Railroads, CSA, 1861-65

Peter:

I'm a Civil War buff too and enjoy reading and researching that just as much as I do trains.  When you can combine both, it takes things to a new level!

I just finished reading a history of the Nashville, Chattannoga and St. Louis Railroad, the key supply line in the Union's fight for Chattannoga and during the Atlanta campaign.

It is amazing when one considers how many times this railroad had to be rebuilt during the war.

Curt

Over the years, my interest in railroading era's has gradually expanded further and further back in time. My current V scale (virtual) project is recreating the Central Pacific's Donner Pass line circa 1869. (I would have liked to have gone back further, but 1869 marks the first year as a completed transcontinental.)

 

However, I also find railroading during the Civil War era fascinating.  My "Civil War Railroading" digital images folder grows as often as I find nice images that can be saved to the folder.

I have read quite a bit about the Civil War(and re-enacted dismounted cav) plus studied the CW railroads. The American RRs really came of age during the war plus the RRs developed along military lines. The US Military Railroad was the grandfather of "modern" American RR both north and south. A lot of the southern RRs were rebuilt after the war by the **** Yankees. My son lives about 5 miles from City Point, the main Norther supply base in Virginia. I have spent a let of time the comparing old photos and what is there now. Sort of, hard to believe. A big Civil War layout would be a fun project, I have always thought. I have one Lionel General that needs work and  nice cars.

The Civil War helped bring gauge standardization to the railroads.

Don

2 good books for a Covil War RR library are:

 

Civil War Railroads by George Abdil

Railroads in the Civil War by John E. Clark jr.

 

Both books are a little dry.....though the Abdill book has a lot of nice picturs.....

 

One book I highly recommend is Roger Pickenpaugh's Rescue By Rail.......it starts out with the roundabout and difficult transfer of Longstreet's Corps from Lee's army to Georgia where they are instrumental in routing Rosecran's Federal Army at Chickamauga............and, finishs the story by recounting the efficient and speedy transfer to the Federal Army of the Cumberland of the 11th & 12th Corps of Meade's army.....thereby, giving the Federals the numerical superiority to raise the siege of Chattanooga.

 

Peter

I have done some history searching and can tell you what railroad was not in operation as yet, the Pennsylvania RR incorporated near the end of the Civil War in the 1860's, around 1865?

 

The Philadelphia and Reading Railways and Mining Company was in operation back then.

 

There are some stories about the north cutting up or burning the railroad ties so the south could not follow them with an engine.

 

The Savanna GA roundhouse should have been built and operational during the Civil War time.

 

Lee Fritz

I'm a big Civil War buff too - love studying it. It's always fun to combine two interests. Railroad history during the Civil War is fascinating. 

Lee:

 

I'll have to argue with you regarding the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was incorporated in 1846 and played a vital role in the Union's war effort.  The PRR reached my hometown of Lewistown, PA, 60 miles west of Harrisburg, in 1848 and had completed its all rail route to Pittsburgh by 1854. 

 

In fact, the Lewistown station is the oldest structure still in existence that was built by the PRR.  This station was built in 1848 and is currently owned by the PRRT&HS.  The station still serves two Amtrak trains daily too.

 

Keeping this in the Civil War theme; Lewistown's Logan Guards was the very first Union unit to answer Lincoln's call for volunteers and was moved by rail to Washington, DC following the fall of Fort Sumter.  In recognition of this, when the Soldiers and Sailors Monument was constructed in the Lewistown square in the early 1900's, a stone was removed from Lincoln's tomb in Springfield, IL and set into the base of the monument.  This is the only stone that was ever donated from Lincoln's tomb.

 

Curt

I have to agree with Curt.......one of the objectives of Ewell's corps, before they were ordered to turn south for the concentration at Gettysburg, was to cut the Susquehanna RR bridge at Harrisburg.

 

Peter

I just finished reading Charles Roberts' PRR Triumph Volume IX. One of the chapters focuses on the Cumberland Valley. He discusses the railroad's development and the difficulties it faced as the war carried north into Pennsylvania....fascinating stuff.

 

Bob

 

Peter:

Thanks for the tip on the books! Just found/purchased the currently-being-republished George Abdill book on eBay!

 

 

Another good Civil War railroad book is "Civil War Railroads and Models" by Ed Alexander. As suggested by the title, it is geared toward modeling. It has many illustrations and is a superb aid in recreating Civil War railroading in miniature. It's a fairly easy item to locate having been printed in great quantity over the years. 

 

Bob 

 

The history is just so fascinating.........Look at the western Kentucky/Tennessee area..... The railroad allowed Albert Sidney Johnson to hold a huge line with very few troops.....Columbus to Ft Henry to Ft Donelson to Bolling Green.....but when Grant to the forts and the river gunboats thratened the railroad bridges, the whole line came apart....

 

What followed was catastrophic.......the loss of middle Tennesee, including Nashville and Clarksville (home of the 2nd largest iron foundry in the sipouth, after Tredeger in Richmond). The unhinging of the Mississippi line leading to the progressive loss of Confederate strongpoints.....and finally Memphis.

 

This is a tremendous marriage of our hobby and our nation's history!

 

Peter

Bob, 

   Good to know. I like the whole Triumph-series, but that is one that I don't have yet.

 

Tom

I have good friends that live outside of Chambersburg and I have spent some time  researching the Cumberland Valley plus the Gettysburg area, Hagerstown area, Cumberland, Md. and the Vally in Va. Fascinating history. I read that if you study the major Civil war campaigns they were centered on the railroads because the armies had gotten so large they couldn't be supplied by just wagons. A lot of CW vets worked for the railroads after the war-east and west.

I always like to point out a good Pennsy man...Herman Haupt of the Pennsylvania Railroad was an engineer and superintendent before taking over the Union's military railroads.

 

http://www.archives.gov/public...11/summer/usmrr.html

 

Tom

While my grandfather's grandfather fought for the losing side, and he and my grandmother still held grudges, I have just visited the sites, Appomattox, Vicksburg,

Chattanooga, Harper's Ferry, assorted others, and most recently, Savannah.  It is

interesting where many of the survivors went, with no homes to go back to, west

working on or founding railroads.  "General" Palmer founded the Denver and Rio

Grande, Otto Mears of Silverton area railroad building fame, came east from California

with the Union army to try to head off a Southern raid west from Texas.  He mustered

out and began building toll roads, and then railroads.  And "Crazy Bob" Womack from my hometown, dodged the Union draft by fleeing west to work a hardscrabble ranch on the other side of Pike's Peak.  He discovered Cripple Creek, so named for a ranching accident.  He, like so many, sold out cheap and drank it up, earning that sobriquet.

The war instigated a lot of the westward expansion.

http://www.kinglyheirs.com/New...n1.html#.VPPFqfldV8E

This site gives a history of railroads used for war efforts. I used this information when I did the manufacturer's presentation for Weaver Models a few years ago, as one of the products I described was a troop car. I sure hope it wasn't the one that is having the floor warping issues. 

Don

Last year, I purchased an N scale USMRR set released by Micro-Trains. It features an Atlas 4-4-0 decorated as the "General Haupt" and four pieces of M-T rolling stock. The equipment is weathered and it's really a splendid set. I spent a lot of time in the Gettysburg area and have long desired reasonably accurate Civil War railroad models. In addition to the USMRR, Micro-Trains has also released similar equipment for southern railroads so the building of a small N scale Civil War era layout is on my list of projects to do. Below is M-T's file picture of the set but it gives you an idea of how nice it is. Beauty can some in very small packages.

 

Bob

 

Interesting website, thanks.

 

Peter

Colorado Hirailer......when I went to Vicksburg a few years ago, my favorite exhibit was a steamer.....but not a train.....the raised Federal ironclad river gunboat, Cairo......

 

Peter

Well, if you are going to read books about Civil War railroading you might be interested  in reading some accounts by the guys who actually drove the trains.

 

Train Running for the Confederacy - Carter S. Anderson

Southern Railroad Man:Conductor N.J. Bell's recollection of the Civil War Era - N.J. Bell

Fifty Years on the Rail - J.J. Thomas

 

and for a general history you might want to check out

 

Victory Road the Rails:the strategic place of the railroads in the Civil War - George Turner

I hate to pick an argument Peter, but I think you have oversimplified things.

 

Holding the Cumberland Gap does not do much for the U.S.  The line wasn't on a rail line, and supplying a large army holding the Gap would have been difficult.  U.S. forces first occupied the Gap in early 1862, but didn't cut the line from Lynchburg southwest until over a year later, and then in a combined campaign that took both Knoxville and Chattanooga.

 

The gauge problem wasn't unique to the south.  In the north you had major rail lines in standard gauge, Pennsy gauge, 4'10" gauge lines and 6' gauge.  If you add in Kentucky and Tennessee you also have 5' gauge.  When Hooker's force moved from Meade's command in Virginia to Grant's near Chattanooga, the trip involved travel on 3 separate gauges.  That it was handled smoother than Longstreet's move from Virginia to Georgia was because the northern roads were in better condition, and because there was better coordination between military officials and the railroads.

 

Also don't forget the importance of waterways in army communications during the Civil War.  The loss of control of waterways by the Confederates frequently opened up alternative lines of communication for U.S. forces.

Bill ......I stand corrected.....I always thought the line from Lynchburg went through the the Gap.......I will have to re-read some stuff.

 

 

Please don't get me wrong, the rivers where huge avenues of transportation, especially in the west where the distances so great and roads frequently poor. However, I would have to say that the Federals held the advantage on the rivers (Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland and eventually the Mississippi due to their greater capacity to exploit it by being able to build and re-build ships at will. The CSA, with their limited capacity to exploit the rivers, was forced to their overtaxed railroads

 

If I have oversimplified things, I apologize.......however, it is difficult in a venue like this to decide how much detail to put in.......it lends itself more to face to face discussion.

Case in point........I spent my right home reviewing how Hallack botched the follow-up to Shiloh at Corinth......leading to Bragg spliting off from the Mississippi army and marching into Kentucky........how do you put all those operating factors in a short paragraph.....it's tough!

 

Anyway, I have started a discussion. You are well versed In the topic.......and, I'd love to hear more!

 

Peter

Where I grew up, the railroads helped prevent a couple of coastal towns from being burned to the ground during the war.

My alma mater, Florida State University, was called West Florida Seminary at the time of the War of Northern Aggression. When word came of a Union Army/Navy landing party coming ashore at St Marks lighthouse in March of 1865, people in Tallahassee assumed they were coming for capitol. It was later learn this wasn't the case as the Union had tried that the year before with disasterous results at Ocean Pond, near Olustee. This invasion was heading for the coastal communites along the river to destroy Confederate raiding capacity against places like Cedar Key and other spots along the coast.

The Captain in charge of the cadets marched them to the train station in Tallahassee, boarded the southbound and got off at Wakulla Station. The cadets marched down to the crossing at Newport, helped dig in, and repulsed all attempts to cross the river along with Veterans Corps soldiers and local militia. The cadets were ordered north to the crossing called, "Natural Bridge" where the river goes underground for a couple hundred yards. There, they went into more earthworks and repulsed several attempts at getting across the river. With heavy casulaties, the Union forces withdrew.

Tallahassee remained the only Confederate capitol East of the Mississippi never to fall into Union hands during hostilities.

Less than a month later, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia and the war offically ended soon afterward with the final surrenders in the West.

To this day, colors for the cadets of the Army and Air Force ROTC units at Florida State University each carry a battle streamer for the Battle of Natural Bridge.

 

This guy has an amazing Civil War era O scale layout: http://usmrr.blogspot.com/ His book on military railroads is really good for Civil War, so-so for WW2 and has more than a couple of errors in the chapter on Kennedy Space Center. Still, it's worth a look (if you can find one, I've never seen one for asale in any hobby shop) and I bought a copy.

I always thought Bob Womack had it right, at least with the war, and then with

thinking there was gold in that creek the calf broke a leg in.   A lot of railroads were

torn up, a lot of resources and lives wasted, and those that fired on Fort Sumpter, just like in WWII that followed, got exactly the opposite results they were trying for.  According to economists I have read, the agrarian economy of the south, supported by free labor, would have collapsed by the 1880's anyway.  That agrarian economy, not supported by manufacturing nor its skilled labor, was not able to support a war effort, and was dependent on imports, subject to blockade.  I see a parallel between Pearl Harbor and Ft. Sumpter.  It was the Japanese admiral who said, "We have awakened a sleeping giant".  In that war, in a much more obvious manner, was shown the utility of the railroads and their abiltiy to throw tons of steel at the problem.  My interest in the war is mostly in the guns, and how slow decisions to mass produce the "horizontal shot tower" Spencer, and "****Yankee rifle that is loaded on Sunday and shot all week" Henry repeating rifles may have lengthened the war.  I think we now know, after WWII, but first demonstrated by the railroads in the Civil War, that we need to be far out in front in the technology. 

Neither the War Between the States nor WW2 were foregone conclusions and we do a great disservice to those who fought to think so in either case.

If the Confederate States had been able to effectively court British and French support like they'd hoped, including possibly military support (something that was prety unlikely, but both the Brits and French did plenty of things that made no sense to any other country through the 19th century), there's question on how that could have gone, considering how unpopular the war really was in the North before it looked like they could wholly defeat the South by 1864 (don't forget, the Union still had some nasty defeats even into the final year of the war). If Lee was able to present Meade with a crushing victory in his 1863 invasion of the North, it would have been a near thing, indeed in the short term.

And WW2? Well, we'd almost bankrupted the US economy by the start of 1945, nobody was buying war bonds, and there was serious discussion in the halls of the FDR white house of looking for a negotitated peace with Germany and Japan.

Neither case was ever likely, but neither were impossible. We must remember that.

I think, tactics and battles aside, the railroads were important to the war and the war was really important to the railroads.  I have a real Spencer carbine. At least, I did have it, until I let my son "borrow" it. It is amazing that after the Civil War, the yankees flocked to the South and wee very important to the rebuilding of the shattered economy. they weren't all "carpet baggers".  the surplus Army steam engines and cars were sold off, some going to the South.

No more different than the US military leaving ten of thousands of military vehicles behind to assist the Europeans in the Marshall Plan. The irony now is that if you want to see the most WW2 Jeeps and trucks in private hands, you have to go to shows across the pond!

A town not far from me has a Union soldier right in the center square, that you have to

drive around to get through on the state road.  The rail line, the interurban line, are all long gone and the grain elevator is in ruins. That Northern vacillation, continues to this day.. that lack of resolve to face a threat.  It lost Vietnam.  We would have been, and be even less able to face one if this continent held two hostile border countries.

If one starts a war  (and diplomacy often does not work), one had better be able to end it, for the entity attacked may, as done by Sherman, and in WWII, use any means possible to end it with finality, and as quickly as possible.  My ancestors were unhappy that they had to bootstrap themselves back up from nothing after losing "free" labor.  I cannot justify that position.  We need ALL hands on deck.  We were lucky that the French and Brits, or anybody else,  did not decide the internal squabble was a good time to regain territory lost in 1776 or 1812, or at the southern border in the 1840's. Note the parallel now going on internationally.

Well stated. In fact, the reenactment of the Battle at Natural Bridge will occur this weekend just south of Tallahassee near Woodville. Always draws a lot of interest. 

Lee makes a very good point here that Union victory in the Civil War was far from a foregone conclusion.  Based on the various accounts of the war I have read, the war was prolonged because Union generals in the first few years of the war were chasing the wrong carrot.  The history is pretty clear that Lincoln was pushing his generals to focus on eliminating the enemy rather than trying to capture territory that held no real strategic value. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign focused on taking Richmond is a prime example of this.  The western generals, Grant and Sherman in particular, realized early on the object was to kill more of the enemy than could be replaced.  That and their willingness to take large numbers of casualties themselves is what made them successful in the west.  And, when Grant moved east and brought this same strategy with him, the results in the east began to mirror the results in the west.

Curt

Curt, 

 

You are prompting me to do some more research on the Pennsy RR. If I am correct I got my info off of Wikipedia.

 

Lee

Ironically, the Civil War served to establish and develop railroads as critical means of transportation of goods and people in the US, and WWII did the same for aircraft leading to less dependence on railroads, especially for passenger transportation. 

For passengers only, you are correct. However the railroads handled virtually all the war material headed for either coast, during WWII. To this day, aircraft still don't carry very much grain, chemicals, coal, nor automobile/trucks or their component parts.

If you spent the time researching the topic, I but you would find the railroads carried many more passengers than the airplanes during WW II. The airliners were relatively small-like the DC3. I read somewhere that at the height of WW II other was a train going around Horseshoe Curve every 5 minutes !! It wasn't until Viet Nam that they started moving troops by air. When I was drafted in 1957  all our travel was by rail.

Yes, the railroads carried the burden of freight and passenger traffic. The vast majority of all soldiers going overseas even for the Korean war travelled by train, then by boat. VERY few people travelled anywhere in WW2 by plane, other than air crews taking their own planes over and back.

 

As for the mention of the re-enactment at Natural Bridge, I was in the very first one of those, I think in 1977, and went to them all until i left Florida for good in 1998. My Dad built a M1841 6-pounder (3/4 scale, which was popular back then) and we used it at the event each year... I've tried to post photos but for some reason, it won't allow me to post anything into the links section at all right now, darn it.

 

 

Lee:

CNJ3676 mentions one of the Charles Roberts PRR Triumph volumes in his post above.  I can't recollect exactly how many books  were published in this series but, if you have an interest in the history of the PRR, I highly recommend them.  I have the volumes covering the Middle and Pittsburgh Divisions but, am aware of similar volumes covering the New York and Philadelphia Divisions in addition to the one noted above.

The historical research that went into these books is fairly exhaustive, a hallmark of all the Charles Roberts books I have read.  I'm guessing you should be able to find these yet either on eBay or Amazon.

Curt

Here's my father's 6-pounder at the very first (I think) re-enactment at Natural Bridge, in 1977 if memory serves. I was standing way off to the left with the ammo box, holding the flag as I was a little kid at the time. This is how I grew up, blowing stuff up. Such a great way for a boy to enjoy a childhood!

The people give it some scale that it lacks from the other pics. My Dad is actually just off the far left of the picture, but you can't make him out much (he's ironically shy considering his hobbies) Mind you, this was taken in 1977 I think, and he built a totally new carriage for it a few years later. Notice the OD green paint. Back then, NOBODY else was even that close the correct CW-era paint. Everyone then all had GREY carriages! It was funny to watch full-scale guns finally show up in re-enacting and eventually we stopped going to the big event at Olustee. We came a LONG way from the days of blue jeans and cowboy bib-style shirts! Still, I've seen a LOT of muzzleloading guns over the years, and I have never, EVER seen one that is more of a work of art than this one!

Here it is from photos he took a couple of years ago. He couldn't bring himself to paint the carriage due to how good the finish worked out. All the parts that can be bronze, are. He made everything on this, even the bolts and nuts. Only the barrel was commerically made as he can't cast something that large that could be trusted to fire:

Dad is in his late 70s now but still likes to tinker. Here's a 1/6 scale 14-pounder James rifle he recently built, just for the heck of it. Everything in this photo was made by hand, no commerical parts were used at all.

 He just drilled the vent hole for it and says he'll be firing it soon after he makes good projectiles for it.