page_title: Amiens Gun
section_title: After capture
hierarchical_section_title: Amiens Gun / After capture
caption_attribution_description: English: Loading the barrel of the captured German 28-cm "Amiens Gun" on to the "Dongara".
context_page_description: The Amiens Gun is a German 28-centimetre railway gun that was captured by the Australian Imperial Force during World War I and returned to Australia as a war trophy. The 28 cm SK L/40 "Bruno" gun was placed on public display on 26 March 1920 adjacent to the Central railway station, Sydney. While the gun's carriage was scrapped during the 1960s, the gun barrel remains on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
context_section_description: After capture, the gun was exhibited in Paris before being removed to England, via a Channel ferry. It was later taken by rail to Woolwich Arsenal for examination and finally to Chatham Dockyard for transport to Australia.
  Transport of this weapon was a formidable task. Finally, arrangements were made to load the trophy on board the SS Dongarra at Chatham dockyard which was achieved without mishap. The Dongarra, on which the gun was shipped to Sydney, was itself a war prize, being the former German liner Stetsenfels.
  Mr. G.D. Delprat, the then general manager of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, who happened to be in London at the time, offered to place the company's facilities and skilled personnel at Newcastle at the Government's disposal, but on the advice of Mr. Shellshear, consulting engineer for the N.S.W.G.R. in London, that the gun's axle loading would exceed the safe load on the original Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge, unless the gun's barrel was removed. This was agreed to.
  However, it was subsequently decided that, as the naval floating crane Titan was available in Sydney and was capable of lifting weights up to 200 tons, the problem was solved. So the bogies, central pivot, undercarriage and gun were unloaded in the Port of Sydney direct on the rails, at Jones Bay, Darling Harbour. From there, the gun was hauled to the N.S.W.G.R. Eveleigh Workshops, where with the assistance of Lieut. George Norman Pockett, Australian Army Engineer Ordnance Corps, all fittings and parts were reassembled.
  From Eveleigh the gun was hauled to Station East Box by a superheated T-class locomotive and from there pushed forward to a specially prepared track at Eddy Avenue, via a ramp, the rails of which sank under the weight (approximately 18½ tons per axle). After strengthening, another attempt was more successful, although one bogie ran off the end and remained suspended in mid-air until powerful jacks were used to re-rail the trophy, which was floodlit at night by special arrangement with the Australian General Electric Co. for some weeks during the 1920 visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) who inspected it. Thousands of Sydneysiders passing the site saw the gun until its eventual movement to Canberra in 1923.
caption: Loading the barrel aboard the Dongarra in 1919
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