Chapter 2
Railways
Military use of railways was a foregone conclusion. They provided a heavy lift capability of men and materiel which could compete with and complement sea and inland water vessels, while providing access to areas not constrained by natural or artificial waterways. In a pre-motor vehicle and aircraft world they also provided an escape from the shackles of slow, low capacity pack animals and wagons. From the mid-1800s wars in Europe and the Americas, and eventually Africa, India, Korea and even more remote locations were heavily dependent on rail deployments and lifelines 1.
Historical Example: Building Military Rail Capacity – US Civil War
The American civil war was fought largely along rail corridors; the Boer War was prosecuted from rail-supplied bases; the Russo-Japanese war was largely decided by the tenuousness of the Trans-Siberian railway. In World War 1 the advances in Palestine and Mesopotamia were made possible by railways across the Sinai and along the Euphrates; the Western Front was maintained by rail, while Germany’s interior rail lines enabled prosecution of the war on two fronts. Even well into World War 2 when motor transport was maturing, resupply doctrine of most armies was defined in terms of ‘forward of railhead’ 2, a situation which altered significantly only in the maritime and undeveloped fastnesses of the Pacific, where Australian (and Allied) military logistics found itself in a new and challenging land transport-deprived environment.
[Slideshow] Railway Logistics
The development of railways in the Australian Colonies was as great a boon for the military forces as it was for the commercial sector, and this remained true in the Commonwealth period, becoming less critical only from the 1960s as high capacity road vehicles became a strong force for competition on a burgeoning all-weather road system. But while these rail systems were crucial in solving military training concentration problems in peace, when it came to moving materials to ports for shipment to the United Kingdom in both World Wars, and the United States forces in World War 2, their structure become an increasing source of concern and disruption as the 20th Century progressed.
As long as the Colonies maintained separate defence forces, and their plans hung around defending their individual population centres, the separate rail systems which were built to service the movement of people and produce to and from their country regions were very suitable to move country army units to and from the cities for training exercises and potential real operations. However when Federation in 1901 brought to the Government and Military Forces the need to plan deployments between states and territories, the deficiencies of fragmented state rail systems centring on capital city hubs became apparent, and eventually pressing.
Table 2.1: Australian Railway Track Lengths 1854-1973
1.44 m
1.60 m
1.069 m
0.061 m
1.07 m
Apart from the problems of separate Commonwealth and State railway administrations, a fatal flaw lay in different rail gauges used in and even within each state and territory. When railways were first considered in 1846, British Colonial Secretary Gladstone advised the Governor of New South Wales, which then encompassed all of eastern Australia, to adopt the 4ft 8½in gauge as standard. However when the Sydney Railroad and Tramway Company was privately floated in 1850, its engineer pressed for a 5ft 3in gauge, and the NSW Legislative Council enacted this to be standard for all permanent ways in New South Wales. South Australia and newly-independent Victoria followed suit to ensure conformity, but the Sydney Company changed its engineer and also opinion, switching to the 4ft 8½in option and getting the Legislative Council to alter the Act. Victoria and South Australia, having already ordered rolling stock on the 5ft 3in standard, proceeded with that gauge; Queensland, after separation from New South Wales in 1859, adopted the cheaper 3ft 6in gauge, as did Western Australia. When the initial private rail companies failed, the State governments inherited the seeds they themselves had sown, and made compromises to minimise the costs to themselves. While South Australia began with 5ft 3in, it also change to the economy trail, laying 3ft 6in track from 1870 onwards; Tasmania did the same from 1887, but also converted its wide track. And to compound this further, the Commonwealth laid railways into and in the Northern Territory on the 3ft 6in standard, while Queensland and Tasmania laid light railways on and 2ft gauge, Victoria on 2ft 6in 3. Added to this
While these aberrations seem hard to credit, when the fact of colonies seeking to seduce interior traffic of each other’s produce through their own ports and customs stations is considered, there were potential financial rewards in these differences 4. However after Federation, and the end of border customs collections, the penalties of transhipment at state borders began to outweigh any residual benefits, but by then the cost of rail gauge conversion raised insurmountable obstacles to standardisation. From the military point of view, with defence plans still formed around local forces protecting local capitals, this was a theoretical problem which was not to be brought home in a practical way for some time.
Map: Railways at Federation
South West Pacific Area
Railway development tended to go in fits and starts, according to economic imperatives. There was a spike in the 1880s during an economic boom, which was completed just in time for the depression of the 1890s, another in the 1920s, completed in time for the depression of the 1930s 5. There was a renaissance to meet war production and the requirements of major troop concentrations during World War 2, usually perpetuating the gauge problems sown by the colonial governments. Indeed, General Macarthur Supreme Commander SWPA was sufficiently concerned at the limitations of the system to offer the Federal Government a Negro engineer division to rebuild it onto a standard gauge, an opportunity sadly declined by a Labor government which had no stomach to disturb state and union relationships 6. And these track gauge problems were compounded by the other limiting factors of bridge loading restrictions, rolling stock clearance gauges, and their carrying capacity.
Table 2.2 Australian Goods Rolling Stock Gauges 1914
During World War 2, in supporting the forces around Darwin, the gap between the railhead at Alice Springs and that at Larrakeyah was bridged by road convoys running over a track which was upgraded to a bitumen highway, with semi-trailers and heavy Mack trucks taking over much of the road fleet 7. This led on to the post war rise of increasingly large and capable semi-trailers and road trains, and trunk highways, much of which operated effectively in competition with railways which were under-maintained and cramped by the strictures of public ownership and unions. And when it came to moving such large military equipments as main battle tanks, the limitations of bridges and rolling stock capacities and gauges made them useless for such a basic task: military logistics inevitably turned its emphasis towards road and sea transport.
Map: Australian Railways in 1970
Colonial Military Railway Staffs
The colonial defence forces had no doubt about the efficacy of the rail system in solving their concentration problems. With a substantial part of their land forces being mounted infantry, and the primary source of them being the country areas, timely and economical movement to training camps and planned defensive operations near the coastal cities in the pre-motor transport era depended absolutely on the use of rail. This also solved the other problem of providing horses. It would have been prohibitively expensive to maintain thousands of horses in remount units for annual camps and as operational reserves, so mounted soldiers were required to provide their own, being paid a forage allowance in camp, with the horses being moved from their unit centre to the camp: no rail, no mounted troops.
[Slideshow] Colonial Railway Support
In consequence, each of the colonial defence forces developed a special relationship with its state railways department. Things were kept as simple as possible by commanding officers of units being issued with rail warrant books for routine movement of men, horses and cargo, the use of which was accounted for to the force headquarters staff, who arranged payment of resulting accounts. Responsibility for concentration for camps and exercises was taken on by the staff; but important as the rail systems were in operational planning, there was no suggestion that there should be military operation of any part of the systems in peace or war. Each force had a very limited establishment and there was a very clear feel for using civil resources for anything other than direct field operations.
Railway staff units/staffs
Lord Kitchener was engaged to review and recommend development of the Commonwealth Military Forces in 1909. After a state-by-state review, he submitted his report on Australia’s defence requirements in Xxxxx 1910. In it he recommended that a War Railway Council be appointed to secure cooperation between the Commonwealth Defence Department and the state railway departments for the concentration and mobilisation of troops. This resulted in a conference in Melbourne in February 1911 presided over by Minister for Defence Xxxxxxx and attended by xxxxxxx: the report released the following month
Engineer and Railway Staff Corps
X
Railway Construction and Operation
X
Rail conducting officers??? RTOs etc
Blue Book
References