THE ROLE OF RAILWAYS IN WARTIME.
I found this book on Amazon some time ago reasonably cheaply and have finally got around to reading it. The delay has mainly been caused by the strange shape of the book which is landscape rather than portrait which I find peculiarly disconcerting in a book.
That said the book is very well illustrated and basically covers the use of railways in war from the Crimean War right up to WW2 and into the 1960's where use of railways for military purposes is claimed to have been superseded by road transport. However anyone watching the news from Ukraine over the past year will be only too aware of just how important military use of the railways still is to both sides.
Rather than cover every conflict separately, the book discusses the use of railways more by period with only the major wars meriting a specific chapter. The book is loaded with many excellent photos and although the coverage of any particular conflict is necessarily limited, it does give an excellent overall history of railways in war.
There is a great deal of useful information in this book which means it should appeal to the reader who is looking for a general history of railways in war and in that respect it is certainly recommended.
Tony -
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, a book on a subject like railways, featuring as it does pictures of land and townscapes, locomotives, rolling stock and trains, one might suppose that a landscape format would be the more appropriate. I'd regard that as a recommendation! It would be interesting to discover some comparison between the carrying capacity of rolling stock and of trains in general compared with road transport.
Cheers,
Ion
Hi Ion....Yes you may be right, the photos are very landscape format actually. Interesting that I had not noticed that !!!! For comparisons between the carrying capacity of railways versus road trucks...I would refer you to a book called "Supplying War".... "Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton". I reviewed it sometime ago. It's a classic and includes some fascinating analysis especially in respect of the 1914 German advance, Barbarossa and Patton's drive into Germany. The conclusion is that trains easily out perform trucks and still do to this day.....Regards.
DeleteI was recently reading Kershaw's 'War Without Garlands' and in it he goes into the carrying capacity of trucks versus trains, single track compared to twin/double track. In short the Germans simply could not supply there troops as Russia did not have enough of an eastablised rail network, talk less of a different gauge etc. These little details are good to know when planning a campaign or maybe even a scenario to give it some credence.
DeleteHi Steve...Yes you are right. German supply doctrine required a double track railway behind each army. However in Russia all they ever managed was a double track railway behind each army group. That said they still had more supplies at railheads than they could bring forward to the troops by truck due to an endless shortage of trucks. Even the Allies in France in 1944 struggled to support their advancing troops using just trucks because the railways were out of action due to bombing and they had enormous quantities of them. Interesting topic for sure....Regards
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