About the book and other babies

After twenty years, many travels together and much care, our baby is ready to leave home!

My Book ready to print.

It is easy to explain how our interest started. To people interested in trains anyway, the Great Little trains of Wales appealed greatly. Long before it was rebuilt, we paced the line of the Welsh Highland Line.We had happy afternoons at Leighton Buzzard and sneaked into old quarries. In France, we visited the 'petit train de la Haute Somme' All of these, and many others already closed had chosen 60cm/two foot for their gauge. All of them exuded atmosphere, quaintness and just a touch of melancholy, a hint of ghosts flitting left-of field.

When we investigated, we found that every one of these lines was indeed haunted. Moelwyn in Wales, Lion in Leighton Buzzard, and a host of relics at the Somme railway were left over form the First World War.

Some of the relics found at Froissy, Haute Somme.

They were survivors - people, animals, machines had all perished during fifty months of carnage. Much has been written about soldiers and horses, tanks and aeroplanes but nothing much about the railways.

To explain why we kept on with our research, you have to understand that we are born contrarians. Once we suspected that something was buried, we had to start digging. More than once, we have been called terriers - with some justice! We found out that there was a forgotten network of 60cm railways, used by both the Allies and the Central Powers during 1914-18. If laid end-to-end it would have stretched nearly ten thousand kilometres. Unlike the usual prewar agricultural or industrial railway, this network could manage tonnages normally associated  with properly laid and engineered standard gauge lines.

Yet all was forgotten.

Only last night on television, a respected historian trod the familiar dodgy ground. We all know that in Europe in 1914, there was a network of railways, standard gauge and metre gauge, serving the towns and villages of the time. Suddenly, the Western Front was constructed in this landscape, with very little regard for the railway network; each side was obsessed with denying as much territory as possible to the other. This meant that the Front was, on average, a good 5 miles (8 kms) from the nearest railhead. 

BEF troops entrai in France. It was march or take the narrow gauge to the Front.

Later in the War, the average distance from railhead to front increased to around ten miles (16 km) to keep loading stations out of the range of enemy artillery. Every five miles of three hundred plus miles of Front needed per day, in quiet times, at least 800 tonnes of supplies (including fresh water) and in the period leading up to an offensive about 3,600 tonnes. It was exactly as if a great belt of new towns, with all their requirements, had been suddenly dumped on open country. The respected historian explained that some horses were imported from America to provide transport from standard gauge railway line to front line.

Let us do the arithmetic. The very best equine transport, the mule, can carry up to 72kg with any sort of endurance. The ponies etc drafted in were simply not capable of that. Four mules hitched to a General Service Wagon can transport up to 2 tonnes. Remember, the unmetalled roads of the time were less than optimum. Transport had to be at night, because they were tempting targets. Looking at my grand father’s war letters, we see that, what with the dark, the mud and other obstacles, they could only manage 1000 yards an hour. In other words, a 10 mile round trip would, without mishap take all night. 11,500 mules plus muleteers were required to transport the supplies needed for every 5 miles of Front on quiet days.  Productivity would rise if wagons were used, but one’s imagination would be rather stretched; 2000 wagons coming and going daily on a few unmade country roads. On the other side of No-Man’s Land was the equally ponderous German front, the equivalent of another string of new towns whose industry was destruction and whose needs were equally great. The Germans of course could not import American horses and mules.

Ah! other respected historians interpose. The technology of the lorry was just coming into its own. A Thorneycroft J-type lorry, for instance, could transport 3.5 tonnes of supplies and move rather faster than a mule. The Voie Sacrée, supplying Verdun, is then cited. Every night, a procession of French lorries made its way from the station of Bar-le-duc up to the beleaguered citadel. What has been forgotten is that, parallel to the road ran a military-built multiple track narrow gauge rail way.

Given these problems, you may now be wondering why the war of 1914-18 went on for so long. There had been wars before. Since the American Civil War half way through the 19^th century, conflict was either resolved in a few months, as in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, or took the form of asymmetrical warfare, as in the Boer War 1899-1902. What the respected historians don’t seem to ask is how millions of combatants over hundreds of miles managed to exist in their trenches for four long years.

The difference was due to the life and work of Colonel Péchot. For years, without modern trucks, tanks and aircraft, supply in the field was limited. The standard gauge railway network was useful – up to a point. Vast armies could slug it out for a few weeks or a guerrilla force could harry a larger force for years. It was not possible for grand action on a long timescale, not until Péchot devised an efficient system of military 

A British built loco for the French Army.  A Kerr Stuart Joffre Class engine (Apedale- Tracks to the Trenches 2014)

transport. His superiors in the French Army grudgingly adopted it. The Germans copied his technology and made effective adaptations. By 1914, the Germans had almost perfected their system and the Allies, particularly the British, spent long years trying to catch up. More than one contemporary French general felt that victory needed a good narrow gauge network.

Our 'baby' tells you the story of this quiet man who had such a profound influence .