World War 1 & the Railways: Difference between revisions

On 5th August detachments of army reservists reported for duty and then marched, four abreast, from the Chester Castle to the railway station, en-route to Londonderry. More left the city over the next two days, along with equipment and stores. On each day the troops were cheered along the streets by crowds. They were being sent to Northern Ireland to allow the 1st Battalion of the 22nd Cheshire Regiment to go to France.

 

 

It was in this movement of troops and equipment that cooperation between the railways and the military worked beyond expectation. At Southampton, a troop train arrived, on average, every 12 minutes and within 15 minutes men, horses, weapons and supplies had been unloaded. Within 40 minutes of arriving at the docks the empty train was ready to depart.

 

Before August was out, many hundreds of men from all over the county had converged on Chester to enlist.

On 31st August 150 men from Winsford marched from the Northgate Station behind the Winsford Prize Band, accompanied by men from Sandbach and other parts of the county. That evening, still led by the band, they marched around the city and local men joined them. Within a month of war breaking out, over 7,000 recruits had enlisted. Many were billeted on the Roodee with many others accommodated at the American Skating Rink on Northgate Street (where the First Bus depot stood until quite recently).

 

Huge crowds were reported at both Port Sunlight and Chester to see them depart, some never to return. At the time, the workers were told that time spent serving King and Country would be counted as part of their employment service at the company with regard to benefits and years of service.

 

 

=== Ambulance Trains ===

In 1912, when the British government was secretly preparing for war and the Railway Executive Committee was formed to run the railways during the anticipated conflict, plans for 12 ambulance trains to be used in Britain were draw up. They were constructed in railway workshops. When war was finally declared, the trains were ready to transport casualties away from the channel ports.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the outbreak of war, the Royal Army Medical Corps had been founded and they became trained stretcher bearers. Triage was devised at this time so that the seriously wounded could be separated from the “Walking Wounded” and those in most need of treatment received it first.

During the course of WW1, many ambulance trains were operated, both at home and on the continent, by the railways. When abroad they were hauled by British locomotives driven by British crews. The Great Western Railway (GWR) operated 62 such special trains to Chester and 134 to Birkenhead. A total of 160 ambulance trains were dealt with at Chester during the war, and, in addition to the Birkenhead trains, many others may well have passed through the station. In the two months after the end of hostilities, a further 10 such trains were dealt with at Chester.

 

=== “Hospitals on Wheels” ===

The first trains used on the Western Front were simply empty French wagons with straw laid on the floor. Twelve trains of converted French stock were soon in use and this situation improved a little with the arrival of the first purpose-built ambulance trains in November 1914.

The design of these trains, both British and Continental, evolved as the war went on and each new train was better than the previous one. By 1918 twenty such trains had been built for use in Britain and 31 for the Continent. These “Hospitals on Wheels” were built at an incredible speed in railway workshops, with all the facilities of a hospital squeezed into the confined space of a train. They included wards, pharmacies, operating rooms, kitchens and staff accommodation.

 

 

At the outbreak of war, Britain had an official policy favouring the use of motor vehicles over light railways for the transportation of men and supplies to a war zone. These vehicles, however, were mechanically unreliable and unsuitable for the task. At the start of the war the existing French railway system managed to fill the transportation gap until the static nature of trench warfare highlighted the inadequacies of both road vehicles and the existing railway system.

 

In 1916, the Royal Engineers constructed a new port at Richborough, south of Ramsgate, to ease the pressure on Dover and Southampton. It was known as ‘The Secret Harbour’ and all the buildings were camouflaged to make them blend in with the low landscape. From here heavy supplies, field guns, horses, railway engines and the first tanks were moved by barges, some of them capable of carrying up to 1,000 tons, deep into the canal system of north east France and south west Belgium. It covered some 2,000 acres and employed 20,000 people.

 

Holyhead became a Royal Navy destroyer base during the war, and this all added to the amount of freight and service personnel travelling through Chester.

 

During WW1 the railways also developed special wagons for transporting tanks, or mobile gun platforms. The size and the weight of both were problems. They usually exceeded the loading gauge and some parts often had to be removed for transportation by rail. Their weight meant that special wagons had to be developed. A modified and strengthened bogie wagon was developed by the GWR and some of these were used to move tanks and coastal motorboats to Avonmouth Docks.