The Rise of Rail-Power in War

The growth of the railways transformed the nature of land warfare

C.WOLMAR 2010

BACKGROUND:
Throughout the history of pre-industrial warfare, armies and their logistics moved at
constant speeds across land masses:
Foot speed as soldiers march across land (infantry carry 60-70 pounds of gear. That
means that the average soldier can only carry two to days rations at a time)
Horse speed (cavalry armies had their mobility restricted by the need for wagon
transportation carrying fodder )
Wagon speed as oxen and horses pulled wheel vehicles carrying supplies (sometimes
unavailable due to terrain, weather, season )

Railroads dramatically increased the mobility of armies due to their ability to

carry large amounts of troops and supplies rapidly across theatres of
operations and even continents.

The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 film, set

in the American Civil War starring John
Wayne.

The movie is based on the true story of

Grierson's Raid and the climactic
Battle of Newton's Station, led by
Colonel Grierson who, along with 1700
men, set out from northern Mississippi
and rode several hundred miles behind
enemy lines in April 1863 to cut the
railroad between Newton's Station and
Vicksburg, Mississippi. The raid was
as successful as it was daring. By
attacking the Confederate-controlled
railroad it upset the plans of
Confederate General John C.
Pemberton.

GENERAL
Railway boom 1840-1870
First use of rail to move troops was Franco-Austrian War 1859
The British built the first strategic railway in the Crimean War 1854-1856
linking their base at Balaklava with the siege of Sebastopol the line
moved 2400 tons of supplies a day.
The use of railroads pre-dated the American Civil War as many
European powers had experimented with them in the 1840s and 1850s.
None of these experiments however, were near the scale of the usage
during the American Civil War
The railroad system was a characteristic of more advanced industrial
nations and acted as a multiplier in the projection of force
On unpaved roads or over fields, an army can march perhaps 25 miles
per day ? A railway of the era could get you over that distance in
perhaps 2-3 hours

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 1861-5

The first battle of the war (Manassas) was over a rail junction
The CSA loss of Corinth 1862 allowed US troops to divide the south into
small parcels of territory (Corinth was the junction of the Memphis,
Charleston, Ohio & Mobile lines)
Rail increased the value of the larger Northern population to the Union
Army, i.e., the railroad could rapidly move a larger number of well
equipped soldiers to successfully invade the Confederate states
Union General William Sherman and his troops displayed great
virtuosity in their destruction of southern railway infrastructure. For a
"Sherman Necktie" build a big fire under the middle of some torn-up
rails ... then twist two rails around a tree in an "X" while the middle
sections are red hot

Franco-Prussian war 1870-1871

Rail use by Prussians efficient , French use chaotic
"Build no more fortresses, build railways," ordered the elder Moltke. In
Germany the railway system was under military control with a staff officer
assigned to every line; no track could be laid or changed without permission of
the General Staff. Annual mobilization war games kept railway officials in
constant practice
After three decades of construction of widespread railway lines France and
Prussia were able to send massed armed forces straight to the battlefront or
onto enemy soil. Often, troops were deployed far beyond the railheads, they
subsisted by traditional methods that differed little from Napoleonic times,
The implementation of a mass of railways quickly servicing the field of battle
with troops and supplies, meant swifter methods of communication from the
home-front to the battlefront. With the battlefront no longer a remote area
apart from the home-front, newspaper-correspondents could travel to and fro,
sending back their reports. Troops could go on leave. The wounded could be
cared for at home. The nation at war thus became an armed camp

Great War 1914-1918

On the outbreak of the Great War the railways which Germany had
constructed jointly with the Belgian Government , even across the Belgian
frontier, enabled her to throw into that country great masses of troops for an
invasion of France and then , also by rail, back through Germany for the attack
on Russia.
For the British Army all goods were moved from the Channel Ports to the
Railheads . Railheads were established at various points within reasonable
distance of the front-lines. Here goods were taken from the train, reorganised
into lorry loads and sent by road to the trenches. Railheads were usually 10-15
miles from the front .
In the earliest days of the war, all rail operations were under the control of the
French allies. Authority for control of the railways was moved to the
Quartermaster-General in November 1915, where a Director of Railways was
installed.
The prime need was for the transportation of principally artillery shells, to the
gun batteries located in. Nearly 200 million shells - were fired by the British
alone during the course of the conflict. Artillery-fire being the cause of 90% of
all military casualties

Logistics is the word used to describe the supply, movement and

maintenance of an armed force under operational conditions

Did the growth of the

railways transform the
nature of land warfare ?

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