German Railway Gun---"Leopold"

[mastermodeler]

This piece is offered by Dragon Models.

Hosted on Fotki
Hosted on Fotki
Hosted on Fotki
Hosted on Fotki
Hosted on Fotki
Hosted on Fotki





And for size reference:

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Yes.....that is a real dime.

Alex

[demonhunterfan]

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Nice work Alex, on your railway gun, and your Panzer III. They look to be HO scale?

Ever since I became a follower of Christ, I've been amazed, and saddened, by all the time, effort, resources, etc that is put into endeavors such as this railway gun. The sight of the two exhaust stacks, and knowing a little bit of how much planning, designing, and working to complete such a huge piece of machinery-- a machine of war, to wreak havoc and death on other people-- oh, if only more people would spend even a fraction of their time, effort, resources, etc on doing good-- what a different world this would be.

Later and God bless

[mastermodeler]

Thank you, and you are very right about the time and lives wasted. They are actually in 1/144th scale, which is by far much smaller. Closer to "N" scale.
Alex

[84vanagon]

What patience! I can't see that small!

I seem to remember reading that the gun was used sparingly
(if at all), because by the time it was finished the war was (almost) over.

[davewahl]

Don:

Another reason that gun wasn't fired very much because the Germans couldn't fire it that many times before they would need to replace the barrel. I managed to wear out WAY to fast. I think they could only fire about 15 times.

[84vanagon]

Thanks Dave.
I knew that there was another reason it wasn't used much, but couldn't remember.

[hotrodtom]

Excellent subject here! Great detail.
I think that another reason why the gun was not used would be the ability to coordinate on a target, being a non-traversable barrel, it was subject to the orientation of the railline it was on at a given point of time. If it were to be pointed, say, at Great Britain, it would have to be near the coast. In that case, it would be susceptible to strafing/bombing runs by RAF fighter/bombers. While it was just another example of Germany's grand scale of design and engineering, it was also a demonstration of the bravado that they were also so susceptable to.

Much like mankind and or very own sin nature, we thought (think) that we can be impenatrable by building bigger and better. Kind of like the tower of Babel. The Reich was also susceptable to this flawed form of thinking in that they thought they themselves were a form of God.
Throughout history, we see painful evidence of mankind's folly and attempting to make themselves a god.

It is strange how we (as Christians) can associate a scale model with a biblical topic, but it is quite possible.