anyone have a good source of quality WWII rolling stock and vehicles?
By saying “WWII” instead of “early forties”, it sounds like you’re after military stuff.
Yes? No?
Also, at least in HO, there doesn’t appear to be only one source of much of anything. At least, if ya go in kinda deeply.
Ed
Yes. I want to add some military rolling stock. Found one cannon from life like but it doesn’t look like it’s good quality like an Atlas, BLI or Atheran
While surfing the web one day, I came across a few ‘‘war game’’ sites. Can’t recall the names, but they had all kinds of military stuff. I recall some 1/87, 1/100 and 1/7?
My point, you may have to go outside the railroad sites
Roco makes very nice models of military vehicles. They make tanks and jeeps etc. They can be found online and in some local hobby shops. I think they are now owned by Herpa.
Here is a link to Walthers:
If you’re talking about military rolling stock that was used in the US, here it is for July 1945:
US Navy had
about 80 helium tank cars, 8 regular tank cars, 78 depressed center flats, 107 hoppers, 1400 boxcars
War Department had
4000 tank cars, 16 calcium carbide cars
The above were freight cars. There were also 100 hospital cars, 800 troop kitchens, 40 hospital kitchen and 2400 troop sleepers owned by the War Department but operated by Pullman.
If you’re thinking of doing military trains in the US, all the Army equipment was transported on railroad-owned cars. Personnel were transported in the above cars plus other cars leased from Pullman.
For military equipment, I’d start looking with Roco. There might be others, but no names come to mind. And don’t forget to take the machine guns off the top of the tanks and trucks during transport.
Ed
This site which I will link to…lists on the left margin just about every manufacturer of Military vehicles of WWII, in 1/87th and others. Just click on anyone of them and look at their offerings:
http://www.reynaulds.com/rei.aspx
Take Care! [:D]
Frank
Think I saw a few CMW military vehicles available at Modeltrainstuff. Their standard vehicles decorated for military.
I have a couple of the afore mentioned Roco, waiting to be freed onto the layout.
Good luck,
Richard
When I see the term “rolling stock” on a RR oriented forum, I think of railroad cars. Others have interpreted this as meaning highway vehicles. Maybe the OP needs to clarify.
Tom
Railroad cars. Flats with tanks, military marked box cars Etc
Jordan Highway Minatures made a 1940 Ford sedan kit that was a common staff car, unfortunately, they have closed following the death of the owner. They may be available from various shops online.
CMW had a run of 1941 Ford stake trucks and tank trucks lettered for US Army and Navy. They are sold out at Walthers, but could be avaiable form other sources.
Sylvan Scale has a number of resin kit cars and trucks from the 1940s, have a look through their site.
http://www.sylvanscalemodels.com/
There are a number of manufactures who include WWII vehicles in their product line. Perhaps the easiest way to search for them is to get a 2017 Walthers catalog. They are mixed in with the other vehicles; you have to read the fine print because WWII is shown along with Cold War era and modern vehicles and fighting machines.
There was a thread a few months ago about Sherman tanks on Flatcars:
SmallScaleHobbies.com has been a excellent source for me for WWII vehicles and they also have excellent HO scale decals for them as well. (note - even in HO scale tanks reading the directions is important…you dont want to glue the tracks on one backwards…
Thanks. For some reason, I can’t get clickable links to work on this computer.
Gary, I’m not sure if you know this, but you have to modify the link after you copy it into your thread to make it clickable. Put a square bracket ‘[’ followed by the letters ‘url’ followed by ‘]’ at the beginning of the link (no spaces and no quotation marks), and put ‘[’, ‘/’, ‘url’, ‘]’ at the end, (again no spaces or quotation marks). The link will not highlight until you submit the post.
Dave
I’m using the “Insert/Edit Link” feature in the toolbar. I suppose I could go old school and use html codes, though, like I do for pictures…
BTW, just to emphasize what Ed said earlier…trains carrying troops or equipment during WW2 would not normally include any freight or passenger cars owned by the military. The freight cars would be regular railroad-owed cars, and the passsenger cars would be Pullmans.
I seem to vaguely remember something about the military trying to put large cannons on the rails, to be spotted near the coast and be able to be moved around as needed. Not sure if that was WW1 or WW2, but I don’t think it really worked. Certainly, seeing rail-mounted howitzers like the Germans had in Europe would be incredibly rare in the USA.
Railcar mounted guns go way back here in the US. They were invented here.
Here’s what I think of as the “classic” from our 1861 war (see cover of Abdill’s “Civil War Railroads”):
And here’s one that’s less well-known:
More recently, there’s a book by Charles S. Small titled “California’s Railway Guns”.
He writes of the general topic, also. The United States built several railway guns for WWI. But none were deployed in the continental United States.
Between the wars, the US built and deployed several big (14") railway guns in the US. The last firing (practice) of one of them was near Los Angeles in August 1941 (NOTE: PRE-war).
As far as WWII itself:
"The Baldwin Locomotive Works built 22 railway carriages (BLW C/N 62367-86) during 4-1940. They then built 20 more (BLW C/N 64367-86 and finally an additional 6 (BLW C/N 67553-58) during 1943. Baldwin’s records are not clear as to the guns mounted A 1941 photo shows what appears to be a 4 inch gun and the car has four wheel trucks. A 1942 photo shows a six wheel truck car and the long barrl Navy Mark 6 8 inch gun The barbette carriage was an Army desing of the first World War which had been adapted to the Navy gun.
Six units went to the West Coast."
This is a fascinating book, and I recommend it highly.
It should be said that UN-mounted guns were shipped around the country. PRR and Milwaukee had several 30’ flat cars designed for that use. You can get kits to build such a setup.
Ed
PS. I looked through a list of Balwin negatives that I hav
Rare, yes. But it did happen.
Doughboys attend to a 12" coastal gun in transit at Altoona, Pa. December, 1918.
PRR Photo, collection gmpullman.
Have Fun! Ed