Railways had been used for a long time before the first world war broke out and actually played a huge part in history in the days before the war broke out. It was the railways in neutral countries Luxembourg and Belgium that Germany wanted to use to get to France. They were told no but the Belgians knew that Germany would ignore this and so set about digging cavities, before filling them with explosives that could be set off with a moments notice. Added to this, derailed trains and emptied engine tanks were used to also block passages. At the beginning of August, German troops took over the railways in Luxembourg, with some travelling right into Belgium by train. Whilst sabotage efforts did manage to slow them down, it didn't stop them. In fact many of the explosives that had been placed inside tunnels failed to explode.
German troops set up Metz, which is now part of France, a huge station that would aid them in the war. It had a staggering eleven platforms and could receive anything up to eighty trains a day. A lot of planning must have gone into this war station because every track had two platforms, one which was to be used my troops and one which would be used for the loading of weapons and other supplies. This meant that trains could be loaded and unloaded relatively straight forwardly and with as little chaos as possible. What Germany really wanted was to get to Paris, the heart of the French railway. Here you could find two railway ring road tracks with lots of lines leading off of them that travelled straight to German boarders, but it was not going to be easy.
On the 4th August, Britain declared war on Germany and Lord Kitchener created a huge recruitment drive which successfully gained thousands of volunteers within days. Volunteers needed to get to training camps as soon as possible and usually travelled the distance by train. As well as this, 80,000 already trained soldiers needed to get to Southampton as soon as possible so that they could get across to France to begin the fighting. Train lines were already in place that went straight to the port key and it was estimated that they would get about seventy trains a day arriving, however they actually managed to get over ninety a day there and so exceeded expectations. The use of the railways and their hard working employees meant that over 66,000 soldiers managed to get across France just in time for the battle at Mons in Belgium. In fact Germany couldn't believe how quickly the British had managed to mobilise an army and get it across the channel.
At the same time, the French 6th Army had been transported, along with their supplies, by train to Marne, where they joined up with British soldiers and fought off the German advance. By this point, it was obvious that the Schlieffen Plan had failed and it was going to be much harder than the Germans had anticipated.
Lord Kitchener's recruitment drive not only hit unskilled workers but it also hit the railway workers with over 100,000 enlisting shortly after war was declared. Many of them were assigned to the Railway Operating Division of the Royal Engineers due to them being highly skills. Their main role was to assemble and maintain the pre-made railways so that they could then get troops and supplies to the front. These pre-made tracks could be assembled along roads wherever needed, at a moments notice. The railway workers possessed skills that could be used at the front and so women were seen more than ever working on the railways. They had previously held domestic roles such as waitressing and cleaning however they were now undertaking harder tasks with some even becoming engineers. Although I would imagine the men too old or young to fight weren't happy about women taking these roles, they had no choice because at the outbreak of the war, the railways had become under government control for the duration of the war. They wanted to transport huge numbers of troops and supplies daily to help the war effort and they didn't care who was doing it so long as it run quickly and efficiently.
The railways also became hugely important when the wounded soldiers began to trickle through and was soon a steady stream as the war progressed. Trains were converted as hospital trains with beds or stretchers laid out instead of seats. It meant that as many of the wounded could be transported within one journey as possible, to get these men much needed treatment. The trains at Southampton were then responsible for transporting those soldiers so badly wounded, to hospitals and convalescent homes around the country. Without these trains, many of those men would have died of their wounds or of infection before they could be treated.
The hard work and efficiency of the railways and the workers helped us win the war for sure. Without them, our soldiers would have arrived at the front a little to late and would have had an uphill struggle to even create the trenches in which they were to live. Although there was still the matter of the shell crisis, it would have been a whole lot worse if we hadn't have been able to transport munitions to the front as quickly as we did. Of course it goes without saying that an army marches on its stomach and our soldiers would have certainly have died from starvation had much needed food not got to the front. One thing that is certain is that the railway helped Britain and her allies win the war.
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