[CharlieC]

A close examination of the image of the 381/40 AVS seems to show the gun barrel was mounted in a cradle. Unusually the railway gun clearly has the Schneider system of blocks as well. I guess the recoil cylinders on the cradle weren't enough to absorb the gun's recoil.

I guess I should explain just in case anyone's interested in this old tech.

Shipboard naval gun barrels don't have trunnions since the barrel has to be removable from a close fitting turret. The barrel is mounted on a cradle and the cradle has the trunnions to provide the pivot points for the barrel elevation. Usually the barrel can slide back in the cradle on firing but is restrained by the recoil cylinders mounted between the barrel and the cradle. When the naval gun barrels were used ashore as railway guns the French adopted two approaches.

One was to use a cradle as if the gun was mounted in a turret, the other, Schneider design, was to add trunnions to the barrel and mount the barrel directly on the railway gun carriage. The recoil was absorbed by laying additional rails parallel to the normal rails and jacking wooden blocks onto the auxiliary rails which took the whole weight of the gun. On firing the whole gun would slide back (in French - glissement). After firing a number of shots the blocks were jacked up and the gun shunted back to the start position on the track. Typically a Schneider railway gun would slide back about a metre for each shot. The Schneider system was cheap and adaptable to a wide range of guns. I haven't counted them but I think the French deployed about 30+ different types of railway gun in WW1.

Regards,

Charlie