International Railroad Discussion > Vietnam pax service Phu Bai-Hue 1963, 4 pix

4 pix: Train, passengers, well-armored loco, railway. Stopped running by late 1963. Too many missing bridges.

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Passengers. Preview of Amtrak service after cost reductions in sleepers, diners, lounges, baggage handling and food service.

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Well-armored loco cab.

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Railway, Phu Bai-Hue, paralleling Route 1 to the left of Bia Larue beer sign.

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lurchdel Wrote:
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> Well-armored loco cab.

In today's military parlance I think that would be described as an "up-amored" loco!

I have a friend who served at Tan Son Nhut AFB in '65. He said that there wasn't much a a railroad left by then. Somewhere in my negative collection I have a rather poor shot of a westbound SP freight at Burbank Junction with a small GE U6B loco cut in just ahead if the caboose. It was on its way up to the Santa Maria Valley RR, and would become their No. 60. If I recall correctly, I read in a RR magazine that it was one of several that had been built for South Vietnam, but was never shipped overseas do to the effects of the war on the South Vietnamese Railways.That is an interesting set of photos. Thanks for sharing them.

Africansteam

Thanks for posting. I have read about railroads in many Vietnam war books (Mostly crossing areas where tracks were or used to be and embankments, that sort of thing)
This is the first I have heard or seen about rail activity or photographs of it in action.
Art in DC

cota1992 Wrote:
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> Thanks for posting. I have read about railroads in
> many Vietnam war books (Mostly crossing areas
> where tracks were or used to be and embankments,
> that sort of thing)
> This is the first I have heard or seen about rail
> activity or photographs of it in action.
> Art in DC
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For photos (no trains) of our unit, the 3RRU, in Vietnam see

http://www.oldspooksandspies.org/

Two web-sites that I know of with great photos of Vietnam Railways during the war are:
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~jakuma/page2.html and
http://134.198.33.115/railops/railops2.htm
I was in Vietnam with the 199th LIB Jan "69 to Jan '70. Our brigade main base was at Long Binh, and the Vietnam Rys mainline was our southern perimeter for about a mile. When I first arrived in country, there was no traffic on the line; by the time I left there was at least three trains each way each day. Motive power was all U6B's out of the Saigon area. The biggest train that I saw was 32-cars long and had a U6B on the point and two more mid-train to get the "big" freight over the roller-coaster like terrain.