i was wondering a while ago if there was ever a model of the gustaf made. i have a military group of engines and cars in a base i made on my layout and i thought a gustaf or a different rail-gun would look great on there. does anyone know were i could find one if any were made??
Some company, back in the 1970's had an HO scale model of "Anzio Annie". A friend of mine had one just for the heck of it and built it - a beautiful model, but all plastic, extremely light, not very trackable. I seem to recall the producer as a Japanese company and if I remember correctly, it was advertised in "Model Railroaders" of the period. Perhaps Kalmbach could help you in your search.
I've only seen a couple. As stated above, they were the Anzio Annie. Magnifecient models, but not meant to be moved. They were designed for display only.
Thanks and yeah thats what i'm looking for and i was going to call and then i saw the price. i'm only 14 so i need to do some saveing frist.
Snakeyfish, Here is a photo of the Gustav named "Dora" you asked about. There is a German company that will make one in HO for $3,600.00 US Dollars. 80 cm bore, about 31" in diameter, 7 ton shell! Used in WW II to destroy Sevastopol, Russia. Note the men standing on top behind the barrel!
There are Ho plastic models of the Leopold railway gun on eBay. You must add lots of weight to get them to stay on track, especially through turnouts! They look fairly good, but not well detailed. They have probably lost the shells that came with it.
That is/would be a heck of a model! I couldn't run it on my layout because of size, I think. It would be like large Schnable cars for operations, IMHO.
No Flash, the Dora required twin parallel tracks and two engines to move it. After the War, the barrel was taken to America and used for keel ballast in the Hospital ship "Hope". The Germans scattered the other parts of it all over Germany. There are short clips of it being fired and moved, that have shown on the Discovery Channel on a program about "Super Guns". It showed just last week or the one before. It also showed Big Bertha and Anzio Annie and others in history.
Snakey, I still have a toy US Army version in plastic of a 'railway type' cannon, packed away, I think. It only has 4 wheel tandem trucks under each end, so is not a big gun. Even the wheels are plastic. Let me look and see. Maybe I have a photo.
Here is a [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1HF3Jr5w9w"]You Tube film of the gustav gun [/ame]and others in operation. It shows the gustav being moved on the two tracks. There are several other similar films, too. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAxySDG_jjs&mode=related&search="]More films.[/ame]
I think I would like one of those mounted in my front yard. It would make an interesting conversation piece. Maybe I could fire it on 4th of July?
The book German Railroad Guns in action by Joachim Engelmann (armor no. 15) from squadron/signal pub. lists the the many railroad guns that Germany used during the war. Dora needed three transport trains to haul all the nessery equipment to the firing site where the double track was laid with close tie spacing due to the weight, 1350 tonnen. The special track firing position took ~1500 laborers 3-6 weeks to construct. The construction crane on it's own set of rails assembled the gun in 3 days. Colonel R. Bohm commanded the Battery which was comprized of a fire control section, intelligence platoon, surveying platoon, 4 observation units w/ IR equipment and a plotting unit, the gun battery troops (500), support troops, flak detachment, 20 Krupp engineers, a nebelwerfer (rockets) detachment, 2 Rumanian gaurd companies, M.P. unit, dog patol troop, plus "a helicopter section" (????) and fighter cover from the Luftwaffe all together about 3870 men. the firing crew alone was 350 men. Dora fired 48 shells at 7 targets in 5 days.
There were two of these guns made, the Gustav and the Dora. They were the same. There are quite a few plastic models made in several scales but they are all huge! These were no Leopold or Anzio Anny. I would suggest that you scale one out before you even think about putting one on a layout. See the link...............Geoff http://www.vincelewis.net/dora.html
