[AT] What is a "Rotiseree restorationnow OT

[Larry Goss]

Humm.  You bring to mind some things I saw in Poland last week, Dave.  Ever hear of the East Line in Germany?  This was a system of underground fortifications that stretched from the Baltic to Slovakia and that was built in 1934.  It was similar to the Maginot line of France during WWI, but this one put that to shame.  Over 500 miles long with interconnected bunkers, ammo dumps, and quarters that stretched in three sections for the entire length of the old German border.  All of it is inside the border of Poland today, and portions of it are open for tourism.  I was in a section that runs for 100 kilometers between the Warda and Odra rivers.   A narrow gauge railroad runs the entire length of it.  The section I was in is over 80 feet underground.

I have tried looking for it on the Internet, but so far have turned up nothing.  No rehabilitation of the area occurred between the date of its start (1934) and very recent times.  Since the whole border was fortified, no one lived in the no man's land for the years between 1934 and around 1990.  This resulted in a wide forest growing up for the whole length of it that forms a serpentine area across the region from East Prussia in a big C shape to Slovakia.  If you know what sort of things to look for, you can pick out the region on Google Earth.  You can still see the location of the pre-1934 property lines in the satellite views of the forest growth.  We traveled parallel to the old border for miles with nothing on either side but pine tree forest.  I have crossed through the forest dozens of times from north to south when visiting Poland, but I never realized how desolate and unpopulated the region is.  If any of you history buffs find an Internet site with material on it in English, let me know -- I would like to print them out.  My son had printouts of materials in Polish for us to look at, but my Polish is not that good.

The fortifications are now being developed a bit to take advantage of tourism.  FWIW, all the artifacts from WWII that are above ground are open to the public, but there usually is an entry charge for any of the underground areas.  That includes the museums of left-over military equipment that are located all over Poland.

Larry


----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Merchant <kosh at ncweb.com>
Date: Monday, September 1, 2008 1:02
Subject: Re: [AT] What is a "Rotiseree restoration
To: Antique tractor email discussion group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>

> There have been several programs on cable, think it was on 
> History Channel,
> about restoring various WW-II tanks, including several different 
> Shermans..
> One of the Sherman projects involved welding together the good 
> parts of 2 
> hulls.
> They did it in a rotisserie to end all rotisseries, 2 rings made 
> from I-beams
> around the hull halves, turning on Sherman road wheels.
> 
> No idea how they rolled those heavy I-beams into rings...
> 
> Dave Merchant
> 
> At 11:34 PM 8/31/2008, you wrote:
> >http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?itemID=763&itemType=CONTENT
> >_______________________________________________
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> 
> Dave Merchant
> kosh at nesys.com
> nesys_com at ameritech.net
> dmerchant at layerzero.com
> 
> http://www.nesys.com
> http://www.nesys.org
> YouTube: SteamCrane
> 
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