Railways - Ypres Area

[chrisharley9]

Can any Pal suggest where I can obtain any books or maps on the history or layout on the railways of the Ypres area both pre & post Great War

All The Best

Chris

[zijde26]

To Chris,

There does exist a publication ' 150 jaar spoorgeschiedenis in het Ieperse 'on the history of the railways in the Ypres area. This publication is written by Wilfried Parmentier. Ido not know if it is available in english. The more specific is your question, the easier could be the answer.

Looking at trench maps gives a striking number of railway-systems,

Gilbert Deraedt

[Aurel Sercu]

Chris and Gilbert,

I knew that Wilfried Parmentier wrote a book about Ypres railways, but I haven't seen it, and I don't think it exists in English. I could ask him though.

Something else. Gilbert, you mentioned the "striking number of railway systems" marked on trench maps. I suppose these are the narrow gauge railways for the transport of troops and material. However, somehow I think that these were not the subject of Wilfried's book. But maybe Chris is only interested in the non-military railways ?

Aurel

[chrisharley9]

To Chris,

There does exist a publication ' 150 jaar spoorgeschiedenis in het Ieperse 'on the history of the railways in the Ypres area. This publication is written by Wilfried Parmentier. Ido not know if it is available in english. The more specific is your question, the easier could be the answer.

Looking at trench maps gives a striking number of railway-systems,

Gilbert Deraedt

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Gilbert

I particularly interested in the railways/tramways that existed just prior to the outbreak of the Great War particularly those that were not rebuilt following the war such as the Tram that ran up the Menin Road and the railway to crossed Hellfire Corner to I believe Roeslare

All The Best

Chris

[chrisharley9]

Gilbert

I particularly interested in the railways/tramways that existed just prior to the outbreak of the Great War particularly those that were not rebuilt following the war such as the Tram that ran up the Menin Road and the railway to crossed Hellfire Corner to I believe Roeslare

All The Best

Chris

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

and why doesn't the train run beyond Poperhinge any more?

[Borden Battery]

Here is some backgrounf information on the railway system that may be of interest to you.

Railway Troops on the Western Front

It was natural that Canada, where in the years immediately preceding the war more new railways had been built than anywhere else in the British Empire, should be called on to play a leading role in providing troops for the construction and operation of railways on the fighting fronts. The force of Canadian railway troops which served in France and Belgium was the largest body of Canadians on the Western Front not under the command of the Canadian Corps. Composed for the most part of men beyond the normal military age, the Canadian Railway Battalions were perhaps the most colourful of all units.

In the pre-war discussions that took place between the British and the French military staffs, the French undertook to man and control the entire railway service. They would be responsible for "the work of construction, repair, maintenance, traffic management and protection, not only in French territory but beyond the frontier". When war broke out it first seemed that this arrangement might work out satisfactorily, since France appeared to have an ample supply of railway troops and a well-planned system for employing them. A British railway company which landed at Le Havre in mid-August 1914 was faced with lack of employment, and there was soon a proposal to transfer from it men of other than railway trades to replace casualties in field units.

Then came the Battle of the Marne, and the subsequent advance to the Aisne. French and British forces found themselves as much as eighty miles beyond their railheads - a gap which French railway units vainly tried to close while, not by their own choice, British repair troops remained idle. Finally on 17 September 1914 the French Government accepted British assistance, though with certain reservations. The French staff still had a number of railway units of their own available, and hoped to use as unskilled labour prisoners of war and Belgians or Italians. At this stage of the war they seemed concerned about keeping their own railway repair arrangements neat and tidy by avoiding the complications that might arise from accepting British assistance.

Early in October 1914 the War Office issued a call for additional railway troops. When interested Canadians learned of this from the press and offered their services to their own government, Ottawa asked the British authorities to substantiate the newspaper reports, asserting that "Canada can supply the want probably better than any other country." While the Army Council expressed its appreciation of the offer, it was not prepared to take advantage of it at that time. "When accepted", the British reply concluded, "a railway corps should be organized on military basis [as opposed to civilian 'gangs'] through principal Canadian railways." Finally on 21 January 1915 the Army Council sent word that it would be glad to have a corps of Canadian railwaymen. "Skilled construction men are wanted . . . please telegraph what numbers can be provided and on what conditions."

On 2 February the Canadian Government replied that it could provide at its own expense a corps of 500 or more railwaymen for construction work; officials of the Canadian Pacific Railway were cooperating in the organization of the unit. Mobilization of the Canadian Overseas Railway Construction Corps - two companies and a regimental headquarters - began at Saint John, N.B., recruiting being completed by 15 May. The men were all experienced construction workers employed by the C.P.R., and each had to pass a test as to his technical ability. By 15 May recruiting was completed, except to make up for discharges - approximately 100 out of some 670 attested - and to form a ten per cent reserve. The unit sailed for England on 14 June and arrived on the 25th. Exactly two months later it landed in France.

Between the last week of August and the beginning of October 1915 the Corps served with the Belgian forces, laying light track for 60-centimetre tramways. It also worked on siege-gun and machine-gun emplacements for the Royal Marines. There was a sudden break in this employment when on 5 October the Canadian unit was withdrawn to England for transfer to Salonika. That move, however, did not materialize. Returning to France on 2 November, the Canadians were assigned to the British Second Army Lines of Communication for work in the Reninghelst area south of Poperinghe. Here they constructed sidings and maintained standard-gauge railway track that had been laid by British railway troops.

In most sectors of the virtually static front the existing railheads were a dozen miles or more behind the front lines. Ammunition and supplies and engineer stores were commonly transported over this gap by lorry to a refilling point and thence by horse transport. The volume of traffic on the roads was tremendous. It has been calculated that at the Battle of the Somme an average of 1934 tons had to be removed from the railheads daily for each mile of the Fourth Army's front. The roads suffered heavily from this tonnage, particularly in wet weather, and damage from shelling increased the problems of keeping them in repair. One solution was to reduce the use of mechanical transport by providing railheads within reach of horse transport. Such a programme was launched on an experimental basis in January 1916, the railheads being advanced to within some three miles of the front.

But a further problem remained. When because of bad roads and shellfire the horse transport could not reach troops in the trenches, the last stage of moving supplies from the railhead had to be performed by manual labour or by pack animals. To remedy this situation, early in 1916 authority was given in cases of extreme necessity to construct 60-centimetre tramlines linking up the standard gauge railheads with the trenches. The advantages of tramways, used with trolleys which were mostly pushed by hand, sometimes drawn by mules and only occasionally pulled by small locomotives, had been recognized more generally by the Canadian than the British forces. In the Canadian Corps two Tram way Companies composed of Canadian engineer personnel, under the C.R.E. Corps Troops, constructed, maintained, and operated tramways until the end of the war. There had been no wide-scale adoption of tramways, however, for while such a system was obviously well suited to supplying a stable front, it received little consideration from G.H.Q., which took the view that the war would soon revert to one of movement. By 1917 there was conviction that all railway resources should be concentrated on the standard-gauge lines that would be needed when the expected general advance started.

In order to extend and maintain rail communications farther forward, more and more railway troops were required. There was no lack of response in Canada, as private individuals willing to raise railway units submitted their offers to the Governor General, the Minister of Militia, the Prime Minister, the Premier of British Columbia, as well as direct to the British authorities. Expansion overseas was rapid. In May 1916, the War Office asked Canada to furnish another railway construction unit approximately 1000 strong. Recruits drawn from skilled railway workers across the country were organized into the 239th Overseas Railway Construction Battalion, commanded by Lt.-Col J.W. Stewart. From the Chief of the Imperial Staff came congratulations to the Militia Department on the "promptitude you have shown in raising Jack Stewart's Railway Construction Battalion", a message whose apparent informality was doubtless prompted by General Sam Hughes' practice of referring to proposed units by the names of the individuals* offering or organizing them. Before the unit could sail, however, Stewart was called to the United Kingdom at the request of the War Office, to be sent to France as Deputy Director of Light Railways.

By April 1917 there were five new Canadian railway units in France. The 1st Canadian Construction Battalion (which had crossed the Channel in October 1916) and the 127th Infantry Battalion (from Bramshott to France in January 1917) were reorganized as the 1st and 2nd Battalions Canadian Railway Troops. The 239th was renamed the 3rd Battalion Canadian Railway Troops, and proceeded from England to France in March. The 4th and 5th Battalions were formed at the C.R.T. Depot at Purfleet, in Essex, and reached France in February.

It was then decided to increase the number of battalions to ten. As more units arrived from Canada they were sent to Purfleet. By the end of June the 6th, 7th, 8th and 10th Battalions had been formed at the Depot. The 9th Battalion came from reorganization of the 1st Pioneer Battalion, in France since March 1916. In November the 11th and 12th Battalions were raised from Canadian labour battalions in France, and the 13th came into being at Purfleet in March 1918. April 1917 saw the arrival in France of the first of three specialist Canadian railway operating companies. A railroad shop company formed at the C.R.T. Depot in March 1918 arrived in France in April.

When they reached France the Canadian Railway Troops Battalions came under the command of Brig.-Gen. Stewart, who at the beginning of 1917 had been appointed Deputy Director General Transportation (Construction) at G.H.Q. In March 1917 he established the administrative headquarters of the Canadian Railway Troops at G.H.Q. British Armies in France, where it remained completely apart from the Canadian Corps.

The following May saw a reorganization in which the original Overseas Railway Construction Corps and the four independent companies joined the thirteen battalions under the Headquarters. Canadian Railway Troops, the whole being redesignated the Corps of Canadian Railway Troops, under the command of Brig.-Gen. Stewart. Towards the end of August, as we shall see, a C.R.T. bridging company was formed for service in the Middle East. By the time of the Armistice the strength of the Corps, including 3364 railway troops in the United Kingdom, had risen to 19,328.

From the moment of their arrival in France the Canadian railway units found plenty to do. The German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line meant that new track - of both standard and narrow gauge - had to be pushed forward. The work was carried out with remarkable speed, despite the hindrance of appalling weather and enemy demolitions. In preparation for the Arras-Vimy offensive in the spring of 1917 Canadian railway units laid steel up to the forward trenches; and as the infantry of the Canadian Corps advanced over Vimy Ridge, close on their heels tramways were pushed forward over the newly consolidated ground. Later that year Canadian construction units laboured under the dreadful conditions in the Ypres Salient before Passchendaele, when on the Second and Fifth Army fronts alone the number of breaks in the light railway lines caused by enemy shellfire averaged one hundred a day.

From 1917 to the end of the war all light railway construction and maintenance on the British front was carried out by Canadian troops, assisted by attached labour. During the German offensives of 1918 railway units were diverted to the necessary reorganization of the L. of C. and to the construction of a rear defence system. The 2nd Battalion C.R.T., it may be recalled, assumed an infantry holding role (above, p. 371). The ready ability of the railway troops to undertake this commitment was a vindication of the policy laid down by the Canadian military authorities-that every Canadian engaged at the front on work of a technical nature must first be trained as a fighting soldier. All British railway, labour and other troops assigned to the defences came under the orders of General Stewart. At one point seven Canadian railway battalions and sixty British units-a total of 22,400 all ranks-were so employed. The 2nd Canadian Battalion, working day and night under heavy shelling, maintained lines linking the British and French systems, making it possible to remove much valuable rolling stock which otherwise would have been destroyed or abandoned. To salvage valuable stocks of timber from the advancing Germans, the Canadians dumped the logs into the canals, forming them into rafts on which they carried to safety large quantities of steel rails, telephone poles and railway ties. By the late summer of 1918 Canadian railwaymen were heavily involved in preparing for the great Amiens offensive which opened on 8 August. They continued to play an important role in the subsequent operations which eventually brought victory to the Allies.

Between April 1917 and the end of 1918 Canadian units laid 1169 miles of broad-gauge line and 1404 miles of light track. In the final year of the war the number of men employed on railway construction averaged nearly eight thousand daily. At the same time an average of more than four thousand were busy every day on maintaining lines already built. We have noted that in certain sectors the Canadian railway troops were under fire for protracted periods. The 10th Railway Battalion, for example, which was in the Ypres Salient, was never out of range of shellfire from the time of the Messines action in June 1917 until the end of the Passchendaele fighting. From 1 April 1917 to the end of the war the Corps of Canadian Railway Troops suffered 1977 casualties.

Source:

Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War

- Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919, Colonel G. W. L. Nicholson, C.D., Army Historical Section

[Borden Battery]

If you access this website, there are several digitized films of railways in action, including the light railways which brought up ammunition and removed the wounded at times.

The National Film Board WW1 Film Project

The NFB continue a program to digitize Canadian films from WW1. The only downside is having to use my least favourite media player, RealPlayer. However, the images have a haunting impact on the viewer.

http://www.nfb.ca/ww1/

[frie]

Chris,

The railway connecting Ypres and Roeselare had a station at Hellfire corner. and was in use in 1950 - after that ionly used many years for goods-train.

The tram along the Menin road was broken up in 1952.

[zijde26]

To Chris,

The publication " 150 jaar spoorgeschiedenis in het Ieperse " written by Wilfried Parmentier does not answer the question "...why does n't the train run beyond Poperinge any more...". I do think that it does not run anymore for econonic reasons. Probably, the different towns can give an answer ... or the NMBS (Belgian Railways) .... or the SNCF (French Railways).... .

A map (1911) of the just pre-ww1 period draws the Menin-Road at Ypres having a tramway. The same map shows also the Ypres-Roeselare railway. I do think that a halte at Broodseinde is visible.

To Aurel,

Most of the railways drawn on trench maps are "... narrow gauge railways for the transport of troops and material... ". However you can recognise the then existing normal railways.

Wilfried's book is not dealing with these. It deals only with the non-military railways and tramways?

Gilbert Deraedt

[chrisharley9]

thanks everyone - at least Ive got something to go on

All The Best

Chris