Some clarity on USAR rail units in the Northeast. The 1205th Transportation Railway Operating Battalion, headquartered in Middletown, CT, is the parent unit of the 226th Transportation Company (Railway), headquartered at Westover Air Reserve Base, MA, just east of Springfield. (Note: The 226th is a company, not a battalion.) The 1205th is rather small for a battalion, with only about 50 personnel slots authorized, although actual manning is somewhat higher due to the common practice of double-slotting (i.e., assigning to two people to one slot on the unit's books). For years the mission of the 1205th has been to augment civilian Army employees at Military Ocean Terminal, Sunny Point, NC, located about 25 miles south of Wilmington, NC. Rail personnel in the unit are primarily rail operations and track maintenance troops. In recent years it has also supported rail operations on other posts. The much-larger 226th is an entirely different kind of unit. It is organized, equipped and manned much differently since it is an overseas-deployable company. If mobilized, it would be assigned to the 757th Transportation Battalion (Railway) headquartered in Milwaukee, WI, the last overseas-deployable rail battalion. The 226th's assignment to the 1205th is for peacetime administrative and training purposes only. The two locomotives on the PVRR are assigned to the 1205th and used in training by personnel of both the 1205th and 226th. There is no good reason to have the locomotives based on the other side of town at Westover ARB since the connecting carrier embargoed the line some time ago, there are no rail cars on the base with which to train, no track maintenance has been performed for eons, and the long-unused track is scheduled to be pulled up in the not-too-distant future. In the future, it's quite possible the 1205th will be inactivated as part of a USAR-wide reorganization to inactivate non-deploying units and contract-out their functions, and if that comes to pass the 226th will probably be directly assigned to the 757th.
