Quote:
Originally Posted by Igo kyu
Stupid criticisms or not, I know more about UK railways than anyone who thinks that level crossings without gates or signals were common in the UK in the 1940s. The railways as shown in the image in the first post are knackered, useless, rotten.
It's not of itself important, or a significant target, but it goes to show how much money was spent in the UK to to make the railways efficient and therefore profitable. Cuttings and embankments were cheaper, and thus much more widely used.
The one thing there weren't, were unmarked unguarded level crossings, where a random car could destroy or delay an important train, or an unimportant train could delay an important car.
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I agree wholeheartedly about train importance...The situation was quite different in France, not concerning the importance given to railways system (it must have been on par with the British one), but in the way it dealt with the environment: like in UK embankments and cuttings were largely used, but almost only on the main gauge network.
It was not so on the narrow gauge network, which was using occasionally embankments but few cuttings. Most of the time the train was going along the landscape, and this gives the narrow gauge network a very much different aspect from the main gauge one. These two networks were complementary and saw much use during all of the war as it was the only "mass" transportation mean left...as it was using coal, not fuel.
In opposition to the English system unguarded and unmarked level crossings were many (almost all of the narrow gauge system used them), and no fences exist on either network railroad, except maybe in large towns.
Like I said to Oleg railways are very much a structuring feature of the landscape as well as a great target. And this not mentioning other great targets like the so well recognizable steam depots and marshalling yards...and the very special network used by the Germans in Pas de Calais after July 1940 to move and fire the K5 and K12 very long range guns of the "EisenBahn Artillerie"...
JV