Rail Gun (At Last)

Well as you know I was thinking of modelling my own, but then this came along so I bottled it, that's not to say I won't at some point do another, or some extra wagons etc... for this, but for now I'm happy

[Super]

Those look great especially that Rail Gun...wow.

Meanwhile, at Fort Lee, Virginia:

SP4 Carl-
“But Sarge, those Brits seemed awful nice and the paperwork was in order, so I just....”

Sarge-
“Shut the **** up, Carl!”



*Fort Lee is (or was) the current home of the real Leopold.

Interesting OTR, I always thought it was a german gun, the model is made by lima of Italy

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It sure is impressive, another huge piece of rolling stock, again about 14" in length...

[Super]

I just had to check if there were any videos of this gun firing and located the one below along with one that tours a refurbished one in our day. I was very surprised the the recoil of the gun didn't move the trucks more. I am always amazed at the know how of this era can shoot one of these at a target 50 miles away and still be close without computers or laser guidance.

Interesting OTR, I always thought it was a german gun, the model is made by lima of Italy

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It sure is impressive, another huge piece of rolling stock, again about 14" in length...

Oh yeah, the K5 definitely IS German! Of the two known to still exist, Leopold is at Fort Lee in the US, while another is in France.

BTW, Carl is a military internet meme. He’s always “that guy” who is a little TOO cheerful, over-eager or otherwise screwing up and hacking off his fellow troops. The punchline is always some other guy saying “Shut the **** up, Carl” or some variation of that.

Ah I see spoils of war :-)

I remember combat Carl from toy story 3 :-)

[Super]

What I don't understand about this weapon is that the cannon isn't on a turret which, if it was, the whole thing would probably tip over with the recoil if it was fired to the side. If this is so, the only way to aim it was to have the tracks facing the right direction which would be a far fetched coincidence. This being said, was this weapon really only made for a stationary, turntable, site like the one in the video above and not specifically used as a mobile artillery piece but just an easy way to transport a cannon from site to site (turntable to turn table) so they wouldn't have to lose a valuable piece in case it was evident that the enemy was going to take the site or if more power was needed at a different front. In which case they would save the cannon and not lose it like they would a fixed cannon and also much cheaper saving on steel and they only have to build the turntables at the different defense positions.. This could only be done where existing track line are or they would have to build more rails. But in this case that wouldn't be that hard as the Germans used slave labor.

I think you'd find the real gun also had a limited amount of lateral movement built in as well as elevation. Which combined with the distance it was firing, just a couple of degrees either side would cover a massive area

@ Super:
Yes, that was a big limitation of real railway guns. They could be devastating in combat but they were extremely difficult to traverse. IIRC, the guns deployed in France were the ones basically emplaced in static defense positions with a purpose built railroad turntable used to traverse them. Like you said, they could lay new line or use existing lines to redeploy the guns. But otherwise, they were either used for coastal defense, like in Sicily or France, or as a siege weapon against cities, like in Russia.

It’s an odd paradox but for an apparently mobile weapon, they were mostly useful in static roles.