In the Works: December 2020

In this blog, we find a connection between a campaigning Daily Mail Journalist and the War Department Light Railways.

16mm model of a War Department Class D wagon built by MD Wright using Wrightscale bogies

A standard War Department class D wagon rated at 9 tons 18 cwt (hundred weight) could carry as much as 120 mules (assuming the standard loading for an equine of 70 kilos.) A railway wagon could be left outside, shot at, be tipped over and of course it did not need regular food and water. Liz Jones, formerly fashion editor at the Daily Mail campaigns for the welfare of what she calls ‘equines’ ie horses, donkeys and mules. She doesn’t seem to know it, but she should regard the War department Light Railways as a great leap forward in horse welfare.

As stated in previous blogs, the WDLR was an arm of the Army Transport Corps. It was commissioned in September 1916 as the Directorate of Light Railways, headed by Sir Eric Geddes. There was already a Railway Operating Division, but it was small, lacking in prestige and funding. It was absorbed into the new organisation which had the backing of Lloyd George himself.

Thanks to its powerful backers and no doubt to the chagrin of the Quartermaster General, the WDLR was able to put in huge orders for track, rolling stock and locomotives, all in 60 cm gauge. Some might have questioned the use of dodgy foreign measurements for a good British railway – weren’t feet and inches good enough?

This German gun was clearly designed to be towed to the Front by a horse, poor thing. Photograph of a captured gun from 'Illustration' Magazine; image courtesy of MD Wright

For two years, politicians and ‘top brass’ at the British army tried to ignore the fact that the French had a comparatively efficient way of supplying their trenches. in 1916, as we see below, they were forced to find an efficient way to transport supplies. It was important a/ to borrow any good ideas and b/ to use a system compatible with the French one. Thus 60cm gauge was chosen for the new portable railways. It was light enough and adaptable enough to be laid quickly with comparatively little groundwork. Conventional railways took years to build. These could be pushed out in weeks. Prefabricated lengths of rail could be laid down, almost like toy Hornby track.

What had the original British plan been? The war envisaged by the generals had never included trenches. True, a trenching tool was part of each foot soldier’s kit, to be used to dig in while consolidating a position before an advance. This advance was to be supplied by lorries on the road and equine transport elsewhere.

Lord Kitchener, Chief at British HQ insisted on leaving a 2’6” railway system in Britain, though the Royal Engineers suggested it would be useful. It is said that he told a manufacturer of light railways ‘This is not our way of doing things’. It is not a coincidence that the War Department Light Railways were formed soon after he went missing, presumed dead.

But we return to the situation in autumn 1914.

Allied troops are digging in. The photo was taken in spring 1918 when the German advance nearly broke through Allied lines. Image from Illustration magazine; courtesy MD Wright

The temporary trenches became permanent. At first, it was the enemy, then the French, then the British Expeditionary Force. It was called the race to the sea. Soon a trench system stretched from the Channel just in the north to Switzerland in the south with few gaps. The Germans in fact took the initiative and chose the best ground! British stories about trench warfare are all about mud whereas captured German positions tended to be snug and well-drained.

Suddenly, almost a million soldiers on each side needed everything, but everything, brought to them. This included spares and ammunition of course, but also food and drinking water, not to forget the rum ration. In addition, to stave off death from mud, rats, disease and exposure, serious quantities of timber etc had to be brought in.

The French soon had a relatively satisfactory trench supply. They adapted a portable railway system, first officially adopted in 1888. The official name was système artillerie 88 but it was always popularly known as système Péchot after Prosper Péchot, an officer in the French artillery. It was a bit old-fashioned and neglected, but with a huge effort, they increased and modernised their stock.

16mm scale model of a Péchot-Bourdon locomotive. The prototype was designed by Prosper Péchot for his system. The model was built by Henry Holdsworth and the photograph taken by Jim Hawkesworth

The Germans were the best prepared. They had a thousand miles of 60cm gauge rail and rolling stock to match. To run their military railways they had a regiment or so of Eisenbahnpioniere/ railway engineers, ready trained. They saw what the French were doing and between 1888 and 1914 had been developing and improving their system. During the War, they refined and improved their system.

This phtograph taken by Eric Fresné in the 1960s shows a German 0-8-0 tank Dlok and the remains of a Brigadewagen, boith used in the First World War. The decay is a sad sight, but better than seeing the remains of once-live horses. Image is courtesy of Eric Fresné

Between 1914 and 15, the situation in the British sector of the Western Front was wretched, but not so bad that Top Brass needed to take notice. With heavy reliance on equine power, matters at the Front were disgraceful. Because the British trenches tended to be overlooked by the Germans, mule trains and General Service wagons could only be moved by night. My grandpa, then a junior officer in the Royal Engineers, recalled that it took about four hours to move a wagon, pulled by four mules and two human attendants the two miles to the trenches. The roads were in a dreadful state, so everyone was soaked and muddy. Then an equally perilous return journey had to be made by daybreak, all to transport 30 hundred weight of stores (roughly 1.5 metric tonnes).

Ms Jones reports that 1.36 MILLION horses and mules were taken from Britain, Canada and other parts of the Empire to provide the labour. She is indignant; perhaps not indignant enough. The horse has been trained up by evolution to live on its nerves. When a member of its kinship group senses danger, it uses its fabled speed to run away. It is thus, even in the best circumstances, only easy if it has horsey companions. Conditions as a working animal are very different from the open steppe and each horse has to be ‘broken’ to fit into human society. Ideally, this breaking in should be humane, but of the 1.36 million equines dumped into the Western Front area, we can’t be sure that this was so for them all.

This picture by Georges Scott shows what could be expected of horses on the Western Front, though highly romanticised. Horses towing a gun carriage are charging the enemy. As a matter of prosaic fact, horses or mules were usually put to work hauling supplies. Image from Illustration magazine courtesy MD Wright

There may well have been many horses which were forced to undergo further ‘training’ for the specialist conditions at the Front; the motorised traffic, gunfire, even being confined for days on end in stables. Bad though being confined indoors might be, it was preferable to working conditions.

When my grandpa mentioned mud on each side of the road, ‘mud’ was a euphemism for the slurry generated by rotting corpses. He recalled passing dead horses on the journey. It happens that the horse family is particularly sensitive to the stink of death. Horse lovers tell each other stories about horses seeing ghosts. I can well believe that they smell them. It is reasonable to suppose that evolution selected them to be wary of corpses. Animal remains were a warning that predators were around. I wouldn’t like to speculate about the feelings of the mules edging their way through darkness, passing rotting corpses, but it is fair to empathise in their feelings of distress.

The horses were correct to feel fear, the worst sort of fear, helplessness where neither fight nor flight were an option. In the German trenches nearby, there were snipers. They were skilled enough to ‘get the range’ of a target when the wagoneers made a first noise and to get in a surprisingly accurate shot when they made a second. The humans knew that whatever happened, they must not make a sound. This gave them an element of control and therefore lessened their stress. A horse or mule could not be expected to understand this and their stress was increased.

Ms Jones remarks that of the equine survivors after the Armistice 1918 ‘most were left behind’. Some, especially beloved cavalry horses such as War Horse, were shipped back . Ms Jones would not be reassured to learn that left-over horses and mules were comparatively rare. Most added to the questionable mud at the Front.

This painting by Georges Scott shows a French 155mm 'long' gun being towed by a lorry. A lorry was good for occasional use but it was thirsty for fuel and chewed up the roads. Image from Illustration magazine, courstesy MD Wright

All through 1915, a vast army of volunteers was training in Britain. If the comparatively small British Expeditionary Force had gobbled up a million mules, how were all these new soldiers to be supplied? The British looked at their French neighbours and German opponents to see the answer. Top Brass were still obstinate. They demanded more lorries. The only trouble was, the lorries needed fuel. The buses taking munition workers to the factories back home needed fuel. There wasn’t enough for both.

David Lloyd George, who had characterised himself as Mr Fixit, called in Sir Eric Geddes. When Geddes proposed a British version of 60cm railways, the politicians were at last receptive and the WDLR was born

When the First World War ended, 60cm gauge was so widespread that thousands of surplus locomotives and rolling stock remained at or near the Front. They were sold off and used for agricultural and industrial work.When they were worn out, they were abandoned. This picture taken at 'tacot des lacs,' a former sand extraction plant in 2010, shows a 60cm gauge diesel gently rotting away.

As we reflect that what was good for people was also good for animals, we might spare a thought for the machines used to replace the animals. What if they have feelings too? We mentioned ‘Collision’ in our last blog. In the story, an autonomous vehicle is faced with moral dilemmas. When a machine has sensibilities, is it moral to destroy that machine, or even to subject it to the IT-equivalent of a lobotomy? Is the next stage after Animal Rights, the Rights of Machines?

In the Works

Saturday 19 December 2020

16mm WDLR modellers