Your tax dollars at work. Good primer though. They recently combined the Army railway MOS into one. So now one person will be trained on track maintenence and construction, locomotive and equipment maintenence and locomotive and equipment operation (the existing commercial railway labor unions would probably flip at that revolutionary idea of combining crafts).
They are going to start teaming the railway MOS folks to go out into the field with Special Forces units…which is an interesting new twist at nation building.
Anyways, read a reference on the Illinois Railway Museum web page that the 757th Army Railway unit visited IRM recently from Ft. Eustis, VA. They did not specify why but perhaps for some training or familiarization? Not sure but it would be neat if Railway Museums could benefit from their labor…while they train on equipment. Win-win situation.
With references tto the last paragraph: I recall reading an article a couple of years back about the Wiscassett,Waterville and Farmington Railroad Museum That had the good fortune to have an “Army Unit” ( Reserve or National Guard) that came to the museum and did some volunteer track work that was badly needed to help the museum track and bridge work(?).
The public tends to forget the work of the US Army’s Railway Battalions performed during in most theaters of the WWII. And even their activities in WWI providing troop transport, and ammunition resupply at the ‘Front’. As well as the work done on both sides of the Civil War to manintain, and
“Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.” - attributed to many.
Interesting booklet. My very perfunctory review concludes that there’s a lot of unnecessary material - too much on the operation of wrecking cranes is a good example - and some material that’s very dated. A week or two on a decent-sized and busy shortline or regional railroad would probably be a better training experience.
Note: “HN” = “Host Nation” - took me awhile to figure out that.
(I was going to quote from the 1st paragraph, but somehow I fumbled it and it was destroyed. I’m so tired of that happening on this website, I’m not going to bother recreating it.)
I thought Afghanistan - around which experience this booklet is written - didn’t have any railroads ? Well, apparently not much/ many until recently, and even then only about 50 miles and a 20 mile branch - but lots of plans:
I didn’t get very far into this manual before I blew my top. This Expeditionary Railway Center (ERC) (what desk jocky dreamed that one up?!) they’re talking about would have a total authorized strength of 184 people. That’s broken down as:
The headquarters element consists of 14 Soldiers, including the ERC’s O-6 commander. The railway planning and advisory teams each consist of 34 Soldiers, including their O-5 commanders.
Now I’ve been out of the service for a few years (few=50+) but I do remember pay grades, ranks, etc. The two sentences I quoted above mean that the ERC will be commanded by a full Colonel with an administrative staff of 13 and five Lieutenant Colonels who will each command 33 people. (For you Navy veterans, that’s a Captain and five Commanders.) For comparison purposes, an Army or Marine Corps rifle company is about 200 people commanded by a Captain (O-3) with four Lieutenants (O-1 or O-2) who are, as I was informed when I was one, “learning to be officers”.
I retired from the Department of Defense worked a number of years in logistics computer operations and programming. No a TOE (table of equipment) and TOO (table of organization are not available to the general public. Seperatly they are not classified. BUT together they are classified SECRET. That information would give an adivsary knowledge of our equipment, strenght and capabilities. Any time we handled that information in hard copy form it was kept in the secure vault.
I read in TRAINS article from one of the Soldiers in one of the railway BN. Both Army Reserve Railway Bn deployed to Iraq and were instrumental in getting the Iraqi railways back up and running on a limited basis post 2003 invasion. So yes they are still used.
I didn’t get very far into this manual before I blew my top. This Expeditionary Railway Center (ERC) (what desk jocky dreamed that one up?!) they’re talking about would have a total authorized strength of 184 people. That’s broken down as:
The headquarters element consists of 14 Soldiers, including the ERC’s O-6 commander. The railway planning and advisory teams each consist of 34 Soldiers, including their O-5 commanders.
Now I’ve been out of the service for a few years (few=50+) but I do remember pay grades, ranks, etc. The two sentences I quoted above mean that the ERC will be commanded by a full Colonel with an administrative staff of 13 and five Lieutenant Colonels who will each command 33 people. (For you Navy veterans, that’s a Captain and five Commanders.) For comparison purposes, an Army or Marine Corps rifle company is about 200 people commanded by a Captain (O-3) with four Lieutenants (O-1 or O-2) who are, as I was informed when I was one, “learning to be officers”.
“In my day” they were a single table (hence the & in TO&E). I don’t recall if they were classified or not. If they were, I doubt it was above “Confidential” as they were frequently referenced in Orderly Rooms, Supply Rooms, Maintenance, etc. But I can see how the information therein would have been invaluable to an enemy, particularly a clandestine enemy.
Thanks for the lengthy reply, CMStPnP. You did reset my blood pressure a bit but that manual seemed to me to be saying this was the entire organization that would actually go abroad to work with HN railroads.
My first choice of branches on graduation was Transportation Corps (my second was Armor with Europe and Hawaii as assignment preferences — any suprise that I wound up as a tanker in Korea? [:)] ). Even though I didn’t get TC, I’ve always known about Eustis and kind of followed any stories about it.
The word “Center” in ERC should have been a clue that they were talking about Fort Eustis. I guess I’m too much old school and out of touch with the modern Army. I guess “Fort” doesn’t sound warm and fuzzy enough for … Ooops, almost got political.
Even with your explanation though, I still wonder at the wisdom of a single railway MOS. Nobody can possibly be expert enough in all aspects of railroading to be able to step into an engineer’s job today, a dispatcher’s job tomorrow, and RoW construction or mainenance the next day. And these people are expected to advise HN operating personnel? Maybe the HN people will let 'em make coffee every morning.
As a former Transportation Corps lieutenant who spent my years on active duty at Ft. Eustis, I’m very glad to learn that the US Army is retaining some rail capability. I thought they had totally done away with rail in the latest round of cuts. (I was with the “Railway Operating Detachment” for a while, but then I was moved to a truck company. I then did two year’s reserve time with the 1157th Trans Co., part of the 757th, in Milwaukee.)
I was disappointed that their new document did not include anything about moving containers and trailers. Or the special terminal requirements for intermodal. I reason that’s a lot of what would be moved from arrival ports.
Gee our US Army can rebuild railroads in Iraq and elsewhere but what about right here? The Ravenna Arsenal tracks in Ohio has not been touched in 50 years
I was Infantry in the early to mid-1980’s a lot has changed there. When I asked on FB why the 101st Infantry were allowed to wear cold weather masks now with ballistic glasses, I was given an update that they are ballistic masks because they fire low velocity “paint” bullets at each other now and that mask keeps the round from tearing / bruising exposed skin. They no longer use the MILES equipment as much with the new paint rounds…so even that has changed fairly radically. They have completely dropped Drill and Ceremony from the Infantry MOS basic and AIT and concentrated on war fighting, specifically in the insurgency area. You go to Ft. Benning now and they have posters in the training barracks on how to identify an IED or VBIED on approach before it detonates. They are actually too immersed in insurgency training and need to be reoriented back to conventional warfare training so say the Generals of today.
From what I gather reading and talking to folks online is the new generalist railway MOS is for advise and assist missions that partner with Special Forces. Special Forces for those that were never in the Army is not intended as a combat force they are largely teachers for Nation Building and most are required to know more than one foriegn language as well as more than one native culture. Though they are equipped for combat and enter combat areas and can engage in combat. Really they are supposed to bring in the Nation Building MOS’s like Civil Affairs, Transpo
greyhounds: Your military ‘career’ sounds like what I had in mind for myself. Didn’t quite work out that way though. For instance, I quite agree with your comment about containers because the first big container ship I ever saw was in the Port of Quinhon, RVN when I arrived there aboard USNS General John Pope (AP110).
Hey CMStPnP, I was at Fort Bragg 1955-1957, on Smoke Bomb Hill, but not with the Artillary, but with Special Warfare, the PsyWar Center. Assistant Audio-Radio Member of the PsyWar Board. A shavetail that made First on-schedule. Never did get sent to Korea, but most of my students in loudspeaker operations did. Got to know Fayetteville fairly well. Occasionally visited Myrtle Beach for a swim in the ocean.
I “commended” a test-and-evalution group of three-to-five enlisted men, always including one sargeant. And one of my PFCs was one of my best friends and classmate as undergraduates at MIT. No problems arose from that, and we are still very good friends, with common interests in railroads, audio, and music.
In fact, he arranges each year for me to receive the very beautiful Providence and Worcester calender.
Some of the higher ranking officers really impressed me, and I can be proud to have been their friend. There was Lt. Bailey, red-headed, had been a prisoner of the Chinese for half-a-year and survived some very very miserable experiences. There was Major Keravauri, who had been in WWII as a young soldier on the “wrong” side, fighting for Finland against the Russians and proud to share his knowledge to preserve freedom.(Finland did NOT turn over its own Jewish population to the Nazis, and all but 100 Jews who fled to Finland found refuge there, and the 100 who did not were the result of an error.) And there was a Colonial Gulley, who was a very devote and knowledgable Catholic, with whom I had interesting theological disciussions.
I let the two BOQ orderlies use my hifi set while cleaning the building. Both loved classical music a much as I did and do. One, Jerry Schoenfeld, became a very wealthy advertizing executive on Madison Avenue. Don’t know what happened to the other, Ivo Fierabend, who had fled Communist Hungary. He still had nostalgia with a beautiful picture book of histo
Indian Head in Maryland has tracks in place, many with railcars sitting on them. But the former right of way into the complex has been converted into a recreational trail with no sign of any rail to connect the facility to the outside world. I guess those railcars will slowly rust in place.
I had that privilege once and it wasn’t even our (then-NYC) people who were on strike. A major customer could be serviced only via a track running through the property of a second customer who was on strike. Our crews wouldn’t cross the picket lines to serve the customer who was not on strike.
That was the occasion of my being introduced to climbing on a moving tank car . . . on a foggy night! Scary.