Forget War Horse meet Charlie

We must not forget that the Pechot military railway system did not only affect human beings. He designed it from the first to do away with animal haulage. This was humane. Horses and other beasts of burden were usually issued with one-way tickets into war zones.  There are stories of dead horses used as blankets during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. A horse expiring in the siege of Stalingrad hardly touched the frozen earth before a dozen hungry citizens were carving off horse-meat. To these sad stories have to be added the tales of the Western Front. The British and French kept cavalry behind the lines, awaiting the moment of the break-through. At the beginning of the war, especially behind British lines, horse power was used to lug supplies to the newly dug trenches. Poor horses!
In November 1915, my grand father went to the Front near Le Touret with the 222nd Field Company RE . It was very wet and he was not comfortable. In a letter to my grandmother, 12th December, he described his cheerless morning. 'A Bosche sniper heard me splashing along in 3ft of water in the front trenches. Every time I fell into a hole and got extra wet, I cursed and he fired, and made very good shooting too. But I was quite safe as I was in a trench' A couple of days later he added 'None of us are very bright at present. I have my fourth cold since I came outy, Cassells has a West Coast liver, Stevens is seedy and the Little Man (their Major) sits and mopes all day long'

Here is Charlie, looking wary, which is perhaps not surprising. Behind him, a bit out of focus, are the wagons used by the British Army up until mid 1916 to transport supplies up to the trenches, often under the most miserable conditions. Courtesy Jackson family

 At least they were alive! His letter continued by describing their latest return to the Front. ' We had a very funny march back up here. We found three inches (7.5cm) of water over the road, and as all these roads have deep six foot (180 cm wide) ditches on either side, they are pretty difficult. If you drive a little out of the straight, you disappear, wagon and all. We dropped two wagons and a corporal into a ditch but pulled them all out again without mishap. Tomlinson's company which went through in the dark left half their wagons there all night. We have not drowned anybody yet, but a lot of drowned horses are lying about the roads. I don't suppose you can conceive what this countryside is like in parts. Where we were, 1000 yards an hour was jolly good going. and one had probably been down on one's nose three times before the hour was up. Of course that is by night. Walking 1000 yards by day is not encouraged. The Bosche is great believer in flares and sends one up every five minutes to keep his spirits up. At first one hates them but after a bit ones one comes to regard them as a blessing as one can get one's bearings by them'

Here are Charlie and my grandpa.

That winter, he met Charlie the horse. By March they had got to know each other quite well. He wrote to my grandmother. 'March 9th 1916. A beautiful frosty morning, and I am feeling quite jovial which is a new thing for me. I was very late up for the last two nights and am in late tonight as I had to go up to the 212th (the sister Company) to arrange about a working party. I had a slight disagreement with Charlie on the way. Charlie said that "by the rules of his Trade Union an eight hour day was long enough" Our argument lasted some considerable time but in the end I persuaded him.
You wouldn't know him these days. He has had his hair cut and is awfully pleased with himself'

This is an Artillerie 88 wagon as used by the French. It runs on bogies, so that the long overall length of the wagon does not matter. It has a well to keep the centre of gravity low and for ease of loading and unloading, the stanchions can be removed. Its capacity is 5.5 tonnes of compressed hay; animal forage was an important item of freight. Courtesy Raymond PECHOT

 Fortunately for all the Charlies, the British Front were about to learn what the French and Germans already knew. Even as man and horse were having their disagreement about the proper length for a working day, some of the British took over a section of front-line from the French 10th Army. This had three 60cm gauge railway lines which included Artillerie 88 rolling stock and the new lighter Decauville 1915 wagons. Even the 'top brass' realised that what the French had was useful. A railway line doesn't stray into a ditch, even in the dark or wet. A train requires a fraction of the man-power needed by a wagon train. From Charlie's point of view, such trains were of interest because a serious quota of all wagons carried forage. Best of all, for the few, the fortunate few, some mechanical tractors scrounged, stolen or improvised, and the horses could wait peacefully at the rear of the lines..

Tracks to the Trenches

We attended the Apedale 'Tracks to the Trenches' (12th-14th Seprtember) commemoration of transport to the front line of World War One.(organised with the Moseley Trust) It was a vibrant event. Everyone from primary school-children to venerable grand-parents were there, both enjoying a day out and trying to get to grips with the experiences of the foot soldiers. You can visit the event's own website.  www.ww1-event.org

Raising steam for the big day ahead

 The guidebook to the weekend was beautifully produced. The introduction 'The narrow gauge railway at war' explained the point of the event and all the locomotives and wagons assembled there. Briefly, logistics - the trail ensuring that timely supplies reach the battlefront - are not glamorous but they are vital. The front-line, especially on the Western side, depended on 60cm gauge railways, quickly laid and relaid to provide soldiers with weapons, ammunition, food and forage. 
Unfortunately, the article had relied overmuch on an article written elsewhere. Mistakes had crept in. For example, the Paris Exposition (Exhibition) for which the Eiffel Tower was built was in 1889 not 1878. The Germans adopted 600 mm gauge in 1888, not 1889 when their first locomotives were built. The story about Arthur Koppel visiting the Paris exhibition and having an epiphany under the Eiffel Tower is charming, but just a story. For many months, hard-nosed Prussian 'observers' had been watching the French Army. The future enemy was the source of their ideas!

Henschel"Brigadelok" of 1918. One survivor of arround 2500 built. The attractive wine red frames are prototypical, the red buffing beams are not but are necessary for safety.

The father of portable railways was a French artillery officer, Prosper Pechot. From the time of the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1) he had been agonising over the next war, and how to avoid another defeat for his country. Victory, he knew, would go to the side which was better supplied. The Decauville Company started marketing portable track, largely for agricultural purposes, from 1876. Pechot saw the potential for military applications. Genius is application as well as  inspiration. With much theorising and experimentation, he worked out that 60cm/600mm track with the right design of sleepers, bogies and mechanical haulage could carry supplies in the volume required by a serious assault.
Paul Decauville, Director of the Decauville Company was the first to encourage him, from 1880 onwards, building prototypes so that he could test his ideas. For various reasons, his superiors were suspicious. Early in 1886, the Navy realised the potential and Pechot helped them move 34 tonne guns up vertiginous slopes and remote beaches. The Press finally brought the Army round and Pechot's ideas were officially adopted in 1888.  Then the French Army took a long rest. By 1914, the initiative was with the Germans who had no less than 1000 kilometres of portable track, wagons and locomotives, all ready to support the Schlieffen Plan and invasion. France, then Britain and later the AEF had a lot of catching up to do.

Built for the French Army, a "Joffre" class 0-6-0 built by Kerr Stuart in Stoke

 

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Recent progress on the Hunslet

The start of the month saw the arrival of the laser cut steel frames, buffer beams and rods.  The design work for the etches was completed and sent to the etch company.  Two weeks later this arrived and was assembled.  It went together quite well and exactly fitted the laser cut frames.

The laser cut frames assembled and the test etch made up

At this stage I could have gone ahead but there were some problems.  The first was the tank wrapper had been etched at full thickness to allow for a riveted tank version to be built at some point.  However this was a mistake since it took too long to form the thick metal to conform to the tank frame even after annealing.  The other problem was the detailing of the steel frames was time consuming and expensive.  So, like the buffer beams I decided I would use an etched overlay for the frames that had all the detail on to exact scale.  I also took the opportunity to tweak the etches to simplify their assembly.
The last photo shows this revised etch. I will probably assemble the parts again just to check that everything fits before I go into serious production . If there is a market later on for an etched tank version the overlay can be a separate small etch.

The new etch showing the frame sides and half-thickness tank wrapper.

Time is not being wasted while waiting for these parts.  The Britan lathe is hard at work making bearings, steam fittings, and all the turned parts each engine will need.

He had no truck with these

Why do some folk like rail-mounted guns so much? They pop up in films such as Doctor Zhivago - the best version, the one with Julie Christie, Tom Courtenay and Omar Sharif in which the armoured train bristling with guns is positively a character in its own right. The guns were effective fund-raisers, appearing on war-time campaign postcards, bought by the thousand by the public. They pop up in novels - the sort I wouldn't admit reading! They were loved by newspapers. Pictures from the Boer War show rail-mounted machine guns heading up a train. They are depicted on the front of serious histories. You can't get a more serious historian than Christian Wolmar and his 'Engines of War - how wars were won and lost on the railways' On the book jacket there is a picture of the massive gun the Germans used on the Russian front.
Even my 'other half', normally a reasonable person, is keen. He longs to build a model of such a gun. Oh well, go on, let's have a picture!

Postcard of rail-mounted gun sold to as part of the War Bond Campaign during World War One. The landscape suggests that the gun is on trial in Scotland. The material was passed by the censor who may have demanded that details were omitted. Messrs A.M. David London

When we were planning illustrations for our book 'Colonel Pechot:  tracks to the trenches', Malcolm was very keen to include a picture of a rail-mounted gun.   He was overjoyed when Dr Christian Cenac gave us permission to include a drawing of an affut-truck, the version of the rail-mounted gun which was used on the Pechot system. That is why 'truck' is in the heading. There are some excellent drawings in Cenac's book '60 cm track used to supply the French fronts during the 1914-18 War'
Speaking personally, I am not so keen on the affut truck/rail mounted gun. Truck=bogie can easily be confused with truc=thingy/widget, another splendid French word and so I think of them as 'rail-mounted thingymebobs'. 
To be honest, they were not a great deal of use. If you ask me, a rail-mounted gun is great for selling books but a bit explosive - like sex really.
But as you are reading on, I assume that you want to know all about the affut-truck Peigne. As the name suggests, the idea came to General Peigne. He saw the Pechot system being installed around the frontier fortresses in the 1890s. Rather than trains loading and unloading guns, why not fire them from the train!  There was even the suitable Canet gun carriage. Nothing to his mind seemed more logical and simple. Why hadn't Pechot thought of it?
The 120mm and 155 Court (short-barrelled) guns were both tried on the affut truck. http://fortificationetmemoire.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/AFT2.bmpTo prevent damage to the track, there were fold-out supports which the crew deployed before shooting. Trials were not a great success. The system was a bit flimsy and the operators tended to lose the keys provided for winding out the supports.  A second generation of affut-truck had more sturdy fold-out supports. The fiddly keys were replaced with solid bars with special cradles on the supports.
A photographs in Voie Etroite magazine no 81 shows  an affut-truck with 18 soldiers, plus an inspection squad.  Photographs taken around the place forte/frontier fortress of Epinal  circa 1900 suggest that each gun had a crew of five, not counting the crews bringing ammunition. http://www.fortiffsere.fr/artillerie/index_fichiers/Page1488.htm
Exercises showed that these guns were not actually much use. If they fired, they gave away their position to observers.They could move to shelter before enemy artillery were trained on them, but the rail could not and it suffered accordingly. No wonder Pechot did not approve!
The war service of the rail-mounted gun was short - on the Pechot lines at least. Rather surprisingly, the affut-truck Peigne emerged after the war. Voie Etroite no 79 shows a German 0-8-0 Brigadelok (ceded to France as part of war reparations) pushing a rake of them along the network at Toul. But no, none have been found decaying on a forgotten siding in postwar years.

Hunslet Quarry Tank- Work starts

Hi, I thought it was time to report what is happening in the Wrightscale workshop.  After designing a tool for the laser cutter to work from and taking the prototype to bits to measure all the component to be etched I have finally reached the start of the first batch to be built. The metal is in stock, the castings likewise, and the first batch of laser cut parts and the etch arrived last week.

The first sheet of laser cutting, the loco sides frames, are in the workshop for assembly.  The water tank has been assembled to test the design. Soon there should be an assembled chassis.

I think I am going to overlay the steel frames with etched overlays with the axlebox, rivet and bolt detail etched, rather than assemble the frames using actual scale bolts etc.  It is hard to believe but a single 3/64" brass rivet is now 6p, so I think soldering in 32 per loco pair of frames is a bit over the top.  I have made provision for riveted  running plates and also the water tank can be riveted too.
So now it is test assemble the frames, machine a batch of axleboxes, slip eccentric components, wheels, cranks, crankpins, cylinder covers, valve chests, valves, pistons......... and the chassis can be completed and air tested.
Soon be will be writing to the first few on the interest list to offer them an engine.  Hopefully this batch will be completed later this year. So watch the blog and follow the progress.
Sarah's book- Colonel Péchot: Tracks to the Trenches is getting near the end; she is doing the final proof reading.  So if you want a copy of the authorative book on the innovation of narrow gauge military transport with loads of good photos, lots of drawings, maps and 22 years of research watch out for her postings over the next couple of months.

From 1888 to 2014 and still going strong

The sight of a Pechot wagon at the Apedale Heritage Centre may seem unremarkable. To see it loaded with rail may not excite much interest, save a small sigh of satisfaction. After all it's better to move rail-related material on a railway rather than using road transport. Would you believe it but we have followed a lorry carrying a Caledonian sleeper carriage! But I digress.

Photo courtesy Jim Hawkesworth

Yet this photograph deserves a closer look. Pechot wagons - Artillery 1888 material, to give them the correct name - were built between 1888 and 1893. The one making its way around the yard at Apedale is a sprightly centenarian. In fact, in Tolkien terminology, it has celebrated its eleventy first birthday. As our friend Jim Hawkesworth gathers, the wagon was used by the French army until the Second World War. Somehow it escaped the Germans. It was then used industrially in northern France. At some point, it lost the stanchions which go into the little pockets you can see as bulges along the wagon side. Not only did the stanchions serve to retain the load on the wagon, but they could also be used as re-railing bars. The wagon has also lost the brakestands which should be at each end. Recently, it was purchased by an English enthusiast for  light duties and an honourable retirement.

Photo courtesy Jim Hawkesworth Beside the coupling chain can be seen a pocket to take the re-railing bar - going off the rails occurred all too frequently.

Not many wagons of this age look this good. Other countries such as Germany and Britain emulated the Pechot system. They simplified the design - cut corners, you might say. By the 1960s, their wagons were sad, battered shadows, bulging at the side, bowed below by their load.Their reasoning was sound enough. Even the admirers of Artillerie 1888 admitted that it was 'too complicated, too expensive, too perfect. It couldn't be manufactured in the quantities required for war' (Lt Georges Mangin, who saw service during the First World War) All the same, if you want wagons which wear well, nothing beats a good Pechot design. If the brakestands are removed by some reason, the brakes can still be operated by a screw lever.

The stanchions have survived on this wagon, and also the brake-stand at the left hand side.

The Apedale wagon is not exceptional. When we visited Fermont, a post on the Maginot line, we found another Pechot wagon. It is not quite in original condition; it has been repainted. Originally Artillery 1888 wagons were grey; as we all know, colour was invented half-way through the 20th century! The history of the wagon was something like this. It was used by the French Army and retained at the end of the First Word War. Once plans were made to create the Maginot Line, it was moved east to the frontier with Germany. During the Occupation, it was pushed into the deepest part of the Maginot fortification. When enthusiasts decided to preserve Fermont as a historic monument, the wagon was returned to the surface. There it sits. Like the Apedale wagon, it's still game. Unlike the one in England, it can't move - it is on a short length of track!

Tracks to the trenches - someone else got our title

As you know, we have been preparing a book about Colonel Pechot, a modest French soldier who, almost single-handedly, introduced 60 centimetre gauge railways as a way of supplying an army at war. These  narrow gauge railways were used by both sides on the Western Front and elsewhere between 1914 and 1918. We therefore were going to call our book 'Colonel Pechot: Tracks to the Trenches' If it doesn't say what's inside the tin, folk aren't going to buy the tin; and what applies to groceries, applies also to literature!

The good people at the Apedale Heritage Centre - Loomer Road, Chesterton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs ST5 7RR - have used our title! We are fond of Apedale. It is on an industrial site which took advantage of 60cm equipment that was sold off after the First World War. The site, now run by volunteers, features a coal-mine that can still be visited and an abundance of preserved stock, some of which dates back to the time of the Great War.  One or two photos in our Pechot book were taken there, so we always look to see what's new, so to speak. This time, we were startled to say the least!

We saw a trench!

Digging a trench is hard work and involves some extra materials. You can see how they stand out against the freshly turned earth. When the War began, French soldiers actually had to fight in bright blue uniforms. The British were more fortunate to be in khaki.

For an instant we wondered if we had been swept back in time, but no, the world was still in full glorious colour, and the sound was working perfectly. We went over to investigate. Three lads were indeed digging a trench system.

The trenches are being constructed with corrugated iron, sandbags or, just seen, woven willow

This is to be part of the Living History display at their World War 1 Event which will take place 12th - 14th September. They decided to call the event 'Tracks to the Trenches'
For more details go to www.ww1-event.org

We took a closer look. Three sorts of trenches were under construction. Some had walls of corrugated iron. A length of trench was being skilfully sided with willow - back in the days of the War, some of the conscripts were old-fashioned hedgers and used their skills in the earth of the Western Front. Some trenches were walled with sandbags. Interestingly, if pressed, most veterans of World War 1 used to recount a version of the 'hand' story. A corpse has been incorporated into a trench wall; the hand protrudes. Any soldier passing shakes the hand. My grandpa, who was at the Western Front, used to tell the story. A similar tale was brought home by the soldiers from the Potteries. As Staffordshire is the county of the hearty hand-shake, story ends with the hand coming away in a soldier's grip! If there is a moral to the tale it is this. Veterans of the Great War knew that their listeners would never comprehend the full horror of their experiences. They fell back on macabre humour!

We looked into the construction. As it had been raining, the trench floors already looked authentically muddy. Although they looked deep, walking has to be achieved half-crouching. The trenches follow the authentic pattern of the Western Front, never straight for long. They weren't designed by drunkards; they zig-zig in order to foil enemy gunners.

The material at Apedale is mainly British. The British came late to 60cm railways, starting the War with a small amount of 2'6" gauge material, as I recounted in an earlier blog. Haulage was supposed to be accomplished by animal or human power.

To complete the Trench experience, you have to imagine the full-size version of this locomotive chugging towards the Front. Steam locomotives would stop short of the trenches and allow a petrol-powered one to take the train the rest of the way. Model of a British War Department Baldwin 4-6-0T by Wrightscale

Trench railways were introduced in a 'bottom-up' sort of way. Once the boys on the ground saw the Pechot system, they imitated it. Between spring and autumn 1916, the Top Brass followed, adopting the metric 60cm gauge in preference to 2'

Another system was being developed during the War. You could see from the photographs taken at Apedale how well bright colours show up against mud. The British had learned the value of khaki during the Boer War of 1899 to 1902. The art of camouflage continued to be studied during the 1914-18 War. Indeed, while my grandpa was running bent double along the trenches, Malcolm's grandpa was developing camouflage.

This model was built by Jim Hawkesworth, using a Wrightscale WD bogie kit. It shows a War Department water tank in camouflage. As well as using field colouring, the shape has been 'broken up' to help disguise the shape. WD wagons followed the idea introduced by Pechot - use braked bogies and standardise as far as possible