Trains...how did they survive?

How did trains survive WWII?

These Dutch passenger trains were built before (and during) the war but how did they survive it?

Electrical


Diesel


I thought that railway lines, emplacements, stations etc etc were great targets?

That is what you get when you go to the Railway Museum (Spoorweg Museum)...more questions about things you never thought of
http://www.spoorwegmuseum.nl/

Pics from
www.nicospilt.com

 

You mean we missed some???

I'll have to have a word with some Air Corps veterans! :evil:








Actually, I don't think it would have been possible to get them all. I'm sure that the mission planners and briefers had some thoughts about the occupied countries getting back on their feet some day!

 

in the end, the germans just hided their trains in tunnels for the day and only moved them during the night with a minimum of lights on it. whenever a nightfighter was spotted, the trains were ordered to rush back into the tunnels.

the allies didn't targeted trains, they just targeted raiway statios and brigdes. shooting trains was something that Thyphoon pilots did when they couldn' find a decent target ajust didn't wanted to come home still carrying their bombs and missles.

 

I agree with Tom. With the sheer number of trains around in WWII, it would have been nearly impossible to get them all.

 

Yes but not everywhere there are tunnel, because large parts of the occupied countries were farms and forests.

 

You are forgetting another thing! Not only the allies targetted railways etc. what about the Resitance? T
he germans also needed material (trains, metal you name it) for their own in the end so how could all (i guess all over europe trains were left) those trains survive?
Btw of those Dutch Diesel trains more than 29 were still in use after the war (of 40 built)!

 

I don't think that melting trains could satisfy the need for raw materials (although japanese melted samurai armours in the late stages of the war!!).

 

How could they those were priceless weapons. :cry:

 

At the time, they were useless weapons, and Japan needed useful weapons.

 

still, no respect for the past and for the culture

i gave the attack of trains another thought. trains ware attacked a year before D-day. it was a part of the transportation plan made by air marshall Tedder. in order to get the invasion a change of succes, the invasion beaches had to be blocked of from the rest of the Reich so that no supplies and men could get their. by attacking the railways and shooting trains, it would be difficult for the germans to send reinforces.
the area's that were attacked by the allied airforces are normandy, the north of france, Belgium (logical, we had a lot of railways. the highest density in Europe in those days if i recall it) and then a part of germany (the railways leaving from the Rurh.)

i don't think that the allied bombed the Netherlands in name of the transportation plan because it was to far away from the invasion beaches and since every railway out of the Netherlands towards france had to come trough Belgium, they just hitted belgium a little more :cry:

 

just as bad as melting down all our railings in the UK.

Pre war railing is very rare now. Everytime you walk past a public building or church look at the stone wall where the railings have been cut from it's mounts

FNG

 

At Peloponessos( southern part of the Greek mainland ) the railways date back to the 1890 decade and are reconstructed only nowdays!!

 

Yeah I agree, there were just too many off them to be worth it for large scale attcks on trains/tracks/bridges all the time. And anyways, it wouldnt be worth it to try that cause they would just rebuild them and contine what they were doing.

Mic

 

Actually that is one of the theories of why the didnt bomb the railways to the death camps because the germans would be able to rebuild the tracks within hours a day or two max.

 

Yeah, i saw a show once where they were considering bombing the railway or they were thinking of bombing the camp to stop it, but im not sure what happened cause i didnt see the rest of the show.

 

It was Aushwitz: the forgotten evidence. I summorized most of the show so I can type out my notes for you. I was gonna post on the forum but I was too lazy. I think they still on my desk under 150 papers.

 

The other one would be that they didn't need trains...in the end there were these so called death marches

 

No that was when they were still going into teh death camps and they knew about it. Reports from resistance groups, decoded travel orders, the high death counts, etc etc. The Death marches were when they were escaping from the Allies hoping to the destroy as much evidence as possible. I read they were supposed to make the camps go boom-boom.

 

Well, they didn't eventually. The anarchy was such that prisoners took over some death camps on their own!

 

I beleive that if I remember 'Night' correctly at one of the camps they fled in the night and left the prisoners. What do you mean by took over? That they had control of them? Or that they fought and won the camps from the S.S.?