I have been thinking about building a small dio of US equipment (tanks, trucks, something like that) being railed across Germany for a REFORGER (REturn of FORce to GERmany) exercise in the '80s. I have read that the same WWII SSyms railcars were used up through the '90s.
M60A1 tanks of Troop B, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment moving into position on rail cars for the post-REFORGER trip back to the storage facility in Germany. REFORGER 1982.
Special trains with 27 heavy tanks, 83 armored personnel carriers and 170 trucks of the US Army shortly before the departure from Kaiserslautern-Vogelweh on 20 January 1969. They are planned for the participation in the exercise “REFORGER I” - “Return of Forces to Germany”.
They look similar, but I can’t tell for sure. What about 6 axle SSyms 80-ton railcars?
I had a similar question but wanted to do it with Russian Cold War equipment. I believe the west Germans kept the gauges and everything the same. I’m not sure if the coupling system would be the same or have changed after WW2.
I too researched this some years ago to see about “forward-dating” some cars for Cold War use and it seems quite a few of the 4-axle and 6-axle types survived and were in use up to the early 1990s. The 6-axle cars were particularly popular in heavy industries such as steelworks for their load capacity! Not sure how much visible improvements you’d see - the three-link coupling hooks and buffers remained standard. I think most of the changes would be hidden underneath with the brake gear etc.
I asked that exact question maybe last year on this site because I want to do a diorama from that time as well and I was told that some of those flat cars served on into the ‘90s. I have one from Dragon and one from Sabre models; I also have a set of decals for it from Peddinghaus which are modern markings. I can’t find that original post of mine though.
I was thinking of displaying a T-80 in an ostensible East German rail wagon using similar; I wanted to depict the arrival (not the withdrawal in 1990) of new kit to GSFG.
Try as I might, I cannot find much on the www; I seem to recall that a lot of the flat wagons were in a red brown colour, but that’s about it. An easy fix would be to use a 1:35 SSyms or the smaller SSy (Dragon) perhaps, and just paint it/them accordingly?
@metalhead85 im not sure if the gauge remained the same in East Germany after the war. I had a similar idea but was told that in Russia they moved away from the hook couples for a different type. It slips my mind what it would be called but i believe it was an enclosed coupler. Maybe that was only for deep in the Soviet Union though.
Yeah I’m not sure what kind of couplers they used in East Germany after the war; they used to use hook and buffers I think. Maybe the railroad modelers can chime in ?
In the US we use knuckle couplers, not sure of the correct name though but that’s what we call them.
Some great pics there! I have to dig out my pics of my unit in Germany in 85-87 when we loaded our vehicles onto rail cars. Wish I would have gotten better pics back then!
I have several from when we had to load Berlin vehicles to make the trek to the 'Chicken by rail while we drove there, leading to my (mis)adventure with the British tanker unit in Hildesheim. I can recall using some pretty old rolling stock. That would have been '84-'85.
DB and DR continued to use the same coupling setup. Gauge remained the same as well.
Russians haved used a different gauge Because Tzar Nicholas I recognized how railways could facilitate being invaded, and ordered that the gauge be wider.
I actually gave a paper in '91 for an Alpha Chi seminar entitled “The New World Order?” which described how that decision was still biting them in the azz…
I’ve posted several photo before of DR equipment I photographed during my wanderings after the wall fell. The others are around somewhere.
I just read that they were later renamed to SSy (50tons instead of 48tons) :
These flat cars were newly developed in 1940 for the transport of heavy loads. In particular for the transport of military vehicles and tanks. The construction was characteristic: welded plate girders and profiles. They had a loading length of 8800 mm. The first delivery bore the generic markings “SSkra” and had a loading weight of 48 tons. Later, this became the new generic designation “SSy”. The symbol “y” stood for a load weight of 50 tons.
After 1949, the cars were transferred to Deutsche Bundesbahn in West-Germany and Deutsche Reichsbahn in the GDR.
Addition to what @golikell Erwin wrote.
Some were permanently assigned to Bundeswehr
and some were given to USTC.
Some model railroad shop indicates markings for them up to 1966.
They were also reinforced sometime in their career (maybe when upgraded/uprated to 50 tons)
I got the impression that this reinforcement was rather visible …
