You'd think this a whif, but it ain't - 1/700 US Navy armored railway gun train

[Joe CalPo]

In the Great War all the major powers stuck guns on trains. Not just armored trains, artillery pieces, often coast defense pieces, in a zoo of calibers.
When the US joined they worked with France's railway artillery, and made their own in the same manner.
But none of these guns were big enough to reply to German's really long range guns, so Rear Admiral Earle (the base in NJ named for him is just down the road apiece) recommended really big guns on custom built trains.
16" were desired, but there weren't enough ready since they were needed for actual battleships building. Therefore 5 spare 14"/50s were taken in hand.  Baldwin of Philly were contracted to build the engines and gun carriages, while Standard Car built the other cars.
One gun was tested at Sandy Hook Army Proving Ground, a little farther down the road from me than Earle NWS, because the Navy didn't have a big enough ground.
Five trains like this one (the real trains had a few more box cars, I didn't have enough models) were built plus a command train. All manned by US Navy personnel.
The parts were shipped to France and assembled, without instructions (the crews had taken notes in the US fortunately) and using scrounged parts, including metric rivets.
The 5 gun trains were used on the western front, firing mostly blind because spotting was to dangerous and difficult.  They were still quite effective, and scared away the German guns. They fired one of the last shots on November 11, timed to land just before the armistice went into effect.
To fire at high angles a large pit was dug and line, using the crane car and timbers and other supplies carried on the train, and the gun carriage parked over the pit so the gun's breech could be lowered.  A later model of the gun carriage shifted the mount to a pit wasn't needed.
My model is made from two photo-etch train sets.  The crane I built from pieces, while I scratch built the gun carriage around a 14" gun barrel from some model I built a long time ago.  The actual trains had a few more box cars aft.
So this model is a land battleship armored (the gun house and boxcars were armored) railway gun. Talk about crossing genres!
The first image is the actual train.
One reference has her olive green, but the only surviving such gun carriage is painted battleship grey, so I went with that. There were almost no markings, just "U S N" on some cars that I will add once I find scale letters.

Enjoy!

[NARSES2]

  

[zenrat]

That's tiny.