I'm building an army train. Strict prototypical accuracy isn't a high priority but I would like to understand what the real world does with tanks that are wider than a typical flatcar.
A scale Sherman tank, at just slightly 10 feet wide, makes a nice load on a typical 2 1/2 inch wide flatcar. But I model the early '50s, so Pershing or Patton tanks are more the period. A Pershing or Patton tank, at about 11 and a half feet wide, overlaps most of my flatcars by about 1 foot on each side (photos below).
I've found photos on the internet that show tanks being transported with overlaps justlike this, but also pictures that show them not overlapping, which means there must have been wider flatcars made for this purpose. I was going to get the six-unit MTH Pershing tanks on flatcar set, but since they cancelled that I have been making my own. Looking at the pictures in the MTH catalog (page 66), of the canceled Pershing on aflatcars, I can't tell which that was (I imagine they were going to overlap)
Anyway,what do you do and what is the "correct" way the army moves tanks by rail?
