I just quoted Red River Army Depot for some hand and power tools. When I quote or look for a manufacturer, I often go to Google Earth (because I’m a natural born geographer and railfan at heart) and was amazed at this facility. The RFQ was for Texarkana TX, but it’s at New Boston, a few miles west…
Holy Smokes!!! It’s a huge place with multiple tracts of ammo bunkers, which I recognized from my own army service in 1967-8 Germany. Miles and miles of track and possibly 1000 freight cars. Most of these were parked between road crossings, ala short line storage for the big roads on unused trackage.
Is traffic there that big, are they positioned for a bug-out, or does anyone have a clue? I hope I don’t see a black Ford Expedition with black tinted windows and four white guys with short haircuts and “questions” outside my window tomorrow morning. I do have a nice front door…
R. Flix
Seems to be a big manufacturing/ overhaul/ industrial facility, more than anything else - kind of like the Army’s version of a railroad’s shop complex. See: http://www.redriver.army.mil/index.htm
I know it takes many flat cars to move almost any type of unit, esp. armor/ mechanized/ motorized/ calvary, and they seem to work on a lot of those kinds of vehicles there. So where else would they store those flat cars ? Likewise for box cars for hauling munitions - kind of interesting to see all the different colors of those - the better to make them blend in with the rest of the railcar fleet, I suppose. See this compilation of DODX car types:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsClassListRR.aspx?id=DODX
Then click on each category for a breakdown - note especially the wide range of numbers for the DODX box cars, at: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=DODX&cid=2 - and the many flat cars.
If we don’t see a post from you again, then we’ll figure out what happened . . . As Newman said in a Seinfeld episode: “Tell the world my story.” See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKlzQo3Wqo = “Do you like golf, Mr. Kramer ?” = segment with Wilford Brimley as the U.S. Postmaster General, at about 1:45 of this 1:55 long segment from Episode 161 - “The Junk Mail”, pc: 905 season 9, episode 5, Broadcast date: October 30, 1997, at:
Munitions Depots are always interesting from Google Earth, though I think this is just more than munitions, as there are a lot of warehouse square feet there, too.
I wonder if that is where the Ark of the Covenant ended up from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I can think of Hawthorne NV and Bellemont AZ right off the top of my head for just munitions depots, and maybe Fort Wingate NM, which is a lot bigger than it looks from I-40. At any of those places, if you see a “No Smoking” sign you can bet it’s obeyed.
Then there’s the little-known Naval Weapons Station Earle, in northern New Jersey at Sandy Hook Bay. Its claim to fame here is that it has its own dedicated double-track railroad running the 10 miles from the "Mainside’ storage area in Colt’s Neck, NJ to the piers there. The company I used to work for did a lot of work there over the years - the owner used to be a SeaBee Captain, and before leaving the service was the Resident Officer In Charge of Construction there for a while as well. From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/earle.htm :
“The Station is divided into two sections: Main-side, located in Colts Neck, and the Waterfront Area, on Sandy Hook Bay, located in the Leonardo section of Middletown. Both areas are connected by Normandy road, a 15-mile military road and rail line. . . .The deepwater piers and barge pier are connected to the shore by a trestle that extends nearly two miles across the mud flats from Earle/Leonardo. . . . The pier stretches 2.2 miles into the Sandy Hook bay and comprises 2.9 miles of pier/trestle surface area.”
You can see some railcars on the piers in the photo of them here: http://www.usmilitary.com/bases/images/earle.jpg
and here: http://www.usmilitary.com/bases/base.php?id=101
See also a photo and brief description at: http://monmouthdailyphoto.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/earle-2/
Here’s a thread on it on another forum, with a couple photos - [EDITED] also says there were 3 VO1000M [Baldwin] switchers there, though it’s not clear whether they’re still in service - later on, someone posted that they’d been re-engined with EMD’s:
Back in the early 90’s I had the pleasure of riding on a train tour of the Red River Army Depot’s railway operation. The train ride, powered by an old SW1200, was over 30 minutes long and never went on the same rails twice. The train switched over to several different tracks and the crew told us that we were only seeing a small portion of their operation. It was interesting and would make a modeler’s dream switching layout.
