{"id":57515,"date":"2021-10-23T23:01:48","date_gmt":"2021-10-23T21:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=57515"},"modified":"2024-10-23T04:17:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T02:17:22","slug":"the-spanish-army-railway-company-serving-spain-on-the-railways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2021\/10\/23\/the-spanish-army-railway-company-serving-spain-on-the-railways\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spanish Army Railway Company: serving Spain on the railways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most peculiar units of the Spanish Army is the one whose mission is to provide rail transport to other military units.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><big>The Railway Company and its current means<\/big><\/p>\n<p>This unit is the <strong>Railway Company<\/strong>, and depends on the <strong>12th Pontoon Regiment and Engineer Specialties (RPEI 12)<\/strong>, which is based in the Sangenis Barracks in Monzalbarba (Zaragoza). The Company <strong>has its origins in the 13th Railway Regiment<\/strong>, which was dissolved in 2008.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48849572591_5cdd83622b_o.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; \" \/><\/p>\n<p>Currently, <strong>the Railway Company has Henschel DH500 locomotives<\/strong> (above these lines), a model manufactured in Germany until 1971 (that is, they are already at least 50 years old), <strong>as shunting machines within the base itself to move its PMM platform wagons for heavy vehicles<\/strong>, capable of carrying everything from TOA M-113 to Leopard 2E tanks. For journeys outside the base, the Army uses Renfe locomotives.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.listadotren.es\/viajeros\/series.php?id=91\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Company maintains nine sleeper cars and four preferred cars in service<\/a>, all from Renfe. Both the locomotives and the cars are painted in the olive green colour characteristic of the Army's vehicles. Here you can see <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EjercitoTierra\/status\/1451806678933032960\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a video published today by the Army about the Railway Company<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W1tFnXEtBok\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><big>The history of the Spanish Army Railway Regiments<\/big><\/p>\n<p><strong>The beginning of the railway specialty of the Army dates back to 1884, when the Railway Battalion was formed<\/strong>, made up of two Track and Works companies and two Operations companies. This first Battalion <strong>gave way in 1912 to the first Railway Regiment<\/strong>, made up of 8 Depot Companies and 8 Active Companies. <strong>In 1918, a second Railway Regiment was formed<\/strong>, with the two existing ones being organized into three Battalions each: one of Operations (in charge of operating the trains), one of Railway Sappers (in charge of opening and clearing tracks) and one of Depot (in charge of storing the trains).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51623270203_8805d9ab39_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; \" \/><\/p>\n<p>During the Second Republic, <strong>both Railway Regiments were merged into one between 1931 and 1934.<\/strong> In 1963, these two units were renamed the 13th Railway Sapper Regiment and the 14th Railway Mobilisation and Training Regiment. <strong>In 1991, the two regiments were merged again to form the aforementioned 13th Railway Regiment,<\/strong> based in Cuatro Vientos (Madrid), which moved to San Gregorio (Zaragoza) in 2001.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51623047256_9fc8bb7d8f_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; \" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you want to review the history of the Army railways in more live detail, at the <a href=\"https:\/\/muferga.es\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Museo del Ferrocarril de Galicia (MUGERGA)<\/a>, in Monforte de Lemos (Lugo), there is <strong>a small exhibition on the 13th Railway Regiment<\/strong>, with old uniforms (which were then dark blue, like in the armoured units, to hide the stains), a nice car (below these lines) and other means of the old 13th Railway Regiment. I took these last three photos there in 2016.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51623270068_bb394abd5e_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; \" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most peculiar units of the Spanish Army is the one whose mission is to provide rail transport to other military units.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,11544,20878],"tags":[22914,10053,6714,6707,10557,19047],"class_list":["post-57515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-army","category-trains","tag-12th-pontoon-regiment-and-engineer-specialties-rpei-12","tag-museo-del-ferrocarril-de-galicia-muferga","tag-regimiento-de-ferrocarriles-n13","tag-regimiento-de-movilizacion-y-practicas-de-ferrocarriles-n14","tag-spanish-army","tag-spanish-army-railway-company"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-25 14:10:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}