by RailVet
Note: The article mistakenly refers to the depot's two geeps as being GE-built locomotives. The depot's third locomotive is a GE 80-ton centercab.
Army trains roll along south of FallonRead the rest of the story at: http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/artic ... /568566763
By David C. Henley
Publisher Emeritus
March 14, 2008, 12:05 AM
It’s a little know fact that 180 years ago, the U.S. Army created and built this nation’s first railroads. In 1828, three years after inventor John Stevens ran a steam-powered locomotive around a New Jersey test track, Pres. John Quincy Adams ordered the Army to design and develop the country’s first railroads “as a national importance in a commercial and military point of view.” By 1840, more than 30 railroads were in existence and 3,000 miles of track had been laid as compared to 1,800 miles of track in all of Europe and Great Britain. Army engineers surveys the routes, built bridges and railbeds, assisted in building locomotives and rolling stock, and developed special Army trains that carried troops and equipment to battlefields during the Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II. Army railroaders were particularly active in spreading railroad lines throughout the West, and today the romance of this profession still lives 72 miles south of Fallon. Operated by the Army in conjunction with the civilian contractor SOC Corp. (the former contractor, Day-Zimmerman, merged with SOC a few months ago) the Army trains are based at the sprawling Army Depot one mile north of Hawthorne in Mineral County.
