U.S. Milatary Railroads?

[csmith9474]

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....

That has always been my call. I was just looking at the Ft Campbell website (their .mil site), and even there they referred to themselves as the only base with some sort of unit. I did get strange looks from my wife and other AF folks when I started picking up Army "lingo" after being attached to an Army unit (the former 49th AD). I would catch myself using terms like "on garrison" more often. I would especially get a lot of looks for having an Army patch on an Air Force uniform. When I was cross training into weather (WRTC portion at Camp Blanding), we had a guy that had just seperated from the Army and went into the ANG. He constantly used the term "hooah" after just about everything he said. He was one of the jumpers and was pretty hard core about anything he ran across.

There are a lot of Air Force personnel that refer to Army installations as bases. It is not that they know nothing about the military, but the fact that they have not had much if any exposure to any of the sister services. I am sure that would serve true in any of the branches of the military.

[VilePig]

To clear up some possible misunderstandings from earlier posts:

Member of the Transportation Corps rarely operate trains.  Rail MOSs left the active Army in May 1976 and the last active Army rail unit, the 1st Railway Detachment at Fort Eustis, was inactivated on Sep 30, 1978.  Since then only the Army Reserve has had rail MOSs, and you'll only see reservists operating rail equipment during weekend drills, annual training, school attendance at Fort Eustis, or the occasional TDY here and there.  Rail operators on military installations are wage grade employees or contractors.

Then-Camp Polk and Camp Claiborne (early 1940s) had a rail training line between them during WW II but that ended with the war, and Claiborne closed in December 1945.  Fort Eustis has been the home of rail training for many decades, and I can assure you that steam locmotive training did not continue into the 1980s.  I went through there in 1975 and we only dealt with Army diesels.  There was one steam locomotive on post and it was inoperative.  It was repaired enough to do three loops around the post railway during the open house that year and then it had to be taken out of service again.  I don't know of any occasion when it operated again, and it now resides in the museum.

General supplies are not delivered to bases or posts by rail anymore.  Such traffic moved to the trucks a long time ago.

The two GE centercab locomotiives at NSY Norfolk are GE 80-tons, not 44-tons or 60-tons.

The Army didn't have "Trainmaster" locomotives.  What you saw were probably Fairbanks-Morse H12-44s in transit.  The last of these left the inventory in the very early 1990s.  

Fort Campbell doesn't receive general supplies via rail, but instead uses the line to deploy forces to the port at Jacksonville, FL. The post is the home to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), a former parachute division that converted to air-landed (via helicopter) while in Vietnam in mid-1968.  The 82nd at Fort Bragg is the Army's only parachute division.  Its geeps were not "inherited" from a shortline but were instead purchased by the Department of the Army as part of an Army-wide acquisition of motive power (mostly rebuilt ex-IC and ICG geeps from VMV in Paducah, KY) to replace its existing Korean War-vintage equipment in 1990.

The two geeps at Fort Lewis are both GP10s. 

Wright Patterson AFB Ohio had four GE 80-ton locomotives, not 44-ton locomotives.  The rail operation is long gone at WPAFB and 44-tonners have been gone from all of the services for many years.

I've seen the track into Osan AB, ROK, but a Korean National Railroad employee stated during my last visit a few years ago that it is no longer used.

The last SW8 left Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, in mid-2005 for the California State Railroad Museum.  Rail car movements for impact testing on loads is done with a carmover.   This takes place within the restricted area at the east end of the post, so few among us are likely to ever view such activities.  The APG tracks are now in awful shape.

Do not consider enlisting or reenlisting in the Army Reserve in one of the few remaining rail units.  Actual rail training on weekends, as small as it was, has declined significantly, and the Army Reserve's intent is now to recruit personnel from industry who already possess the desired skills (i.e., construction workers for engineer battalions, truck drivers for truck units, etc.), allowing units to concentrate on Army combat training on weekends. Rail training takes a distant back seat to such training, if it occurs at all.  The amount of time devoted to rail training can vary depending upon a unit commander's interest in rail, which may vary from "very little" to "none at all."  Remember that rail unit commanders are TC officers who will probably not be there too terribly long and rail is just an oddity in today's Army.  If you're interested in working around rail equipment, apply for a position on a railroad or volunteer at an operating rail museum.  You will be much more satisfied.

There is a USAR rail unit company based at Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point near Southport, NC, but anyone considering enlisting in it should be fully aware that it was reorganized from an installation support role to being an overseas deployable unit, a completely different kind of company.  Even if you occupy a rail slot in such a unit, you could find yourself being involuntarily retrained as a truck driver and deployed as such.  The Army's personnel  manning is tight, so don't think you can join a rail unit and avoid the current unpleasantries overseas.  "Oh, they'll never take me" are famous last words.

Barksdale AFB, LA, tore out its rail line in the early 1990s.  The old SAC cars on base were reportedly former B-52 simulator cars, but they were sold off via DRMO many years ago.

The GE 80-ton at the Galveston Rail Museum is indeed the same one that was at Barksdale AFB.  Earlier it had been assigned to Charleston AFB, SC, which abandoned rail operations long ago and finally tore up its tracks in 1991.

[NJWATERGUY]

 I wrote a little about the Naval Weapons Center at Earle Nj. and It got me curious so I went on google earth and its awesome. You can follow the railroad from the piers all through the base. There is an extensive network of tracks. You can see many areas were train cars are parked in bunkers and all kinds of warehouses etc. It would be a great modeling pike. Go to google earth and search Atlantic Highlands New Jersey. You will see the piers out in the water and you can zoom in and take a ride from there.