On Nov 16, 2019, at 5:52 AM, Bruce Smith <smithbf@...> wrote:



Bob,

I don't think that the gun tube on the PRR F22 flat cars is the same as the "installed" photo. I'm away from my sources, but the latter guns at Fort McArthur were railway mounts, as is shown in your second photo, whereas the gun tube on the flats is most likely for a fixed mount. IIRC, the two railway guns for Fort McArthur were completed and shipped to the fort on their own chassis and wheels.

Regards,

Bruce Smith, temporarily in Rochester New York (Shee-eet, what is that white stuff on the ground????)

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From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> on behalf of Bob Chaparro via Groups.Io <chiefbobbb@...>
Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2019 12:21 AM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io>
Subject: [RealSTMFC] Photo: Gun Barrel On Flat Cars

 

Photo: Gun Barrel On Flat Cars

Photo taken at the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad Yard, Los Angeles:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mtcPFD6LBeI/TZUQcJ50CPI/AAAAAAAAN8s/Vj20tEdXvTw/s1600/1917-03-24_FortMacArthurGun-LAYards-SaltLakeRR_01c.jpg

Caption:

1917: 14” diameter gun-tube (weighing 110,000 pounds) for the new “state-of-the-art” port fortifications at San Pedro’s Fort MacArthur (established 10/31/1914) are a “tourist attraction” at the downtown LA yards of the Salt Lake railway; when each gun arrived in San Pedro it had to be slowly and painstakingly snaked up San Pedro hill (sometimes moving only a few feet in a day) to the Upper Reservation using house mover dollies which left increasingly deep gouges in the pavement; the land for the Upper Reservation had been purchased in 1910 from William G. Kerckhoff and George H. Peck for $249,000—about $31.6 million in 2009 dollars using the nominal GDP per capita index; the four 14” gun-tubes were mounted on disappearing carriages at Batteries Osgood-Farley and Leary-Merriam (built at a cost of $462,788, or $83.4 million in 2009 dollars using the relative share of GDP index); each of the 14” guns could fire a 1,560-pound projectile 14 miles; the number 2 gun at Battery Osgood-Farley was mounted on 06/30/1917 and by the time the number 1 gun was installed on 07/31/1923 the installations were already obsolete; the big guns were rarely fired, due to the damage they caused to San Pedro homes and businesses, before they were cut up for scrap in the mid 1940s.

Installed Gun:

https://www.gettyimages.be/detail/nieuwsfoto%27s/army-personnel-standing-with-a-14-inch-railway-gun-at-ft-nieuwsfotos/50622595

Today Ft. MacArthur is home to the N scale Belmont Shore Model Railroad Club and the O scale Angels' Gate Hi-Railers club. Each club has its own building.

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA