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Military preparedness tied to defense rail fleet

FORT EUSTIS, Va. (USTCNS) The song, "I've been working on the railroad" means a lot to George Gounley. So does its refrain "all the livelong day."

Gounley has railroaded in one form or another all his working life, whether with a large 'Class I' carrier, a short line railroad he co-founded, or a consulting company.
He has railroaded in Vietnam and Mexico as well as the United States.

He even made several trips to Moscow on a nuclear disarmament negotiations team, as a tank car expert for the Department of Defense.

Currently, as MTMC Deployment Support Command's manager of the Defense Freight Railway Interchange Fleet, Gounley and his staff of nine live and breathe railcars -- over 2,000 of them.

"The DFRIF is composed of all cars purchased by, or leased on behalf of, any branch of the Armed Forces for use on the commercial railroad system," said Gounley, a 15-year veteran managing this unique fleet. "It is owned and managed by MTMC DSC for the benefit of all services."

MTMC DSC's Rail Fleet Office chief is the first to admit that it's a much different kind of railroading for DoD than 60 years ago when much installation trackage was built.

Gounley says the use of on-post rail assets and services for meeting the daily peacetime requirements of a post has declined, as it has for most users of "retail" rail services since World War II.

The railroads today are much more oriented toward trainload or "wholesale" transportation. Even so, the value of those installation railroad assets required for deployment has greatly increased as a result of the Army Strategic Mobility Program.

"Railroads are as important as ever for the movement of military equipment from the forts to the ports," said Gounley.

"And the DFRIF fills in two critical gaps that the railroad industry doesn't provide," he adds. "First, where commercial rail traffic doesn't generate the kind and quantity of car ownership by the railroads that DoD needs, the DFRIF fills the void. Secondly, the DFRIF fleet is owned by DoD, therefore rail cars can be strategically placed at forts and ammunition depots to be ready for any use including mobilization."

Speaking of the 2,093 cars he manages from his Fort Eustis office -- which include flat, tank, box, refrigerator, caboose and schnabel cars -- Gounley says most of the general purpose flat cars are assigned to specific Army and Marine installations to support mobilization.

The remaining cars are not assigned to any particular installation and are dispatched as needed to support peacetime traffic.

General-purpose tank cars are all used for fuel movements and are divided into pools assigned to specific loading points. A small number of special purpose cars move such items as ship components, fuel, oxidizers, and motors.

MTMC recently assumed ownership and operation of Army tank cars in Alaska needed to support the intrastate movement of military fuels.

According to Gounley, these 50 cars were not part of the DFRIF because they were located outside of the continental United States.

"Acquiring these cars is a logical extension of the DFRIF," said Gounley. "These are the first OCONUS-based cars in the DFRIF, but DFRIF cars based in CONUS do routinely operate into Alaska and Canada in support of training exercises. The technology and design standards are the same throughout North America - even regulatory requirements are coordinated among the United States, Canada and Mexico."

In 1996, Gounley's staff began the migration from an obsolete maintenance and movement data base system and now utilizes the Asset Management System, a state-of-the-art rail management program developed by MTMC to manage the DFRIF. Car managers now go online to arrange for the movement of empty cars to customers, repair shops, and mobilization pools, and to maintain the AMS movement database.

DFRIF field equipment specialists perform annual car inspections and perform contracting officer representative duties such as verifying shop estimates and approving car repairs. They also audit and approve repair bills from the railroads and maintain the AMS maintenance database.

According to Gounley, AMS will soon be available to his customers on the Internet, allowing installations to go on-line to request cars, track empty cars sent to fill their request, report car arrival at and departure from an installation, and report cars requiring repairs.

"We are working with the Information Management folks to come up with a user-friendly web site," said Gounley. "My goal is that if you can order a book on-line you can order a freight car on-line. I also want our site to work for the installation as well as for us. I hope that the Transportation Officer will be able to use our site to keep his track inventory, for example, and not just for DFRIF cars but for commercial cars as well."

According to Gounley customer access to AMS will greatly enhance the intransit visibility of the fleet, "and with that should come an increase in customer confidence in the product we provide," said Gounley.

"Our goal is to improve our military's preparedness to go to war on the rails," said Gounley. "To do that the military and the railroads need to better understand each other. Too often, the military's lack of knowledge of railroad operations is matched by the railroads' lack of knowledge of military operations. MTMC DSC's management of the DFRIF helps to bridge that gap."

MTMC DSC helps to bring the two together not only when our cars are involved says Gounley, but also on occasion when only railroad-supplied cars are used.

"We have even assisted the Army in Japan and Korea in dealing with issues of car repair procedures and car replacement policies," said Gounley.

Gounley is proud of his employees' efforts, which have produced revenues more than sufficient to cover all the costs of managing and maintaining the fleet for the past 11 years, following a string of deficits dating back to 1969. According to the rail guru, it was partly a matter of changing the philosophy behind the operating procedures.

"When I joined the command, I received a financial report on the fleet showing revenues and expenses, and a whopping loss," said Gounley who came into his rail fleet position from the private sector. "Managing the DFRIF is likened to running a business, with our mission to support the warfighters during deployment. But there was nothing saying we had to lose money doing it."

Gounley was able to increase utilization by marketing the cars to military shippers the command had not previously served, and he worked hard to reduce repair costs by substituting long-term repair contracts with a few shops instead of individual car repairs at a large number of shops.

According to Gounley the results were gratifying.

"Revenues went up, costs went down and the readiness condition of the fleet improved as the cars were used more often," said Gounley.

According to Gounley a reserve balance is maintained from one fiscal year to the next, since railroad cars have periodic maintenance requirements that are not uniformly spread out over the life of the cars. Also, because the revenue source is the railroads rather than DoD shippers, revenue cannot be adjusted to make up prior year shortfalls or to meet foreseen expenses as it can for other Defense working fund accounts.

"Even so, the real bottom line is that the DFRIF fleet benefits our warfighters by ensuring mobilization capabilities when and where needed -- because we own, manage and control the fleet," said Gounley. (FROM MILITARY TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT COMMAND, DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT COMMAND PUBLIC AFFAIRS).

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