A heavy field gun rests on a railroad flatcar in this early twentieth-century photograph, part of a documentary series recording captured or surplus artillery moving by rail after the First World War. The wooden-spoke wheels, riveted steel construction, and adjacent Northern Pacific Railway boxcar place the scene in the WWI/immediate postwar period, likely around 1918-1920, when thousands of trophy guns and obsolete pieces were shipped across the United States for public display, salvage, or presentation to American communities as war memorials. Project: 218708