I was making some drawings of this rail car recently and noticed something odd. Based on the size of the Maus tank and the available 1/35th scale tracks, this car would have been too wide for the gauge track used by the railroads then. I know I may have it all wrong but by my estimations it would have over hung the wheel truck significantly making the car very unstable on corners and under speed. Can anyone weigh in on this, I have since abandoned my drawings until I get some more information, and there is not much that I can find.

AFAIK, during WW2, Germany used standard gauge rail lines (1435mm). 1435mm:35 = 41mm.

On a side note, Planet Models 1/72nd scale Transportenwagen looks to be quite accurate widthwise (1435:72 = 19.9mm) :



Frenchy

O.K. that works out to 1.614" at 1/35th scale. The Maus I got is 4.00" wide and the 80t Ssyms Platformwagen is only 3.47" wide. So if I use the width of the Maus as a gage then the width of the Transporter for the Maus is 1.192", a scale of nearly 45% of the width overhung per side. Scaling up makes it over wide for the rails. How did they manage the size of this giant. Where can I find accurate measurements of this beast?.

Oh yeah!, I'm replying to my own post. WOW was I wrong, the math is all wrong I apologize for the mistake. I found where I went astray. My bad!!

No worries! Remember that the Tiger tanks had special transport tracks to keep down the width. Even if there isn't any problems with stability the load still has to fit within the load profile, width, height and curvature at the top corners to fit inside box girder bridges, tunnels, underpasses and other structures close to the railroad. For double track lines the load must not interfere with the other track,... to avoid nasty surprises ....
Some railroad lines in Germany had electrical power so there would be pillars and posts to carry the overhead power lines so the load must not interfere with these either.

Would they have removed the armoured side-skirts and used transport tracks and removed the outer road wheels juset like the Tiger tanks?

Overhang in the corners: 1. Remember that 1:1 scale railroads have "corners" where the radius is measured in number of hundred meters. For industrial tracks it might be squeezed down to maybe a 60 meter radius which would be 1.7 meters in 1:35 (5 foot 7.5 inches).
2. The load bridge hangs on the two pivots (one each end) so it doesn't matter if the wheel carriages turn beneath the load, compare with the coupling for a semitrailer, since the surface that carries the load can be made to be constant regardless of the angles between load-bridge and wheel carriage. If the wheel carriage was a single axle affair then there would be trouble, compare with a single axle dolly for a trailer when it is turned 90 degrees to the side.

/ Robin

The Maus is never been tranported by rail.
There are only two protypes build.
And they are destroyed to keep them out of Russian hands.
In Koebinka, Russia, there is the only Maus left, in a museum.
The Russian troops took one prototype with them after completing it with spareparts.
But if you like a Maus on the rails, why not?

Here's my problem. The 1/72nd model shows the car with a tapered lead on the center bridge but this car in the photo shows none. I wish I could find out where this was taken. It looks as if at least one car was built and also it looks to be abandoned. Also there are at least eight wheels under the center section that look as though they are not able to turn with the track radii. If I build one with stationary fixed center section wheels would it be accurate?

I hope you find out where the picture comes from.
It's almost certain that that is one of the prototypes taken by the russians.
Because the Mause never went to battle.
Remember it weight a 188,000 kilogram, so it must be a heavy railcar to hold this weight.

I guess this could be another view of the same tank :



The caption gives no location for this picture (Kumersdorfe ?). It just says the Maus is ready to be sent to USSR (1945)...

Frenchy

Just because the tank never went into production does not mean the problem didn't need to be solved. After all they probably thought of transporting this monster.

Looking at that photo... it's insane how big that thing was.

Since the center section is lower than the ends you have one, possibly two, angles confusing the image. If it was level all the way and you get an angle in a photo taken from an angle -> the width changes. When the center section is lower there will be an angle in the photo but it will be hard to tell if there might also be a second reason for the observed angle. It could be possible to measure in the image and try to calculate if the angle could be caused by a change of width. On the other hand you have a measurement in those pictures since you can make a reasonable guess at how much the tracks overhang the sides of the waggon. The width between the buffers is standard and MUST be the same for all waggons used together in trains. A hopeless mix&match-game at the switching yards otherwise. The width of the Maus gives you a good guess at the width of the centre section, any other waggon in your chosen scale gives you the width between buffers and the pictures gives you an estimate of how the buffer width relates to the ends of the load bridge.
The Maus was 5.67 meters wide, normal load gauges allow somewhere between 3 and 3.4 meters width -> the Maus was oversize by more than 2 meters (say 7 feet) -> the center section must be wider than the ends of the waggon.

Wheels under the center section: It doesn't take all that much lateral movement of the wheel axles to handle the curves of the tracks. Heavy load carriages like these sometimes have a restriction on the minimum radius that they are allowed to roll on. The needed movement could probably be handled by the axles sliding a little bit in the bearings. It could also be that some of those wheels don't have flanges (the center one in a group of three).
This was used in some large steam locomotives to allow some wheels to move a little sideways over the rails without going over the edge. Another option is that the bogies under the center section are not connected to it, they only support it. Assume that the load bridge can slide sideways a little. The centre bogies are connected to the others by some sort of connectors (see the drawings by Frenchy)
/ Robin

The Maus wasn't that wide.
These are the dimension of a Maus.

Weight: 188 Tons
Length: 10.2 metres (33 ft 6 in)
Width: 3.71 metres (12 ft 2 in)
Height: 3.63 metres (11 ft 11 in)
Crew: 6

The only thing that matters is its weight.

Oops! Typo! Thanks for correcting!

3.71 meter Maus carried on a railroad where the allowed width is something less than 3.4 meters, at least 0.15 meters (6 inches) overhang each side. I think that the load gauge at that time was less then 3.4 meters, more likely somewhere around 3.2 meters or less which would make the Maus at least 0.25 meters too wide -> need for special checks and planning before moving by railroad.

The current allowed measurements for German railroads can be seen here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Lademass_EBO.png&filetimestamp=20090521162803

G1 is for international movements, G2 is for movement on primary railroads inside Germany (3.15 meters)

The special waggon for the Maus, judging by the pictures, seem to be nearly as wide as the tracks which is less than the 3.71 meters since the armoured track-skirts are outside the tracks. Guess at 0.2 meters each side -> width over the tracks somewhere around 3.5 meters -> approximately 6 inches outside a 3.15 m load gauge on each side.
By the way, the center-center width for the buffers is 1.750 meters on european normal gauge railroads

Regards / Robin

So, yes it is the one the Soviets shipped off to Russia. The caption for that photo says, "Hybride assemble apres guerre par les Sovietiques". I don't speak French but I think I recognize the words,and I think it says, this is the hybrid that is being shipped to The Soviet Russia after the war. I guess they appropriated the railcar also. I also found an image of a blueprint from a site where a modeler had built a diorama of it as it was being loaded and readied for transport. This diagram shows a slight narrowing of the center section. Although it is still not clear if the wheel trucks were articulated under the bridge.

I've been following your thread, very interesting. I thought I had seen a drawing in one of my Maus reference books about the transportwagen. I hope this helps. Don M.

Yes this image is a lot clearer than the others I have gotten. The biggest issue with the aforementioned images I found is they are blurry and very hard to see. At this modelers site, www.pznxer-bau.de, he shows his work in close ups and there is a host of detail not shown in other images. I wonder how much assumption I can get away with to dissuade rivet counters from criticizing my work if I choose to build this car. I know there must be clearer and more detailed images out there but I can't find them. Can anyone help in this search?.

Sorry that web site should be, www.panzer-bau.de I have big thumb syndrome.

Hi Richard
There was two interesting statements on that web-page:
1. "Für den Scratchbau des Tiefladers liegen Originalpläne vor."
Roughly: Original drawings were used to scratchbuild the carrier.

2. "Der Spezialtieflader hatte solche Dimensionen, das enge Kurven oder Tunnel unbedingt gemieden werden mussten."
Roughly: The special carrier had such dimensions that tight curves and tunnels had to be avoided.

Maybe you could contact the builder and ask where he got the drawings and if you could buy copies of them?

Regards / Robin

Yes I did contact him yesterday and got some files from him. I am about to look them over. This may be what I have looked for. Thanks