If you happened to be passing by Norfolk Southern’s rail yard in Bellevue, Ohio, recently you might have come across something very usual. Two flatbed railcars were spotted there carrying what looks to be exactly like Russian-made S-300 and Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile systems, but are very likely extremely high-fidelity mockups of them.
Joseph Zadeh, a trainspotter who goes by @aboveaverage.joe on Instagram, was kind enough to share pictures he took of these railcars and their cargo with us. There are four vehicles in total seen, two each on the pair of commercial flatbed cars. The exact owners and/or operators of the railcars or their cargo are not currently known.
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At first glance, one car has what looks to be a Tor-M1 along with a 5P85S transporter-erector-launcher (TEL), which is associated with multiple versions of the S-300 system. The other has what appears to be a variant of a mobile tracking and missile guidance radar known variously as the 5N63 and 30N6, as well as by the NATO reporting name Flap Lid, also a component of a number of variants of the S-300, along with another Tor-M1.
Read more: The War Zone