I was talking to a friend of mine a few days ago regarding a train he saw in London, Ontario. The rail cars were a uniform colour, either beige or grey. He said there wasn’t any insignia, graffti or markings on the rail cars whatsoever. He went on to say it was a long train but didn’t say how many rail cars were involved. Any chance this was a military train? If not, does anyone here have any idea what kind of train this is or was?
It would be nice if there was something of a timeframe for this. We actually have CN and CP going through here. Be that as it may, however, there is a kind of supply base up by the CP rails that very well could have been involved. There is also a service battalion up here as well so it could have been military in nature----
Canadian Military unit heading from Petawawa CFB for a training exercise at Ft. Irwin in California. Another train of empty flatcars headed up to Petawawa yesterday. Ft. Irwin is near Yermo, CA on the UP.
Of course its that time of year again winter is starting in Canada so California gets invaded by Canadians once again.
Didn’t think the Canadian Forces were large enough to have there own train, interesting to find out. They have two planes two destroyers and one train. Very Interesting!
Al in Stockton
The Canadians have made a great contribution and suffered signficant losses in Afghanistan. IIRC, their casualty rate in Afghanistan is higher than the US casualty rate was in Iraq. They haven’t flinched, even though they’ve seen their brave soldiers come home in caskets at a rate that they haven’t seen in over half a century. They deserve praise and appreciation, not ridicule.
On a lighter note:
Canadian Forces do train at Ft. Irwin. It’s a high tech training ground equiped with laser equipment that simulates reality as best as possible. It’s saved a lot of lives.
I’m sure Selector will correct me if I’m wrong, but…
Canadian Forces use some different equipment than US forces. They’ve done a lot of UN “Peacekeeping” work in the past. So some of this equipment has been marked “UN”. Well, a few years back they loaded up this “different” equipment on flatcars and shipped it out to Ft. Irwin to use in training. Some of it rolled through the US still lettered as “UN”.
Somebody took a picture of the train and put it on the Internet. You can imagine what happend with the black helicopter crowd “UN” military equipment in the US! IT WAS HAPENING! Ranks right up there with the shackle equiped white boxcars.
Second train was reported as all TTX flats. I think that the Canadians have a limited number of heavy-duty flats, but I suspect that there was a lot of TTX flats in the first train too.
The only military trains you will see in Canada are 95 car trains with tanks, troop carriers, heavy duty trucks, etc etc and cabooses for the armed guards, and they are BRITISH, on their way to Suffield Alberta for military excersizes, no, Canada does not have military trains, that’s what the C.P.R. is for.
Hi, fellas. I have no history or knowledge of the trips to CA, but I have known of trips to TX and to KY for exercises with our friends down south who can spank us into fitness and readiness by providing all sorts of support, not the least of which is a sizeable and sentient enemy force. Also, training in the same training area gets both stale and counter-productive when you aren’t also learning to nagivate and when you’re not facing new obstacles and situations. So, realism, novelty, new equipment, hotter climes…all sorts of variables are desirable to keep soldiers stressed and generally vital and learning.
It’s true, we don’t have troop trains or trains for moving equipment. We contract that out, and pay for it with our budget. Shipping stuff is expensive, no matter who moves it, so we do as little as we can. The best case is going into the US of A and finding places where it is almost a turnkey in terms of equipment…we all use the same things. So, we have about 95 or so CF-18’s, the variants of your Navy’s F-18, and we use the same ammo now in our Canadian version of your M-16…and so on. Why invent new wheels?
Sometimes your own forces ask us to come as we are. They want to test themselves, and they want something formidable and perhaps a bit unfamiliar to challenge them. We often ship one-offs back and forth for testing and R&D. I know that many nations were/are very interested in our reconnaisance armoured fighting vehicle, the wheeled one that was unparalleled in terms of its ability to ‘see’ long distances in the dark and to spot enemy activity in several foreign conflicts.
Like your own forces, we are strapped and losing ground after the several protracted conflicts over the past decade. It is very nearly time to walk away. I never thought I would accept that end to the task, but without a much stronger and more involved effort over t
Train #2 was spotted in Muscatine, IA on CP with Canadian marked equipment heading towards Kansas City, MO. This was on Thursday the 19th.