Tanks on the move!

Military train rolls through Atlanta. Not really that uncommon but since the war is on in Ukraine, it seems that people actually noticed. Check out this news story from 11Alive - Atlanta's NBC affiliate

https://www.11alive.com/article/new...z2qRJO5nIBCtJeDw4ejeWL8jLJs0WE257T0Z9qWRcoExQ

 

Might be nothing. Could be going somewhere like Poland. If they are going to theater, they'll want new camo.

 

I’m still in the Army and was a tanker up until a few years ago. Those things could be going anywhere. A few years ago a train with military trucks went through Chicago and people assumed martial law was going to be declared. It was actually just new trucks coming out of the factory in Oshkosh, on there way to whatever unit was going to get them. A tank on a train today doesn’t mean it’s going to Ukraine. Lots of other, unrelated stuff occurs and put tanks on trains. About half the reason I started playing with model trains again has to do with those micro trains runner packs. I’m about half way done modeling my old tank company-all loaded up on flat cars.

The Army had routine deployments of armored units to places in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. I’m not sure of the direction of travel of that train, but they could be going to or coming back from any one of those places.

There is a constant rebuild/refurbishment program. They leave an active duty or national Guard unit, go to a factory, and then go to a different unit when they have the new bells and whistles. It’s a complicated shell game and is practically nonstop. It could be that.

We have about 10 rotations at the National Training Center each year-so those tanks could be on their way to regularly scheduled training out by Ft. Irwin, CA.

That’s all regularly scheduled programming. Without knowing the specifics about direction of travel and the unit those tank belong to and what else is on the train, it’s pretty premature to assume what’s going on. Just because I see an autorack doesn’t mean that Ford sales are going up.


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With the Aniston AL Army depot that repairs and refurbishes equipment less than 100 miles west and Fort Benning (as a tanker, I bet you know what they do there) a 100 or so miles south west, many other military and guard bases in the southeast and several ports, it's way more common than people think to see them. I saw a post by Hardcoaler in another thread with a NS train that had several flats of tanks that he saw the other day. It's just interesting sometimes when people suddenly take notice of what's going on around them.

 

Yep. I thought the way that article was written it implied the Army was being sneaky about this.

I actually forgot about Anniston too. I was thinking of everything up in OH and PA.


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Military cargo is moving all over the country - all of the time. Sometimes it is usable, sometimes it is damaged and going for repair. The military knows and we aren't supposed to know.

 

My first and most exciting view of a rail convoy was in 1944 when an all-vehicle trainload came through our small town on the NYC Harlem Division. First of all, I was only 9, on the station platform, up close and in awe with something I'd never seen before. Second, the Harlem was a commuter line with the only non-commuter trains being the nightly Rut Milk and an occasional local freight. I say "all-vehicle" because the vehicles were very big, painted brown, with no troop cars or soldiers. Found out later that it was an alternate routing because a 16' Naval barrel had gone crossways across all four Hudson Division tracks in the tunnels north of Croton-Harmon. I've seen many armored trains since, but never that exciting.

 

Would like to have seen that navel barrel incident.