"Forgotten tiny trains carried WWI vets to victory" Topic

"The saga began in 1918 in northern Virginia's Fort Belvoir, known then as Camp A. A. Humphreys; named for the Union Army general during the Civil War and later the Army's chief of engineers.

Although Brig. Gen. Andrew Atkinson Humphreys had died in 1883, some of his Soldiers were around still in 1918, and these veterans passed down what they learned in that earlier conflict to a new generation of sappers.

Their skills -- bridge building, demolition, field defenses and so on -- were now in great demand, as World War I (then known as the Great War) was raging in Europe, and the United States had entered the fray…."
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Amicalement
Armand

here's a 1917 Baldwin War Department Light Railway Locomotive 778 still in operation at the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway.

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Going through a modern housing estate on a 100 year old narrow gauge train is a surreal experience. But it soon gets into the country !

Many thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

A good deal is left out of that article. Camp Humphreys, the future Fort Belvoir was set up on the Potomac River downstream from Washington DC when the US entered WW1. The location was several miles from the nearest rail or trolley lines. No problem, the railroad and trolley company could run branches to the base…except it turned out they couldn't do so until the war ended. At least there was the river, and the Potomac was a water highway in those days. Then the winter of 1917-18 rolled around and the river froze solid. This meant relying on road traffic from the nearest rail or trolley station or the highway from Washington. This worked until the thaw, at which point river traffic could operate again but the roads including camp roads turned to mud. So the army turned to the narrow gauge trains it was intending to use in France as a solution to its own problems at Camp Humphreys.