Odd WW II photo found

Sheesh *smacks forehead* I give a nice little writeup and forgot one teensy little detail.

The scale. It's all 1/700.

All of the rolling stock was scratchbuilt because WEM got out of the railroad business The best info I could find about period railcars was they varied from 40-50 feet long. Each ended up being not quite 3/4-inch long, or 40 scale feet for the cars.

I'm the first to admit the "switching engine" looks a bit, well ... lumpy and more like a caboose! Ten thumbs and sanding sticks can only take me so far. Thank you all for the kind comment, but really, Dave and Hugh at Loose Cannon Productions get a lot of it - they make the kits, I just spend forever putting them together.

It's not a caboose, although it looks like a baywindow one. It's a boxcar with oversized doors and tracks. It's a roofwalk, but there aren't platforms. Question 1, where did you get a 1/400 set of train cars? it looks more like 1/160 to me.

About ten years ago there was a really nice article in one of Kalmbach's annuals, I think it was "Model Railroad Planning" concerning this subject and I'll find it and invite Aaron or Kelly or Matt to provide a linky. Quite a remarkable series of planning decisions involved in the transfer of goods and personnel from rail to ship.

This is a nice dio for sure. I recently was a part of a renovation of an historic pier on the wharf in SF, Pier 1 which you'll see if you care to Google.  One fact is that the roll-up doors on the shed are 40' apart, which is the length-over-coupler of the AAR standard box car of the time.

Edit: interesting. The ship scales at almost exactly 10 boxcars, which would be 400 feet. But the APA is 450 feet. At Revell scale, it's 10% too small, so there you have it. Ship has been identified as a Haskell Class/ ne. Revell Montrose Class APA, but where did you get those trains?

9no

As for that "seam" on the roof of the boxcar, that's a roofwalk. They don't use 'em any more, but they were still a fixture on US boxcars when I worked as a brakeman in the 1960s.

Ah, but there should be a corner platform at either end if that's a box car--in those days the brake wheels were carried high up.  Then, there's the way is sure looks like a side-cab caboose--which would be right for the UP in those days--but a little unlikely to get pushed down a freight spur out to a pier, all well past the crew pickups in the marshalling yard.

Still a great dio, though.  (And a UP yellow caboose would be a neat bit of color, if a bit inaccurate, in the dio.)

Edit to Add:  Just looked at the color photos, that's just over-thick doors on the boxcar.  Darn, side-cab cabaoose would have been neat.

The first clue to my eye was the tubs for the .30 cal. machine guns on the LCVPs.  They show up in the photo as light-colored donuts.  In reality the plating of those tubs is considerably less than an inch thick; there's no way it would look like that in an aerial photo.

The resin kit manufacturer did its best, but gun tubs always present a near-insoluble problem in small scales.

Nice try Monty.  If it hadn't been the much anticipated AP, you might have fooled me.

Come along quietly now...

Fred

Damn you guys are good ... Real photos in living color in a day or two when I can get them resized so my computer doesn't choke on them. I thought this up over my breakfast coffee. Must be true what they say about an idle mind being an instrument of the devil!

And Manstein's revenge, no scam intended, I apologize if you took it as such. 

Extensive research (i.e., a Forum search on MFSOB's name - total time expended:  ca. two minutes) has established that MFSOB has been working for some time on a dockside diorama centered around a Haskell-class attack transport.  Nice job, MFSOB; it actually did fool me for a minute or two. 

How about some more shots, from different angles?

mfsob wrote:

Thought I'd scan it as a curiosity for those of us with too much time on our hands :

Yeah...right.... Nice diorama.

As for that "seam" on the roof of the boxcar, that's a roofwalk. They don't use 'em any more, but they were still a fixture on US boxcars when I worked as a brakeman in the 1960s.

Anyway, nice diorama, for that is certainly what we're viewing.

Cheers,

John Snyder, White Ensign Models

Well, I'll vote for a slightly longer ambulatory limb.

Note the booms over the after hatch.  In loading mode, you plumb on boom over the center of the hatch, and the other over the pick point over the side.  That lets you perform transfer loading, which is faster.

There's also no smoke, clouds, or birds in the shot.  (and what lookt to be a seam on the roof of the railcar next to the LCVP, which is not tarped for travel at all.)

Excelent bit of Dio, though.

jtilley wrote:

Am I getting overly-suspicious and cynical in my old age?  Or is some extremely skilled, knowledgeable, and talented ship modeler giving my leg a gentle yank?

I'm leaning the same way Doc.   I need to check my Friedman's Amphib Design History when I get home,  but I seem to remember that there were boom lift weight limits imposed and that the ability to organically lift a Sherman (in excess of 30 tons) was not available to most AP/APAs.   The ability was provided to some AK/AKAs, and then only to some of the booms.   Check the activity around the aft hatch.  

Sure looks like a Haskell-class APA - and a real treasue trove of detail for enthusiasts.

On the other hand...there's something about the gun tubs in all those LCVPs...and the wake of the tugboat (or whatever it is) in the lower righthand corner...and the tanks on the railroad cars...and the lack of people in the LCVP that's thundering away under the ship's starboard quarter (whereas people are visible elsewhere)....Am I getting overly-suspicious and cynical in my old age?  Or is some extremely skilled, knowledgeable, and talented ship modeler giving my leg a gentle yank?