WWII having an especially strong appeal. This seems to be true for modelers from North American, Europe as well as Asia.

Yet, in the MRRing sphere, I almost never see things like armored trains, rail artillery, troop trains, war-time trains hauling tanks or anything like that. I can't recall ever seeing an explicitly war-time layout (although I once read that Hermann Goering had an elaborate layout that included bombers which flew along wires for attacking the trains).

Since MRRing, like scale modeling, is a heavily guy-oriented pursuit, I'm wondering why MRRs are different in this respect. Any ideas or comments?
 

eightyeightfan1

Now I'm AMP'd
It's intriguing to me that MRRers seem so uninterested in military equipment or layouts.

If you look at another guy-dominated area of the miniatures world, scale modeling - plastic or cardstock - war machines are by far the most popular subjects, with anything related to WWII having an especially strong appeal. This seems to be true for modelers from North American, Europe as well as Asia.

Yet, in the MRRing sphere, I almost never see things like armored trains, rail artillery, troop trains, war-time trains hauling tanks or anything like that. I can't recall ever seeing an explicitly war-time layout (although I once read that Hermann Goering had an elaborate layout that included bombers which flew along wires for attacking the trains).

Since MRRing, like scale modeling, is a heavily guy-oriented pursuit, I'm wondering why MRRs are different in this respect. Any ideas or comments?

Mainly, I think you don't see to many Military based layouts is, because unless you have a Military Base, Depot, repair facility, or Naval station, some place where a military train can go, lots of model railroaders don't find a need for a dedicated train. Even modeling the rail served portion of a military base(I keep thinking back when I was stationed at Ft. Hood in Texas) could take up a lot of layout real estate, even if compressed. Might make for an interesting switching layout.
On an operation type layout, though, scheduling a movement of, armoured vehicles, a military unit moving to a training site, or heading out to a combat zone, would add some variety, and keep the dispatcher busy. (Would a military train have priority?) This would be good during WWII as both the Allies, and Axis armies used rails specifically for movement for troops, equipment and supplies.
But today's military, with its heavy lift aircraft, "roll-on, roll-off" ships, and the use of contracting out movement of supplies to commercial truckers,(even in combat zones, as we recently saw in Iraq) the only use of trains would be getting supplies to a point of departure, or a repair facility. Today's military would rather have supplies move in a commercial boxcar, so it wouldn't be targeted(Gone are the days of "U.S. Army" painted on the sides of a boxcar). Moving troops to a departure site now is a Greyhound bus.
Modeling a military train during WWII, is easier then it was a few years ago(Which I agree with you, why haven't we seen more). A few companies do offer troop cars. Roco does sell armoured and artillery vehicles, for both Allies and Axis armies.
Modeling a military train today, would be nothing more than a few modern armour vehicles on some TTX flats, with maybe an AMTRACK car, or the railroad's caboose for security personel.

The opinions on this post, are those of the member posting, and do not reflect the opinion of The Gauge, its admins and mods, or its membership.
 

Russ Bellinis

Active Member
I recently saw a train moving through Cajon Pass that was solid flats loaded with various pieces of military armor. I don't remember if it was a BNSF or U.P. train, but I think it was U.P. I'm not sure if it was heading to a base in the desert, to Mojave to go over Tehachapie, or if it was heading somewhere to the East. Even without a military base as a destination, a train loaded as a military equipment movement would be an interesting train to have run across the layout from staging to staging if your layout has staging on both ends.
 

Mountain Man

Active Member
Most likely to or from Ft. Irwin, the National Desert Warfare Training Center. Otherwise, to aport in Texas for shipment to Iraq.

I think the primary reason no one models military trains is that nothing is rerady-to-roll; it's pretty much all scratch building. I would like to build a fortress someday with it's own narrow gauge train to service and supply it, interconnecting with a standard gauge to transport to the fort depot. Animated the coastal guns and equipment would make a unique layout.
 

Triplex

Active Member
But today's military, with its heavy lift aircraft, "roll-on, roll-off" ships, and the use of contracting out movement of supplies to commercial truckers,(even in combat zones, as we recently saw in Iraq) the only use of trains would be getting supplies to a point of departure, or a repair facility. Today's military would rather have supplies move in a commercial boxcar, so it wouldn't be targeted(Gone are the days of "U.S. Army" painted on the sides of a boxcar). Moving troops to a departure site now is a Greyhound bus.
Exactly. Back "in the day", trains were actually used in combat situations. There were armored trains, rail guns, rail supply lines built right to the front...
That's why you saw some MRS-1s in civilian use in the US. These were the last custom-built military engines (that I know of). Their purpose? To haul supply trains in Europe in the event of WW3. That's why they were variable-gauge: so they could supply an overland invasion of Russia. Of course, that never happened. And, soon after they were built in the 50s, the increasing use of aircraft and helicopters to move cargo made trains largely obsolete on the battlefield. The MRS-1s were used at Army and Navy bases in the US until the 70s, then sold as surplus.
 

Russ Bellinis

Active Member
Most likely to or from Ft. Irwin, the National Desert Warfare Training Center. Otherwise, to aport in Texas for shipment to Iraq.

I think the primary reason no one models military trains is that nothing is rerady-to-roll; it's pretty much all scratch building. I would like to build a fortress someday with it's own narrow gauge train to service and supply it, interconnecting with a standard gauge to transport to the fort depot. Animated the coastal guns and equipment would make a unique layout.

I'm not sure where Ft Irwin is, but I think any shipment to Texas would go on the UP over the old SP main line through San Timateo Canyon roughly paralleling I-10. If Ft Irwin is at 29 Palms, the shipment would also go on the Southern route rather than Cajon. There is a Marine Corps Supply base just East of Barstow. The equipment may have been going to that base to be held for redeployment.
 

Mountain Man

Active Member
I'm not sure where Ft Irwin is, but I think any shipment to Texas would go on the UP over the old SP main line through San Timateo Canyon roughly paralleling I-10. If Ft Irwin is at 29 Palms, the shipment would also go on the Southern route rather than Cajon. There is a Marine Corps Supply base just East of Barstow. The equipment may have been going to that base to be held for redeployment.

Fort Irwin is located next to the Goldstone Tracking Range in Death Valley. Our guns and tracks always went to Barstow and we road-con'd them from there to Irwin. We used BNSF a lot to ship our unit back and forth from the railhead inside Fort Carson.

Incidentally, I first trained at Irwin before it became "Fort". It was still "Camp" Irwin during all of my visits and the base itself was entirely shut down except for a caretaking unit. We brought our water in daily from Barstow, 80 miles one way. Lovely part of the world.

I guess we have settled that military equipment was being shipped somewhere by somebody for something. The more things change, the more they stay the same.:cool:
 
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