Chapter 11: Train Training

A couple of Soldiers brought in pitchers of ice water and glasses for everyone. Braggard started from the beginning and his aide 25 year old 5' 7" 34B3036 110 lb black haired brown eyed 1LT Marie Stewart started writing on the dry erase board, as Gen Braggard explained his plan.

The train had already been pieced together. It was self contained and carried almost as much fire power as a light aircraft carrier. It had eight Apache attack helicopters; four Kiowa 58D scout/attack helicopters; six Blackhawk cargo/medical evacuation helicopters; and a Chinook helicopter. Fixed wing aircraft could be called in from the nearest airbase if it was needed.

Eight Up-Armored Humvees; four Bradley fighting vehicles; six tactical attack vehicles {three man dune buggies}; twenty horses; eight mules; two 5-ton Up-Armored cargo trucks; and one 5-ton recovery wrecker.

In front of the lead engine was an armored flatcar with a 25MM Vulcan cannon and multiple Javelins. In the line were similar cars with one as the tail too, ten total. Every car had multiple firing points on both sides and pop-up firing points in the roof to deny access to the roof of any car for any length of time.

There were three fuel cars for the train, aircraft, and vehicles. Two water tankers, two dining cars, three supply cars, 27 vehicle cars, two maintenance cars, two medical cars, and one car set up as a hospital for multiple wounded, four engines, last but not least eight sleeper cars rounding out the 64 car long train.

Our group would be joining 60 Soldiers already on the train. We would begin training on all the equipment and procedures that are required to operate the train.

We would be considered Contracted Staff with Carl and me as the acting Commander and Senior Enlisted. The truth was we were in command of all operations and CPT Wanda Llamas an MP was the CDR of the train and the military assigned to it; 1SG Nelson Smith a Spec Ops Soldier would be the First Sergeant. Chief Warrant Officer Three Anthony Nolan was the engineer.

We would use the train to move our unit closer to the Utah element that was causing trouble in all the surrounding areas. Fixed wing aircraft were keeping a serious over watch of all their actions. Once were closer we would begin to send out our own scouting flights. The combined attack force would be more than any current force could handle; at least that is what all the higher ranking people thought. I wanted to know how many of them had practical experience to base this current belief on.

The sleeper cars were designed several ways; one - individual bunk rooms for twenty with bathrooms at each end; two — ten by four person rooms, each having its own bathroom; three - quads that slept up to six, each having its own bathroom; two — duplex which had two sets of two bedrooms that shared a bathroom, one master bedroom with its own bathroom, and all shared a small living room.

Each Helicopter had its own flatcar and the Chinook rode on two flatcars that had been attached together giving enough room for the huge helicopter to land and take off.

The eight hummers were split four to a flatcar; the two 5-ton trucks shared a flatcar as did the 5-ton Wrecker and all six TAVs; two Bradley's to a flatcar and all of the livestock in one boxcar.

The first training we did was while the train was still at Centennial and others could pull guard duty while we worked on unloading and loading each of the vehicles, developing different groupings of vehicles, equipment and personnel. We were looking at what would work in different situations. What helicopters could support ground vehicles and how many people we could take on the attack and still leave enough people to protect the train. After a week of working out the bugs we had our basic groups established.