{"id":52,"date":"2006-12-01T10:30:34","date_gmt":"2006-12-01T09:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=52"},"modified":"2013-04-24T18:45:57","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T18:45:57","slug":"railway-under-attack-but-mother-in-law-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/railway-under-attack-but-mother-in-law-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"Railway under attack (but mother-in-law safe)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The November 2006 issue of American magazine <cite>Railway Age<\/cite> has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.railwayage.com\/A\/xpov.html\">report<\/a> from <q>former KCS dispatcher, locomotive leasing\/maintenance specialist, and Trains magazine editor Mark Hemphill<\/q>, who has been in Iraq as <q>senior railway consultant for the U.S. Department of State\u2019s Iraq Reconstruction Management Office<\/q>.<\/p>\n<p>It is a very interesting read, describing the scale of the problems faced by IRR, in particular with security.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.railwayage.com\/A\/xpov.html\"><cite>On the record . . . with railroader Mark W. Hemphill<\/cite><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There have been 1 500-plus attacks on IRR fixed plant, concentrated in areas where there is no local control. Some 90% of attacks use IEDs (improvised explosive devices) placed on the track. Crews go out daily to repair the two to five meters of damage the devices generally cause.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Another 7% of attacks are from small-arms fires (firing at trains or repairmen), and 3%, complex attacks using IEDs, small-arms fires, grenades, and machine guns.<\/p>\n<p>Passenger trains are not attacked, according to Hemphill, because &#8220;everything in Iraq is local, family, tribal. You don&#8217;t attack because your mother-in-law is onboard.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The November 2006 issue of American magazine Railway Age has a report from former KCS dispatcher, locomotive leasing\/maintenance specialist, and Trains magazine editor Mark Hemphill, who has been in Iraq as senior railway consultant for the U.S. Department of State\u2019s Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. It is a very interesting read, describing the scale of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}