In this week’s episode of the History Extra Podcast, Railway history: everything you wanted to know, Christian Wolmar touches on their influence on warfare. There’s much more in this wide-ranging interview, including an amazing statistic on the average daily rate of railway construction over more than 80 years in the USA.
One of the things I found fascinating about my WWI research at LAC was that the relative permanance of railway construction to aid in the battles and speed food and arms to the front lines depended on the likelihood of front lines shifting backwards. The commands weren’t just guessing. They were assessing the strrength of their own lines, that of the opposition, and the topography of the contryside. Fascinating to read about in the original documents! BT