Sunday, October 6, 2013

Excalibur Army, formerly a Soviet Military Depot located in Prelouc, Czech Republic

This project I am doing has switched gears from what I had originally had planned to what I realized once I came to the Czech Republic. Upon getting here and learning more about the subject that i am studying I realized that study a series of generally the same type of military development was rather pointless. There are, well there were, much bigger things at play here than this that in my nativity, had missed. 

During their occupation of The Czech Republic and the rest of Eastern and Central Europe, the Soviets did not just use these countries as base-points to continue progress. When they occupied an area, they completely transposed cultures and societies. While that subject is too vast and too far from what expertise I do have, it is something I have to keep in mind from here on out. 

As far the infrastructure of the military occupation that the Soviets led, the bases of original interested to me will not suffice. Instead i am now trying to look at the larger system of what the Soviets had once constructed. A system that was not built with temporariness in mind but rather in the vein of world conquest. 

One part of the system I am mentioning is the fast and efficient transportation through these occupied lands and during the time, the mode of transport that fit the bill was via railway. What you can find now are depots, located adjacently to towns, that previously stored vehicles, armaments, ammunition and supplies that could be readily moved anywhere along the rails.

In 1995 the depot was bought by a company called Excalibur Army where it was turned into their manufacturing and distributing headquarters. EA makes an array of military equipment such as clothing, medical supplies and even vehicles. More recently they have also started started doing repairs and maintenance on vehicles still in use by the military. There is also an area called Tank Power, which is owned by Excalibur Army, where they offer a variety of outdoor activities such as an obstacle course, shooting range and swimming. They also have a cleared out patch of land where they give rides in old decommissioned tanks that were left at the depot when the Soviet Union collapsed.










An old set of rails running into the development




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