The exact same thing happened to the Patton Museum of Armor and Cavalry at Fort Knox. When the armor center moved to Fort Benning, all the various armor pieces moved there as well. While the Patton Museum remains at Knox, it is a shadow of its former self. It used to be worth hundreds of miles and hours on the road for an armor modeler to visit. Today, it’s hard to recommend a detour off of I-65 even though the round trip off the interstate and back is less than 25 miles.
Joint Base Lewis-McChord up here near Tacoma are currently remodeling their museum. It’s closed til January 2017, but I’m looking forward to getting in there when they do open it. Looks like they have some interesting pieces parked outside as well.
–Chris
As a kid I lived in the housing area adjacent to the museum '68-'71 and the “field of tanks” was our playground at times. When we played Army we played using real tanks! The on-site museum building hadn’t been built yet, so it was just an open field filled with armor and artillery pieces. Some of the tanks even had hatches that were not welded shut and several of the artillery pieces, including the German 88 millimeter howitzer we’re able to be elevated and traversed. Apparently some passersby noticed that the kids from my housing area were out there having way too much fun and the military police stationed a daily guard out there to walk amongst the tanks with a rifle slung over his shoulder. I never understood why the guard was armed considering he would never dare to use deadly force to keep the kids away from the tanks.