HUDSONG1 wrote:I can remember US Army TRAINMASTERS [black with yellow lettering] laying over at Kingston PA (NEPA) at the DL&W roundhouse in the early 60's. *never did get to see them when they left. Berwick PA (manufactured tanks, etc.) was about 25 miles south. Military trainings would pass northbound going to Scranton and wherever. This was the Bloom (Bloomsburg) Branch that connected the DL&W with the Pennsy at Northumberland PA, *along the Susquehanna River. Also, a town or 2 away (and again I didn't get any photos) about 4+ years ago, LAG (equipment etc.) in Duryea PA had 2 or more US AIR FORCE coal hoppers [ blue with white lettering]. In Ashley PA, +/- post Agnes Flood (June 1972) here in the Wyoming Valley there were (2) US Army Hospital Cars in the ol Jersey Central yard at the Glen Alden Breaker and yard. Before I got out of the Air Force in '71 I was at Sumter South Carolina and I believe an Air Force Center Cab used to interchange tank cars.
Do you have any pictures of the engines and are you sure they were trainmasters? Thanks.
Happy new year!!!
Late last year on Fort Lewis near Tacoma Washington I had to wait for a train of DODX flats loaded with Hummers and various pieces of military light to medium equipment. Some of them looked pretty banged up. The BNSF train that usually makes that run has one BN green Geep and a Caboose. You know those things that belong on the end of a train. They drop the cars in the Fort Lewis interchange yard and the Fort Lewis GP-7 (or is it a 9) (engine now has four exhaust stacks where previously there were two, so I am assuming it is repowered) switches them. Their interchange yard probably holds over 100 cars. The US Army civillian personnel switch the cars for loading or unloading. They are transloaded both circuis style or with a stradle crane. I also saw an Industrial brownhoist crane(just like the Tichy Kit) with a line through the DODX number on a Tacoma Rail siding, Mountain division, just south of Tacoma. The crane was a diesel conversion crane and it was on its wheels as opposed to being loaded on a depressed flat.
Loring AFB in Maine received hundreds of hoppers of coal via the Bangor and Aroostook every year up until the base closed about ten years ago. Interestingly enough the AF also had a Russel Wedge plow with USAF markings painted in silver. I think they had an Alco of some sort, but I don't recollect which model it was.
Wright Patterson AFB Ohio near Dayton had several GE 44 tonners in Air Force Blue with USAF markings. They also had at least one Alco S-1 or 2 just like the engine Atlas just released. They have several steam plants around the base and the AF switches the coal loads in hoppers, and unloads them through the bottem dumps.
I could mention the trains on Osan AFB Korea,but that would be out in left field. They were also depressed flats with what looked like Buckeye six wheel truck, but the wheels were spoked!
The three stateside facilities have/had Civil Service railroad operations crews. Loring is probably not used any more. I have not been in Dayton in many years, but I sure enjoy getting held up by the trains on Fort Lewis! And it is really cool seeing a caboose!
Paul
Dayton and Mad River RR
Last month I was video taping trains on the Union Pacific Sunset Route at Mescal, Arizona, when an east-bound train of nearly 100 empty DODX 6-axle and TTX heavy-duty flat cars went by.
This location is between Fort Hood, Texas and the National Training Center in California, so military trains are not uncommon.
The locomotives were Union Pacific power.
During the Afghanistan and Iraq Invasions solid trains of DDOX Flats combined with any other similar flat were screaming down the MP Main several times a week at what must be over track speed empty. I counted over one hundred flats including hefty ones strong enough for Battle Tanks.
I remember Aberdeen Proving Grounds and the Ordinance Museum. That facility had rail tracks ALL over running here and there but nary anything going on whenever we were on base at the Comissary shopping or visiting the museum about the time the Vietnam war was going on. The track was in such robust good condition I just knew they do things when we civilians are not around in the night. =)
I have been on many installations in trucking and recall tracks were everywhere.
Sadly I think the NLR AFB in Jacksonville was actually pulling up rails to make new construction. They did keep the old pathways open as trails for exercise or training in the woods.
I recall stories of world war one railroads that did good service.
Civil War railroads endured much destruction and in some cases invented new ways to fight a war with troop movements and other ways of fighting.
I have had learned about how they would move a Corps from Texas to the ports in a few books using rail. Interesting stuff.
Finally I know of several passenger cars used by SAC as Missile Bases and some very special Cars. I think the USSR relies heavily on ultra-secret military trains for thier nuclear war efforts, heck I think the whole USSR rail was there for the use of the State not the people.
I served until 2001 and was recently interested in the possibility of re-enlisting in the MOS of 88U. If you'll do a search for US Army Reserve MOS 88U, you will find a number of articles that should help you out. All military rail units are reserve component units. Now, some reservist work full-time so dont let the term throw you off. I live in NC and we have a military railhead at Stoney Point (?name?) near Wilmington. There is an article out there that addresses the success of the rail unit operating during Desert Storm in 1991. I hope this helps.
Thanks for the very detailed write-up on the DoN rail operations. I am a Navy contractor and have spent alot of time at NS Norfolk and in Kittery ME over the past few years. Too bad so much is gone now.
One base that has (at least in 2002, when I was there) an active rail operation is NSWC Crane (Indiana). Lots of ordinance stored and shuttled around there by a small fleet of EMD (and EMD-repowered) Navy switchers. The power was in bright yellow paint with black lettering - rolling stock mostly old 40' and 50' boxcars with roofwalks removed and roller bearing trucks. Our office was right next to the small enginehouse so I got to see alot of movements nearby.
Interchange at Crane was done with the CP Rail-Soo Line's former MILW CT&SE line, now Indiana Railroad. However, at this date I believe little interchange of "stuff that can go boom" occurs - most that came into the base or left was on semi-truck. I think the rails were pretty much exclusively used for "intra-plant switching."
Photos on active military installations are verboten so you need to rely on memory to model these operations in this day and age. That is, if you are even able to "get on base" with a valid purpose to be there. Still, I imagine that there is some amount of information available in the public domain to do a credible job of modeling these interesting operations.
A modeler would do well to just model a spur off their mainline leading to a small hidden staging area. The military locomotive would appear at the interchange yard, pick up and drop off cars, and return to the "secret" hidden location, behind the security fence. That's what a local modeler in my area is doing on his layout.
PNCROSE wrote:The outlook for military railroads at Navy installations is bleak. The Navy has been turning to trucks since the early 80's and shutting down base RR operations. The three that I am most familiar with, Naval Station Norfolk, NWS Yorktown, VA, and Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, VA have been shut down or scaled back their operations. Norfolk Naval Station had an extensive system which reached most of the piers and contained a small yard. The former Virginian Railroad had their main coal offloading facility and yard where the current Navy Exchange, Dental and Medical Clinics now stand. A line also reached out to the former Naval Air Station. Ships received most of their supplies and equipment via rail. However, this was being used less and less from the 60's onward and was mostly just rusting by the early '80's. The tracks, some of which were in the streets and ran down the piers, were pulled up or paved over in the mid-90's in spite of a proposal to use them to connect with proposed light rail service to Virginia Beach and downtown Norfolk (sailors commute too). A freight station remains near ADM Taussig BLVD with an ex-Southern caboose on a stretch of track next to it (as of ca 2000). Two small GE switchers in faded yellow paint rested outside the fence next to a grain elevator. An ALCO diesel with either CC or A1A trucks once sat derelect for years near the carrier piers. The slanted cab sides were evidence that it was built for use in Europe. The piers were constructed of concrete and were open. Only the Supply Piers (3 and 4) had buildings somewhat like the Walther's pier structure but less ornate.NWS Yorktown ceased using trains for weapons transport in the late '90's. Now each weapon is brought out on a flat bed truck vice several of them on a string of 50' flatcars. Most of the view of the weapons station from the York River is obscured by a healthy forest. The pier is L shaped to keep the ships far out in the river for obvious reasons. Some covered barges may also be moored to the pier.The shipyard in 2000 still had an extensive rail network, but was seldom used. The rail network reached all of the piers and surrounded the dry docks. One of the more interesting track arrangements was where the tracks for the large traveling cranes crossed the railroad tracks. Most of the rail movements in the '90's were to position flat cars, boxcars or tank cars for various purposes (carry heavy equipment and tools and offload fuel or other chemicals). They would generally stay put for months while a ship was being overhauled. No equipment was fit for interchange and stayed on the shipyard property. Navy railroad equipment is normally painted gray similar in color to the ships. Some tank cars were black. Flat cars were '50' as I recollect and boxcars and tank cars were 40' and all were built in the 1940's and '50's. Some box cars had the roof walks removed. Some tank cars had the little scaffold surrounding their single domes. Reporting marks were USN and the cars did not carry Navy insignia or the name of the base they were assigned to. Motive power were GE center cab switchers painted yellow (the Bachmann 44 tonner would be a good stand-in although I think the locomotives in use at the shipyard were 60 ton). The Walthers Front Street Warehouse is a good stand-in for the buildings on the shipyard many of which were built in the decades following the Civil War. Newer buildings tend to be on the fringe near the fence line.
Dmitzel,
Not argueing the verboten aspect of the photos but it does happen. Case in point I have seen some very very good photos of the Norfolk docks taken by tourits on open ship days. The exception is I don't recall ever seeing the sub pens. There is probably a pretty good reason for that....
If you are looking for out of date photos of military bases, current or inactive, you can always use the Navy Archives, Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian institution (small fee for the last one). When I was doing some research for a prof in grad school all of these institutions had no problem getting photos up to the early 80's with some being even later than that.
Another place to check, would be the US Fort Registery www.USAForts.com. The majority of the photos are from defunct forts, but there are some for active forts there as well. I have asked the properiter of the website if he has other incidental shots of base railroads and he does have some. Ask nicely, tell him why, he gets nervous about active base requests. The other place you could try is a Office of Public Affairs for the Navy. They do have a done of stuff and if catch them on a good day you can get a lot. I briefly toyed with the idea of doing NAS Lakehurst in the late 20's and early 30's until I scaled out a Airship hanger, and that brought that idea to a crashing halt.
Now if you are doing INACTIVE bases, the job gets A LOT easier. There are very very few restrictions on photos of these places unless there is a material danger to the photographer, example, try getting on the grounds of the Badger Ammo Plant outside of Sauk City, I have a ton of photos for Fort Monroe, and some of Fort Eustis at the museum, and at a loading ramp at an empty siding.
cnwfan51 wrote: Something else that you might consider would be to use hospital cars to simulate the transporting of the wounded if you are modeling during time of war One Of the saddest photos I have ever seen was taken in Central Nebraska in the summer of 1945 and the caption read it was a specialt train made of U S Army hopital cars taking a train full of war dead back East Just a thought Larry
Interesting, I would think it would be very unusual for hospital cars to be used to transport the dead, since at that time there were certainly plenty of wounded servicemen coming back from the Pacific that would need the services of the hospital cars. The dead were usually transported in coffins in baggage cars.
shawnee wrote:Remember, the Army doesn't have "bases"...they have Posts. The Navy and AF have bases.
Somebody better tell the Army that.
my father and i once got kicked out of the train yard by a MP when the train yard was still GTW becuse we were takeing photos of a train with some flats covered with tarps, Still got photos though! probably a UFO on its way to hanger 18. lol
I was stationed at Ft. Eustis for about 8 months prior to shipping over seas back in 1965. I have found this thread very interesting as I have not been back there since I shipped out.
I was assigned to the warehouse down at the 3rd Port. We handled parts and supplies for all the watercraft (boats, ships, LCU, LCM, Ducks, Larcs and Barcs). Occassionally we had scrap left with us by the various outfits that were on the different vessels.
We would load up a 2 1/2 ton truck and take this accumulation of scrap to the post dump. That is quite an experience seeing what they have in the dump. I saw old 2-8-0 Consolidations stripped to the boilers just rusting away and they had a experimental hover craft made from fiberglass (painted olive drab green). It looked like a car with 2 seats and a big fan mounted in the top of the hood and another in the trunk lid.
When I was in the Air Force back in the 80's I used to see long strings of tank cars being pushed onto the base through the fence from a civilian railroad. Then the small loco on the base would take over and move the cars to other areas of the base.
I always assumed that the tank cars were full of jet fuel since it was a SAC base and we flew B-52's and KC-135A's. Neither of those planes were exactly "fuel efficient".
wl_keller wrote: When I was in the Air Force back in the 80's I used to see long strings of tank cars being pushed onto the base through the fence from a civilian railroad. Then the small loco on the base would take over and move the cars to other areas of the base.I always assumed that the tank cars were full of jet fuel since it was a SAC base and we flew B-52's and KC-135A's. Neither of those planes were exactly "fuel efficient".
Which base was it?
Barksdale AFB, in Bossier City La.
I also saw some old passenger cars there a couple of times, but I'm not sure what they were for. The were lettered Strategic Air Command and had a SAC shield on them.
They appeared to be painted Strata Blue, the same color as our maintenance vehicles or something similar. At first I assumed they were going to be part of the museum, but now I'm not so sure.
I knew someone who used to be an EWO on B-52Gs. He told me that SAC used to have a mobile B-52 simulator in some type of railcar.
I wonder if the tankcars were for KC-135Qs (or KC-135Ts).
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
wl_keller wrote: Barksdale AFB, in Bossier City La.I also saw some old passenger cars there a couple of times, but I'm not sure what they were for. The were lettered Strategic Air Command and had a SAC shield on them.They appeared to be painted Strata Blue, the same color as our maintenance vehicles or something similar. At first I assumed they were going to be part of the museum, but now I'm not so sure.
As ericsp hinted at, that is exactly what you saw (the B-52 sim cars). I believe they have finally all been scrapped. It is late for me now, but I will post links to photos and info tomorrow.
I heard Barksdale is nice, but we are stationed at the Academy right now, and Colorado is hard to beat.
Well after all these years, I finally know what those rail cars were. I only saw them a couple of times before I was relocated to Guam and then to Nellis AFB.
I was maintaining B-52G's and KC-135A's at Barksdale. (they now have H models as the G's have been retired). The tankers at the base were all A models. At that time I believe there were only three variations, the tried and true A model "water wagons" (they still used water injection and J-57 engines), the Q model which carried JP5 for SR71 refueling, and the R model which used newer TF-33 engines (same as the H model B-52).
Out of curiosity, I googled the satellite map of the area around the base and it appears that all of the tracks on the base have been removed. The only thing left is just the switch and the track dead ends at the fence.
I saw a small switcher with USAF markings at the Galveston Rail Museum. I'm wondering now if it was the loco that used to be at Barksdale.
When I was deployed to Saudi, I scored and incentive flight on a KC-135. I was able to fly the boom and all that jazz. Talk about lying down on the job though.
Here are some links to the cars that I believe you are talking about (on some pages you will have to scroll down to find the pics) It looks as if there were the KC-135 sim cars as well....
http://www.dhke.com/railroad/utah/ogden4.htm
http://www.wildfire-productions.com/atd/index.html
http://forums.railfan.net/image.cgi?concourse/mobile.jpg
csmith9474 wrote: shawnee wrote:Remember, the Army doesn't have "bases"...they have Posts. The Navy and AF have bases. Somebody better tell the Army that.
Well, anyone in the Army knows. It's a Post, not a base. HOOAH!
shawnee wrote: csmith9474 wrote: shawnee wrote:Remember, the Army doesn't have "bases"...they have Posts. The Navy and AF have bases. Somebody better tell the Army that. Well, anyone in the Army knows. It's a Post, not a base. HOOAH!
The only reason I said that (I didn't know if anyone would pick up on it) is that more and more often I am hearing Army posts referred to as "bases", even within the Army. I don't understand it, especially having been attached to an Army unit. I still refer to Army installations as posts (i.e. post exchange).
Edit: I just wanted to clarify that my original response to your post wasn't a knock at you. I was a little to vague. Sorry 'bout that, hooah.
csmith9474 wrote: shawnee wrote: csmith9474 wrote: shawnee wrote:Remember, the Army doesn't have "bases"...they have Posts. The Navy and AF have bases. Somebody better tell the Army that. Well, anyone in the Army knows. It's a Post, not a base. HOOAH! The only reason I said that (I didn't know if anyone would pick up on it) is that more and more often I am hearing Army posts referred to as "bases", even within the Army. I don't understand it, especially having been attached to an Army unit. I still refer to Army installations as posts (i.e. post exchange). Edit: I just wanted to clarify that my original response to your post wasn't a knock at you. I was a little to vague. Sorry 'bout that, hooah.
Being on active duty, the only people that I hear call an Army post a base is usually someone who knows nothing about the Army or the Marine Corps, and I guess for that matter, the military!
Most Army personnel will call a post by it's name; ie; Fort Hood, Bliss, or Jackson....