by JAMES SIMPSON

Trains were cutting-edge weapons of war in the 19th century — and all the major powers were figuring out how to deploy them. The Europeans learned how to move troops by train. The Americans — how to fight on rail cars. The British, meanwhile, found they could dominate an empire from the tracks.

In today’s world of tanks, bombers and submarines, it’s perhaps hard to believe that the train was once an amazingly mobile weapons platform. They might be locked to their rails, but for over a century trains were the fastest means of hauling troops and artillery to front lines across the world.

The invention of the railway shaped warfare for a century. Rails allowed force projection across immense distances — and at speeds which were impossible on foot or by horse.

This is the first in our new series of articles on the history of military rail-power — from the earliest experiments in post-Napoleonic Europe to the Soviet nuclear missile-carrying trains of the Cold War.

Our story starts in England in 1830 with the opening of the world’s first major intercity public railway — between Liverpool and Manchester. Britain was in the middle of an industrial boom. Railroads offered a capacity and speed that satisfied England’s thirst for raw materials.

From this first public major railway, entrepreneurs crisscrossed the British countryside with lengths of track. Their haste is readily apparent in the statistics. In 1830, Britain had just 97.5 miles of standard width tracks. This increased to 208 miles by 1833, 403 miles by 1836 and 970 miles by 1839. Passenger numbers followed along in a similar fashion.

As the world went nuts for trains, the continental European powers soon recognized the strategic potential of the steam revolution.

Prominent industrialist Friedrich Harkort was one of the first to call for Prussia to invest in building a defensive railroad in 1833. According to Harkort’s plans, the line would run between the fortress town of Minden and Cologne, close to the French border.

Other civilians were equally caught up in train fever. The Saxony writer Carl Eduard Pönitz also pushed the Prussian government to invest in rail infrastructure to the frontiers of rivals France and Austria.

In the French Chamber of Deputies, the country’s lower house of parliament, the deputy for Dieppe summed up what made the railway so attractive to the European powers over the next 80 years.

“If a country could thus speedily carry considerable masses of troops to any given point on its frontiers, would it not become invincible, and would it not, also, be in a position to effect great economies in its military expenditure?”

Speed, capacity and economic efficiency were three very promising concepts in post-Napoleonic Europe. The railway seemed to be the solution to a military problem that had plagued the European powers since the French Revolution.

Conscription changed the scale of warfare significantly. Where armies had once fielded forces of tens of thousands, Napoleon’s Grande Armée consisted of hundreds of thousands of men.

A large army created major logistical problems. Additional manpower required more horses for supply trains and mounts.

Horses weren’t even particularly efficient logistical tools. Every animal required 20 pounds of fodder a day but could only carry 200 pounds— a horse could travel for fewer than 10 days before needing a resupply. Each extra pound of ammunition, powder and rations further depleted this operational range.

Horses and carts traveled also slower than the average soldier. During Napoleon’s Russia campaign, the Grande Armée marched 15 to 20 miles a day … but their supplies traveled just 10 to 12 miles. While both men and livestock tried to live from the land, the size of the army and Russian’s salted earth retreats made foraging far from sustainable.

“Rail-power,” as coined by the early 20th-century British author Edwin A. Pratt, offered economies of scale for these immense military endeavors that the horse just could not match. Trains could transport personnel and supplies 24 hours a day at six times the speed of a traditional horse-drawn convoy. They could even carry horses forward to the lines to hasten existing logistical capabilities.

With a military revolution in the making, the entire continent of Europe embarked on a railway arms race — while Britain watched on with great interest.