One of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life was when we rail moved our unit when I was in the 3/8 Cav in Mannheim. The whole thing blew my mind. It turns out you cannot neutral steer a 55 ton vehicle on a wooden bed flatcar, so to load the vehicles, we had to drive them down the entire length of the train. As you drove a tank from one car to another, the flatcar would lift up into the air (look carefully at the picture below - you can see one lifting), it was totally freaky. I found a picture of it online. Oh, and because the train had low priority on West Germany’s busy rail network, it took the unit a day and a half to get to our destination. We partied in sleeper cars, getting drunk. It was a total blast.
Here’s a picture of it. These guys are driving down the entire length of the train, until every car is full. These guys are moving away from us (with ground guides). The tie downs are just hanging off the tanks.
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