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AMTRAK is a passenger moving business. My experience with Army logistics involved a lot of planning moving troops and equipment to ports. Most Army posts do have rail connections, for moving heavy freight. The way it works is that the Army will plan to move a unit- be it an Infantry brigade or a missile battalion- in two parts. The equipment always moves first, and always moves to a port for shipping. (The exception is when Army units go to the National Training Center in California, or the site at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Then the equipment is almost always kept on the same train.) Moving people is done by the fastest, most convenient way. No one wants to deploy troops who will sit around without equipment at the other end. It's better to keep them at their home station for as long as possible to let them clear up family problems and get mentally ready to do their job. When the balloon goes up, troops do a duffle bag drag to a chartered bus, which will take them to the nearest military air base. Sometimes that's right across the post; sometimes it's to a civilian airport capable of handling big transports. BTW, a typical Army division (which is pretty hard to define) will range anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers. Unlike WWII, most Army divisions are "mechanized"- which means that your typical Infantryman will be working out of a Bradley fighting vehicle, rather than walking into battle. (This is not true of "airborne" paratrooper units or "air assault" units- once they fall out of the airplane, their feet provide their mobility.) AMTRAK works best at moving passengers short distances at high speeds. Railroads work best at moving bulk freight. For moving people as fast as possible, in coherent unit groups, for long distances over 300 miles, nothing beats an airplane. Cost and efficiency, while important, don't neccessarily play a role- but time and troop readiness are everything. Erik
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