In demobilizing the industry which was producing our railway artillery, the Ordnance Department again availed itself of the opportunity to provide for the future defense of the United States; and in this branch of war industry, too, we find the same tapering-off process after the armistice, the completion of some materials which were nearing completion at the time of the armistice, and the retention of machinery to provide for a possible future industry. As a result of these measures, the Atlantic seaboard is now defended by a system of powerful guns mounted on railway cars and capable of being moved on the regular railroad tracks, supplemented by new tracks laid both during and since the war by the Coast Artillery Corps, to any point which may be in need of defense. Before 1917 all our coast-defense guns were mounted on fixed emplacements at the forts. Camp Abraham Eustis, which sprang into existence during the war as the embarkation camp for artillery at Newport News, has been turned over permanently to the Coast Artillery Corps and is now the headquarters for the Coast Artillery Railway Brigade. Fortunately the railway units nearest completion on the day of the armistice were those best suited for use along the seacoast. The project to build railway artillery, it should be understood, was one of producing mounts for guns most of which were already in existence. These guns came principally from the fixed mounts in the coastal defenses, but some of them from the Navy and other sources. The guns ranged in size from the 7-inch rifles, procured from the Navy, to 16-inch howitzers, one of which had been built experimentally by the Ordnance Department before 1917. Two or three of the railway projects--such as that of the 7-inch navy guns and that of the three 12-inch guns originally manufactured for Chile, but commandeered at the gun plant by the United States--were complete on the day of the armistice. When the Ordnance Department faced the task of terminating the industry, there were eight incomplete projects in railway artillery. Two were canceled outright; in three others partial production after the armistice was permitted; and the final three were carried through completely.