Right, time for that time of year again where I start inflicting my vacation photos on you. Warned you've been. This time around I went for a week in Russia, if nothing else so to have it done already if the iron curtain decides to slam down again with a vengeance.
First out was Moscow. With the Kremlin armoury not going very hard on the armoury angle (being more a museum of tsarist opulence, complete with bible's covered in a camel's weight in gold and jewels) and not allowing photography either the focus here is going to be on modern stuff. Well, compared to my usual fare at least, there will be people still alive older than most of it somewhere on the planet.
First out: some photos from the tank museum in Kubinka.
Now despite being somewhat well known thanks to having the world's only Maus sitting around and photography being allowed, I've somewhat gotten the feeling that there aren't all that may photos flopping around form the place. This may be because getting there isn't entirely trivial. Starting out with their English language website: they don't have one. The somewhat official looking thing google suggests to you appears to be run by some bitter ex-employee. Now there are plenty of options to cough up a big wad of cash to have a private guide fix tickets, drive you there, show you around, and drive you back. But for the obstinate "I can myself" crowd like yours truly, here's how to get there from Moscow:
1: Mail them in advance (someone there can read English) and tell them you're coming. It used to be part of a military base so apparently they like to keep track on foreigners. They aren't quick about answer, so get started a few weeks in advance. 2: Get to the Belorusskaya train station. You're on your own for how, the city has fifteen subway lines... 3: Somehow negotiate a purchase of a return ticket there and back. Try to make it an express one, the normal cost ticket doesn't cover express trains. 4: Somehow figure out which train is yours. It won't be from the main cluster of rails but from a few off on the right. 5: Get off at the station, up the stairs, to the right, and down. Hopefully the t62 is there to greet you, or there's a problem. Go along the rails to the bus "terminal", then right and keep walking until you get, well, here. 6: See the bridge ahead? You don't want to get up on that, you want to go into the bushes to the left of it and walk on up to the highway the bridge goes over. Up to date TBE shots may be a good idea.
7: When you get to the highway, turn left and follow it. It gets to a bridge where you'd be uncomfortably close to the Russian traffic, but luckily there's an unused old bridge next to it to use. 8: The museum is on the other side of the highway. There are no pedestrian crossings. Satellite surveillance provided by Alphabet (aka Google maps) suggested that it might be possible to go loop back down left under the bridge and follow the railroad that it was over to get under. Plan B was instead to follow the highway a few hundred meters further to a red light, and hope that'd give me a chance to just run for it. But proving the value of boots-on-the-ground-recon, it turns out that just at the end of the old bridge there's a small improvised stair leading down to a small path under the main bridge, at the right side of and at a reassuring distance form the train tracks. Basically down right under the main bridge here at the end of the bridge span. 9: Follow the path to a small road, then turn right and follow that to the museum. Easy! 10: Notice that no one asks about your name, passport or any of that when you buy the ticket (despite doing so in English), wonder what the heck the point of #1 was.
Anyway, tanks and assorted. They have a lot of stuff there, generally crammed into quite tightly so this won't exactly be full walkarounds. And they had more than I had the stamina to photograph, so if you have a favourite obscure Russian SPG prototype... there probably won't be a photo of it.
Behind which we have a bloody big tank. Well, the shell of one at least. Luckily(...) I'm no Moran here and as such the inside condition isn't terribly relevant.
A mine clearing vehicle which, as far as I can tell, is simply built to be able to not really care about anti tank mines (the crew might beg to differ depending on how good ear plugs you got for them), and which you then have right through any suspected minefield. Not as big in person as I thought it'd be, probably due to my mind getting it somewhat mixed up with Krupp's gargantuan Räumer S.
The museum itself is basically just six of these garages/hangars. A seventh is claimed to contain "all the other countries", but was locked and much of what you'd expect to see in there (Swedish, Japanese, French) was in the US garage instead, so it's probably permanently shuttered.
Oh. Didn't realize they moved it. Surprised they did since it's not exactly the lightest vehicle. Enjoying the other images anyway.
Camden Allen
Probably a trade off between whatever had the highest loot-boasting value and still being somewhat reasonable to move. 65 tons of Ferdinand is a lot, but compared to the Maus...
Object 279, the (extra) nuke-resistant tank. In three tone camo rather than the plain green in the usually seen photo. Hardly freshly painted, so God knows how old that pic is by now.
All the museums which are on the balance of MoD are funded by the leftover principle. That's why, let's say, Monino air museum depends on the labor of volounteers.
Park Patriot somewhat seems to be the exception, but I have a feeling there's a vested interest up high in their existence, and not just to preserve old relics. And Monino, yeah, they could use a donation or two to buy a bucket of paint. But that's for another thread.
Based user for allowing us to see cool stuff without having to actually risk getting AIDS by going to Russia. Should look for the collection I had from Kyiv though, seems like the right thread for it.
Object 775 I guess someone heard talk about Russian tanks having pancake turrets and thought that was a bit unfair, so as to show people a real pancake turret...
If you're risking more than Hep A and TBE here then simply going to Russia may not be the important bad decision you made. And if you're risking those, well, then you've made a bad decision about vaccines.
BMP-3 Object 950 Prototype or variant prototype? Heck knows. Interestingly enough though all the BMP signs say БMД, BMD, rather than БMП. I wonder what happened in translation there.
No, that is a BMD-1 D standing for DESANTA (airborne) All the BMDs (1-4) can be dropped from a plane. Albeit smaller than their BMP counterpart, they tend to share the same weapon systems.
