Tank Boneyard: Murrayville, Victoria

[Johnny Payphone]

I found these stripped and dismantled tanks on the side of the road in Murrayville, Victoria.  Tank treads and parts lay everywhere as well as old cars, heavy machinery, and even some wooden horse-drawn wagons.  The last picture is of the wooden body of an old bus.

[Rowan of Rin]

I found these stripped and dismantled tanks on the side of the road in Murrayville, Victoria.  Tank treads and parts lay everywhere as well as old cars, heavy machinery, and even some wooden horse-drawn wagons.  The last picture is of the wooden body of an old bus.

Incredible! I especially love the tank in the second picture, I must get there and do some exploring of my own! May I ask you what you are doing in that part of Australia Mr. Payphone?

[Bezier]

That is one great looking old tank there. It is incredible what one can find from just exploring, eh?

[Johnny Payphone]

If you take a look at where Murrayville is, you'll wonder what anyone is doing in that part of Australia.

[Gryphon]

both are WW2-era tank hulls.  I think the top one (on its side) might be from a mid-war American M3 Light Tank, called a Stuart by the Brits; while the next two down are definitely the remains of an early-war American M3 Medium Tank, called the "General Lee" or "General Grant" by the Brits.  Some M3s had Wright radial engines.  Just out of curiousity, what's the scrapyard asking for them?

[akumabito]

Brilliant machine!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Seems like a great place to 'shop' for bits and pieces of awesomeness.

[elShoggotho]

Sad to see the rusted hulk of the Australian variant of the M3 Lee tank. Predecessor of the Sherman, sadly underperforming and discontinued for direct front use.

I want one. No, two. No, five.

Look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee

[Johnny Payphone]

In the fourth picture you can see there are at least two more of the Lee variety in the pile.  It appears the owner of the yard was accumulating and stripping diesel equipment for parts.  The engines lying around were all huuuuuge-bore straight-sixes and straight-eights.  I didn't see any radial engines, which I would have recognized as Dr. Evermor has a 10-cylinder radial on a bus chassis as a wrecker (wait, you would have seen this if you've been to the Forevertron).  Honestly I didn't see a soul in this whole town.  Everything in the yard looked like it had been there for a while.  The oldest stuff was horse-drawn, there were some '20s and '30s coupes and such, with the tanks being the "newest" thing in the yard.

[alfa1]

I think the top one (on its side) might be from a mid-war American M3 Light Tank...

To me, it looks more like this example of a Matilda tank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Matilda_MK2_Series_4.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Puckapunyal_Matilda_Tank_DSC01931.JPG

[Klynt Mahryd]

I'd love to salvage that yard

[Hikaro Takayama]

I'd love to salvage that yard

Me too!  If only to see what kind of vintage electronics there might still be in some of those things (laugh all you want, but I found a mostly intact 1930's era tube radio chasis along with some unbroken 1930's era tubes in a junk pile about two miles from my house about 15 years ago).

[Gryphon]

Alfa, I think you're right, it does look like a Matilda - I'm not so good at IDing the British tanks....

[Marcus Bell Of Ulm]

The tank looks like a steampunk tumbler to me...

[Dr. Zedrich Heretic]

So I lurked into this thread thinking, “well, can’t be much worth looking at here, but what the hell.”  Then I saw the first tank photograph and said “Wow” out loud.  This is an impressive find, thank you for sharing.

[AllisterCain9]

I wonder if you can just pick one out and take it home?

[Gryphon]

From one Yank to another, I suspect that the legalities would be the smallest problem to solve in "just picking one up and bringing it home" from the other side of the planet - M3 Mediums were BIG!

[Sir Nikolas Vendigroth]

I'd love to salvage that yard

Me too!  If only to see what kind of vintage electronics there might still be in some of those things (laugh all you want, but I found a mostly intact 1930's era tube radio chasis along with some unbroken 1930's era tubes in a junk pile about two miles from my house about 15 years ago).

What's to laugh at? Junk's great, especially when it still works 

[AllisterCain9]

From one Yank to another, I suspect that the legalities would be the smallest problem to solve in "just picking one up and bringing it home" from the other side of the planet - M3 Mediums were BIG!

Nay, I was talking about locals. If I found one of those, id rent a U-hal and bring it to my back yard where I could deal with that equipment on my own terms. Or to say the least drag it to the middle of the desert, in a secret place where nobody would find it.
As for legalities, just pay the owner of the land some money and Im sure theyll be happy if you clean out their land.

Capitalism at its best.

[Dusza Beben]

From one Yank to another, I suspect that the legalities would be the smallest problem to solve in "just picking one up and bringing it home" from the other side of the planet - M3 Mediums were BIG!

Nay, I was talking about locals. If I found one of those, id rent a U-hal and bring it to my back yard where I could deal with that equipment on my own terms. Or to say the least drag it to the middle of the desert, in a secret place where nobody would find it.
As for legalities, just pay the owner of the land some money and Im sure theyll be happy if you clean out their land.

Capitalism at its best.

That would have to be one heck of a U-haul!




JP, two words...

MUTANT VEHICLE!

 

DB

[Gryphon]

to paraphrase what Dusza says, you ain't gonna move a frozen-up M3 hull with no U-Haul, son.  Never mind the permits, are you familiar with gravitational inverse-square laws?  Tanks are usually transported overland on specially-modified, extra-wide, low-slung flatbead semi trailers; getting a tank that no longer runs ONTO that trailer requires a HUGE (that's H-U-U-U-G-E) crane.  Even if the tank hull was parked a quarter-mile down the road from your house, this would be an expensive proposition - transport of such a thing often costs orders of magnitude more than the item itself.  I have a friend who bought an engineless 50-foot-long steel Navy lifeboat hull on chocks in a Navy yard for $50 at government auction; it cost him over $5,000 in transport fees/storage fees/fines/permits just to get the darn thing out of the Navy yard and into a local private boatyard so he could begin work on it.

Big is fun, don't get me wrong, but it is pricy if you're the one footing the bill.

The reason those hulls are still in Victoria instead of some smelter's furnace, even after this summer's global spike in steel prices, is that it took so much effort to get them there in the first place and would now take even more to get them out.

[akumabito]

As far as tracked armor is concerned, the M3 Lee is a bit of a lightweight. Combat weight was a tad under 28 tons. From the pics it is clear it is missing the top turret, all armament and ammo, the engine, and nearly all aft armor. I'd guesstimate actual weight closer to 18 tons now. Still hard to move, but hardly impossible - a ferrocement yacht can very well be larger and a lot heavier than that!

Size-wise, it's not that much of a problem to get it moving - it's about a ft wider than a standard shipping container, yet a fair bit shorter. I guesstimate with the turret removed, it wouldn't be much taller than a standard shipping container either. So it won't fit in one, but finding a flatbed trailer and crane that can haul it it is far from problematic.

Obvious question would then be 'why?' Tracked armor isn't particularly expensive anyhow. Cold-war era hardware is being dumped on the global market all the time. If you just want a toy, there are many MUCH cheaper options around. If you want 'proper' historical value, you'll need insanely deep pockets to restore one of these as pretty much everything will have to be made from scratch. (I saw a restored Sherman tank for sale recently for $220,000)

[akumabito]

Speaking of tanks this beauty is about as awesome as they get!

[AllisterCain9]

Thats a good point. This reminds me, that the last time I went to my local paintball field, they had two full sized old helicopters placed as terrain. If they can by an old helicopter for decoration, it cant be THAt expensive.

[Gryphon]

Oh, yeah, there's WW2 armor up and running all over the Midwest USA.  I've heard that it's not that hard to pick up "fixer-upper" Russian T34s in Mexico for around $30K to $50K.  There are two in operation in the Wisconsin/Minnesota region tha I know of (probably more,) as well as a handful of working Shermans, and a smattering of functioning German Panzers in Chicagoland.  Someone down there has a British Ferret scoutcar as well.  My team runs our Russian BA-64B armored scout car at paintball and airsoft games throughout the year, and there's a group based in the next town east of here that runs an American armored halftrack.

An empty M3 Medium hull is still a pretty hefty piece of oversized hauling, but good idea aku - a professional yacht hauler might be the most cost-effective hire.  If by "not that expensive," you mean merely thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands, you are probably right.  Certain organizations like the VFW or the American Legion can sometimes get the military to haul and place thes sorts of items at a deep discount, and some businesses already possess the heavy equipment necessary (lift cranes, heavy equipment trailers, etc.)

Also, helicopters come apart a lot more easily than tanks do....

[akumabito]

Also, helicopters come apart a lot more easily than tanks do....

Well, the M3 is riveted together. I suppose it should technically be possible to drill out the rivets, then remove the panels one by one. Perhaps a sturdy engine crane would do the trick? You'd need to bring a generator, an industrial sized drill and plenty of drill bits though. Not the fastest/easiest/most subtle way to 'liberate' a tank, I suppose, but theoretically feasible