Week of Remembrance: Callum Wilcox's Amiens Tracks & Trenches 1918

In this week of remembrance, here’s a unique layout by British modeller Callum Willcox that recalls  the contribution made by railway troops during that conflict.

Willcox, 24, created the 009-scale military trench railway layout in 2018 to mark the centennial of the ending of World War One.

Called Amiens 1918—Tracks & Trenches, it remembers the battle of Amiens, one of the last major battles of the war.

Willcox’s layout is set during the battle. It depicts a recaptured artillery battery that has become an Allied field headquarters and supply depot.

A narrow-gauge field railway serves the troops, using a mixture of British, U.S. and French locomotives and captured German rolling stock.

The layout is the result of his interest in railways and military history. Through it, he wanted to combine both interests.

He started construction of the 2 by 4-foot layout in the spring of 2017, with the aim of getting the layout finished for the start of 2018, ready for the commemorations.

  

Watch a video of this amazing layout here. 

See more photos on Willcox’s Facebook page. (Scroll down a ways.)

Willcox isn’t the only modeller making war-themed layouts. Find more here.

For other posts on this blog about railways and war, click here.

Information and some photos from Model Rail magazine. 

Callum with his layout. 

Week of Remembrance: Britain's Railways During World War Two

It will soon be Remembrance Day (Nov.11), also known in the U.S. as Veteran’s Day.

When we think of Remembrance Day, we usually remember the men and women who fought, were wounded and who died while serving in the armed forces.

We don't normally think of those who also made a valuable contribution to the war effort in World War II—those who worked for railways.

During this year's Week of Remembrance, the CP Rail M & M blog is highlighting the men and women who kept the trains running in England during that war.

Keeping a railway running is hard enough in normal times; it is extremely difficult when the enemy is bombing rail lines, trains, stations and shops.

As is pointed out in the BBC TV program British Railways in World War Two (see links below), one of the Luftwaffe’s “main objectives was to cripple Britain’s railways, and so paralyze the movement of troops, raw materials and munitions. Suddenly, every railway worker in Britain found themselves on the firing line.”

It was a costly war for the railways, in terms of men and material. During the war, 395 railway staff were killed and 2,444 injured by enemy action. About 450 locomotives were destroyed or damaged, along with many pieces of rolling stock and other infrastructure.

Says author Michael Williams in the book Steaming to Victory: How Britain's  Railways Won The War of the men and women who worked for Britain’s railways: "Their courage and sheer hard work in getting trains  moving again after the bombs had fallen was legendary."

Williams praises all who kept the trains running, noting that "the bravery of people who kept the rains running during the Blitz was all the more impressive since railway operating staff in one respect worked under worse conditions than the armed forces."

Men fighting in battle, he notes, would only be at the front line a number of days before beling relieved. "This was never the case with the railways, whose staff kept passengers, troops and strategic supplies moving day after day, regardless or weather, air raids or anything else that could go wrong."

Many railway staff, he says, "worked and died under combat conditions."

As if this were not enough, they could return home after a long, perilous shift to find their house had been bombed and their family killed or injured.

Meantime, the shops had to keep locomotives and rolling stock in running condition, despite being under attack.

When the war was ending, then Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the men and women of the railways: 

"Results such as the railways have achieved are only won by blood and sweat. I express gratitude to every railwayman who has participated in this great transport effort contributing so largely to final victory."

Other Links

1. BBC TV British Railways In World War Two. ( A four part series on YouTube.)
2. From Rail News: Seventy Years Ago: Railways At War.
3. British National Railway Museum: Rail Story of Victory in Europe.
4. A Bristolian Train Driver Recalls World War Two.

Other Week of Remembrance posts in this series

2013: The Canadian Pacific Railway's "Angel of Victory" Memorials.
2013 II: A War Memorial on a Model Railroad Layout.
2012: Canadian Railway Troops in World War One. 

Week of Remembrance II: A War Memorial on a Model Railroad Layout

Joe Laroche's cenotaph scene, with roof of
waiting room removed for viewing.

Earlier, I posted about the CPR's "Angel of Victory" memorial, for the 2013 Week of Remembrance. Now for a look at how one modeller has added a cenotaph to a model railroad.

Joe Laroche is a skilled modeller and a member of the Selkirk, Man. model railroad club. He built the station for the club's layout, and added the cenotaph scene outside the station.

His station scene is similar to what the CPR did with its memorial outside of its stations in Vancouver and Winnipeg, and inside its station in Montreal.

Joe used the Walther's Union Station kit to make his flat-style station for the Selkirk club. For the memorial, he used military figures mounted on a plinth.

I have not been able to find examples of other model railroads with war memorials. At least two British manufacturers sell war memorial kits, though.

The Canadian Pacific Railway's "Angel of Victory" Memorials

When the Great War ended, towns and cities across Canada began building memorials to honour the over 60,000 Canadians killed in that conflict.

In addition to the national, provincial and other civic memorials, there were a number of private memorials created by companies to honour fallen employees.

Angel of Victory in Vancouver.

Among then was the Canadian Pacific Railway, which created the "Angel of Victory" (sometimes called "Winged Victory"), a monument to the 1,115 CPR staff killed in that war.

Three copies were made of the monument, created by Montreal sculptor Coeur de Lion McCarthy. They were placed outside CPR stations in Vancouver in 1921, Winnipeg in 1922 and Montreal in 1923.

Despite its name, there is nothing especially victorious about the monument, which shows a sad and stoic angel carrying away a limp, dead soldier.

It's a subtle statement about the waste of war, a lament for the loss of so many lives.

In Winnipeg. 

In this regard, it is similar to Canada's greatest World War One memorial at Vimy Ridge in France, which is more a monument to sacrifice than a celebration of victory.

(The Vimy Ridge memorial was said to have been Hitler's favorite World War One memorial, and he went to great lengths to ensure its safety after the Nazis captured France in the Second World War. Read that fascinating story in the Toronto Star.)

Of the three CPR memorials, the one in Montreal has fared the best since it is inside the station. The copies in Vancouver and Winnipeg are beginning to show the wear of the decades.

(The Vancouver version made that city's list of top 10 endangered historical sites in 2009.)

In Montreal. Note this version still has
the original crown in the angel's hand.

Of the ones in Vancouver and Winnipeg, only the one in Vancouver is still in its original location. Both are missing the original crown, which the Montreal version still has in the angel's hand.

The Winnipeg version was moved after the CPR sold its station; it now is outside Deer Lodge Hospital (which serves veterans).

The tablet on the monuments says:

"To commemorate those in the service of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company whom at the call of King and Country left all that was dear to them, endured hardship, faced danger and finally passed out of sight of men by the path of duty and self sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others may live in freedom. Let those who come after see to it that their names are not forgotten."

Click here to see how modeller Joe Laroche incorporated a war memorial into the Selkirk, Man. Model Railroad Club layout.

Read about Canadian Railway Troops in World War One here.

Original location in Winnipeg.
with the crown.

Thanks to Montreal in Pictures, West End Dumplings, Vancouver Sun and others.

Canadian troops sit under the Angel of
Victory in Montreal during WW 2.

A close-up view.

Week of Remembrance: Canadian Railway Troops in World War One

Canadian Railway Troops working on tracks
near the front line.

It’s the week of remembrance here in Canada—the week leading up to November 11 when Canadians remember those who fought and died in this country’s wars.

Among those who served in World War One were 19,000 men in the Canadian Corps of Railway Troops. These troops were responsible for the laying, repair, maintenance and operation of railway lines in France and Belgium.

While much attention is focused on those who fought in the battles of that war (and deservedly so), less attention has been paid to those who made the fighting possible by making sure that soldiers got the ammunition, food and other supplies they needed to fight the war. Among the most important were the railway troops.

Troops take the train back from the front.

Railway troops came from all parts of Canada, and most had railway experience; the first troops were recruited from the ranks of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which supplied 500 experienced workers. The first of the troops arrived in France in 1915, at the request of the British War Office. The railway troops were still there in 1918 when the Armistice was signed.

During the war, railway troops laid lines on the heels of advances, such as at Vimy Ridge where 60 miles of narrow gauge track was laid. Ammunition was brought up, and casualties taken back. At Cambrai tanks were brought forward via rail; at Canal du Nord 2,000 tons of rations a day were brought to soldiers in the trenches.

Canadian troops and German prisoners send the
wounded back from Vimy on the train.

Altogether, the Canadian Railway Troops laid all of the narrow gauge and 60 percent of the regular gauge tracks on the western front. In 1917-18 alone they laid 1,404 miles of light gauge and 1,169 miles of broad gauge tracks.

Although the conditions were less than ideal, laying and maintaining track on the Western Front was similar to conditions in Canada’s frontier regions (except for people shooting at them, of course). In the Canadian west it was common to build temporary lines and bridges and deal with unusual and unique circumstances and terrain.

Bending rail.

As A. MacDougall noted in a memorandum proposing a Canadian railway unit: “It would seem that the experience thus gained [in Canada] in the operation of lines over temporary structures and with irregular and incomplete roadbed would be in a large measure analogous to conditions likely to be met with in keeping up communication with an army advancing over a country in which the enemy had wrecked existing structures and partially demolished the road bed.”

Although the troops were non-combants, and did not receive military training, many were killed and wounded while laying tracks or repairing lines. Added to the danger was that while regular troops could shelter in trenches, the railway troops worked out in the open where they could be observed by the enemy. A total of 483 Canadian Railway Troops died during the war, while 1,383 were wounded.

Wounded heading back by train. 

Unlike other units, which were maintained as militia units when the war ended, the units that made up the Canadian Railway Troops were disbanded at the war’s end. As a result, their service has largely been forgotten. Forgotten, too, is the important role they played—and the sacrifices they made—in the success of Allied operations on the western front.

Sources: Sinews Of Steel: Canadian Railway Troops On The Western Front, 1914-1918, Major George Jager, CD, and Peter Broznitsky, Canadian Railway Troops. Photos from various sources, including the Canadian War Museum.

Cap badge, 12th battalion,
Canadian Railway Troops