The three former Virginia Railway Express GP40Hs 4670-4672 are a mystery as far as the reason they were purchased and their intended purpose.
The VRE locomotives were purchased by the Army when it had a plan to ship Army trainees between Fort Lee (now the combined home of Quartermaster, Transportation and Ordnance training) and Fort A. P. Hill near Fredericksburg, VA. The latter is largely used for field training. This was discussed a number of years ago here:
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The Army acquired three locomotives from VRE as well as some commuter coaches, and the plan was to run trains up to Milford, VA, on the ex-RF&P (there's no rail spur into Fort A. P. Hill itself) and transfer trainees by bus to the post.
I don't think the plan was researched sufficiently because, as I recall, it turned out that implementing the plan would cost much more than the original estimate, plus to fit these special troop trains as extras along this corridor would result in the trains spending a lot of time waiting for an opening, negating any possible savings in transportation time.
The cars were sold off (some to be scrapped) without ever being used and the locomotives were supposedly going to go to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point near Southport, NC, although I haven't heard that they actually ever went there. I'm told the locomotives were "dogs" on VRE and the Army would not get good performance out of them.
As for field training, after the proposed troop train operation was cancelled, I met an employee from Fort Lee and asked him how trainees now do their field training. He said the post simply uses what little "field" area it has on post at Fort Lee and does the training there.
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