The image displayed from the poster

Great scene!  I added your image below. 

Military trains

There's a lot to making military loads. I strongly recommend looking at photos in model books and online, noting that most people modeling them do the following errors:

• No ties downs or wheel blocks
• Crew served weapons still in place
• Lack of individual vehicle/unit markings for each vehicle

Neither of those is correct for a military train.

I was an Army officer in heavy mechanized units (I was also personally involved with the creation of the Army's first 'Stryker' Brigade), so I did lots of rail loading of vehicles onto trains.

Nothing makes me roll my eyes more than seeing belt-fed machine guns in place on vehicles on flat cars. Yeah, try explaining to the court martial board why you left that up there and how you don't understand why it wasn't still there when you got to the train to off-load it!

Wheel Blocks

DODX Loads

The Military may no longer use wheel blocks, those flats have tie down chains, just like auto transport trailers used. Trust me the railroad won't move a string of Military Flats with expensive Government Equipment that hasn't been secured. Jim Hediger did an article in MR a few years back on how to model flat car load restraints, such as wheel blocks, tie down chains/straps, etc. You can view pics of DODX equipment on the Fallen Flag site, listed under Government Equipment.

James Barnes, Jr.

No wheel blocks?

My first reaction to this was, "in a pig's eye" then I looked up a few images myself. Yeah, you're right.

They must have stopped doing this in the early 2000s or later. I know for tracked vehicles the blocks never did much (I once rolled an M1A2 tank right over the top of wheel chocks in my motor pool, in idle as it was facing downhill at the time. The ground guide said he'd removed them but hadn't and didn't feel a thing), but I've personally seen them stop wheeled vehicles from rolling a bit during movement of the flat cars.

Hm....

Lee, Lee: Take a deep breath, relax... perhaps take a chill pill. It's a hobby. Those of us that WANT to research will do so... those of us that prefer to be more relaxed in our approaches, will do so.

In this hobby, we all find our "happy place" in whatever way we want, or can.

It's all good.

Andre

Spotting the errors

Andre, 

It's a training thing - he's been trained to spot problems like that, so as to prevent them from going any further. It's a very difficult thing to turn off, practically muscle memory. 

And if he was still involved with the military, it's something he _wouldn't want_ to turn off. 

Not finished