Keeping the War Moving Railways of the Great War with Michael Portillo

World War I was a railway war.

I'm going to find out

how the railways helped to precipitate a mechanised war,

defined how it was fought,

conveyed millions to the trenches,

and bore witness to its end.

I've taken to historic tracks,

to rediscover the locomotives and wagons

of the war that was supposed to end all war.

And to hear the stories of the gallant men and women

who used them in life and in death.

I'm travelling through Britain and Northern Europe,

tracing the railway's role at every stage of the First World War.

By the middle years of the fighting,

the railways serving the 80 or so miles of the Western Front under British command

were creaking.

Back in Blighty,

the home network was struggling to cope with the demands of total war.

To sustain morale and to stand a chance of victory,

Britain had to get its railways on track.

Today, I'm getting hands-on experience

of the narrow tracks and trains

that kept supplies flowing to the front line...

-Ready, lift.

-Whoa!

..uncovering the story of the war's forgotten railway poet...

"Blasphemer, braggart and coward all..."

..It's quite strong stuff, isn't it?

..and commemorating the many soldiers' lives

lost in a horrific railway accident on British soil.

It was a disaster almost waiting to happen,

and it happened here on that fateful Saturday morning.

I'll pay homage at the site of the tragic Quintinshill disaster,

visit North Eastern Railway Headquarters,

and take to narrow-gauge tracks in Staffordshire.

I'll hear the story of the Bath Railway Poet

before crossing the Channel

to discover how the railways fed millions of men in the trenches.

So far on my journey,

I've learned how Britain faced up to a munitions crisis in 1915.

But no sooner was one problem solved,

than another reared its head.

It wasn't just that too few shells were leaving the factories,

many of those that did were slow to reach the Front,

tied up in logistical bottlenecks.

Britain might have lost the war

had it not recruited practical men of business.

The biggest problem-solver of all

came from the railways, from his office in York.

I'm on the trail of one of the First World War's forgotten leaders.

His name was Eric Geddes, and in 1914,

he was the Deputy General Manager of the North Eastern Railway.

Chris Phillips from the University of Leeds has researched

how the war took his glittering railway career

in an unexpected direction.

What kind of man was Eric Geddes?

He was a man with a lot of drive, a lot of energy.

He was a self-made man, really,

he chose to actually go to America to make his fortune

and he actually got his first introduction to the railway business

working as a hand on one of the big four railroads in America

After gaining further railway experience in India,

in 1904, Geddes returned to Britain.

He joins the North Eastern Railway,

he's put on a traffic apprenticeship scheme

and he rises through the ranks at a rapid rate.

By 1911, he's the deputy general manager,

he's the highest paid railway official in Britain,

and his office is in this building here.

Britain's railway companies were huge and successful businesses.

By the time Geddes joined the NER,

it was pioneering modern management techniques,

gathering statistics to find ways to slash costs and boost profits.

And this is the historic boardroom of the North Eastern Railway.

-Gives you an idea of the grandeur of those companies in those days.

-Absolutely.

The Liberal politician, David Lloyd George,

believed that men of industry could be an asset to the war effort.

In 1915, he invited Geddes

to join the newly-created Ministry of Munitions.

Is Geddes a success in his munitions role?

Very much so, in the year before the Battle of the Somme,

the munitions supply is increased exponentially,

and Geddes is one of the main reasons for that.

He's actually knighted for the work that he does

with the Ministry of Munitions prior to the Battle of the Somme.

In preparation for the "big push" on the Somme,

shells were produced in phenomenal numbers.

But as the battle got under way, the transport system began to buckle.

Let's have some tea.

Outside the key town of Amiens,

there's a tailback of around 18 miles of trains,

awaiting railheads to unload their ammunition.

The problem is lack of coordination.

The supply networks have been completely decentralised,

so all of the different modes of transport that the British are using

don't actually talk to each other.

They need to get one man in to take control over the entire network,

from the docks to the front line.

To put this right, Geddes himself was given sweeping powers,

unprecedented for a civilian on the battlefield.

Effectively, he becomes Haig's personal transport adviser

and he joins the senior command at GHQ.

He's given the honorary rank of Major-General

to reflect his position within the hierarchy,

and he sets about effectively coordinating

the entire transport network.

Geddes drew on all his railway expertise.

He collected data, demanded desperately-needed railway equipment

and hundreds more skilled operators

and improved communication between docks, roads, railways and canals.

How would you assess his success at the Western Front?

In 1916, the British struggled to supply one battle,

which was the Battle of the Somme.

In 1917, they managed to supply four,

all of them consuming ammunition on a scale that simply dwarfed

what was available at the Battle of the Somme.

Sir Douglas Haig said that the First World War was about three things,

it was men, munitions and movement - they were his "Three Ms".

Kitchener provided the men, Lloyd George provided the munitions,

but it was Sir Eric Geddes that provided the movement

After the war, Geddes was made the first head

of the newly-created Ministry of Transport

the government department where some 70 years later,

I was a junior minister.

By my time in the 1980s,

diesel and electric locomotives

had conquered steam on Britain's railways.

And that development could trace its roots back to the First World War.

Massive locomotives belching fire and smoke

did an excellent job transporting men and guns to the Continent,

but they were too big, noisy and visible

to work across the muddy plains close to the Front.

What the army needed was something quieter, lighter and slimmer.

As part of his 1916 transport revolution,

Sir Eric Geddes recommended that lightweight, portable narrow-gauge railways

be adopted across the Western Front.

Today, these scaled-down trains and tracks

can be seen at the Apedale Valley Light Railway in Staffordshire,

where they've been preserved by the Moseley Railway Trust.

Phil Robinson is its chairman.

Phil, we're surrounded by the trappings of narrow-gauge railway.

-Narrow gauge was used extensively in World War I?

-Absolutely.

The main advantage is it's fairly lightweight

and it can supply individual guns

which is not something you could do for example

with the standard-gauge stuff.

It'll go around sharp corners, it'll dodge between buildings, you know,

in a shelled village for example, and, not only that,

the gradients that the narrow-gauge locomotives can cope with

are also much better than what you could do

with the standard-gauge system.

From the start of the war,

French and German troops used these nippy little trains

to bridge the gap between main line and the front line.

But British military planners had put their faith in motor vehicles.

The big problem with the lorries is

the weight of the lorry on the road was tearing the road surface up.

So the classical view of the First World War is lorries

up to their axles in mud. Men, horses struggling through the mud...

And the beauty of the narrow-gauge railway is

that it spreads the load across the rails

Something like this, you could drive a ten-tonne locomotive on this track

over the muddy part and it wouldn't sink in.

By the time Eric Geddes took the reins,

the churned up roads were causing major bottlenecks.

On his recommendation, Britain began taking light rail seriously,

ordering thousands of miles of 60-centimetre-gauge track.

-Ready? Lift!

-Whoa!

So, it's not too bad to handle with enough people.

-No, not bad at all.

-Right, let's put it down here.

'It came in prefabricated lengths...'

Lift!

'..meaning it could be put together

'and taken apart again just like a train set.'

And then you just have to bolt the track together.

Yes, just bolt fish plates

and then you can immediately drive a locomotive on this.

By December 1917, 700 miles of these tracks were in use

carrying shells,

water supplies, wounded men

even King George V on a battlefield tour.

To haul these loads, specially-built small-scale locomotives were needed.

This little loco here, although it doesn't look very big,

it looks more like a toy,

it'll actually pull 200 tonnes of goods along on the flat.

So, compared with a modern truck, it's actually pretty powerful

despite the fact it's such old technology.

Now, that is remarkable. So, these were a great success?

Absolutely they were.

They probably had something in excess of 800 steam locomotives

all of this same 60-centimetre gauge.

But when steam locomotives got too close to the front line,

the smoke and steam could be a deadly giveaway to the enemy.

So, petrol engines, then in their infancy,

were also brought into play.

Lighter, cleaner and quieter, they also had other benefits.

Of course, the big disadvantage of the steam locomotive

-is the length of time it takes to get ready.

-Yeah.

The beauty of the internal combustion engine is that

it's ready almost instantaneously.

-Shall we have a go at that?

-Sure.

-Ready?

-Yep.

Go.

Yeah! So, quite a bit faster than a steam engine.

It was the first time that internal combustion

had been used on any scale on the rails.

And all sorts of engines were soon available.

Now, this one is armoured.

That means you can take it to more exposed areas

where the armour plating will at least give you some protection

against people shooting at you.

And, happily for me,

petrol engines are simpler to operate than steam.

-Hello, Selwyn.

-Hello.

So, how does one drive this thing?

What you've got up here is a brake on this wheel here,

so you have to nurse the throttle a little bit,

which that lever by your left hand.

That's it, you've got it.

So, the clutch like on a car.

Push the clutch down,

select first gear which is that way,

and then very gently, release the clutch.

And we're off.

The First World War light rail experiment

proved that internal combustion was a railway technology worth watching.

After the war, more economical diesel versions were developed,

and were soon being used on the main railway network.

A locomotive like this

helped to supply the front line

and helped Britain to win the War.

But the move from steam to the internal combustion engine

also pointed the way for the modern railway.

At the outset of the war, the railways on the home front

did their best to maintain normal service for civilian travellers.

But it was impossible not to notice that things had changed.

Trains were packed with troops,

stations were the scene of emotional farewells

and railway staff witnessed it all first-hand.

"Oh, Mr Porter, what shall I do?" The person who carried your suitcase

could sometimes be a man to confide in,

so that apart from baggage,

porters also picked up stories, histories and emotions.

I'm in Bath to meet Susan Sawyer,

the descendant of a railway porter

who found creative inspiration in the war.

Sue, your great grandfather, Henry Chappell,

was a porter here at Bath station,

but what was his main claim to fame?

Well, he wrote a poem in August 1914.

That poem would became very famous, was published,

put into several languages,

and was posted in many stations throughout England.

Do you think there was a connection

between the two things he chose to do in his life?

I think so. He always said it gave him his inspiration to write.

By August 1914, from his vantage point in Bath, Henry Chappell

would have sensed a change in the national mood.

As the first troop trains jolted along the tracks,

waved on by the crowds,

the newspapers were full of shocking stories

of German atrocities in Belgium.

Amid this fevered atmosphere,

Henry Chappell picked up his pen to write The Day.

"You boasted the Day, and you toasted the Day

"And now the Day has come

"Blasphemer, braggart and coward all..."

-It's quite strong stuff, isn't it?

-It is, yes.

"..You spied for the Day, you lied for the Day

"And woke the Day's red spleen

"Monster, who asked God's aid Divine

"Not all the waters of the Rhine

"Can wash your foul hands clean."

Who's this is directed against?

-The Kaiser.

-And did the Kaiser know about it?

He did read it, apparently.

-And?

-He was furious.

Do you think that this is part of that movement

at the early stage of the war,

stirring people up against the enemy, lifting the national morale?

Quite possibly. It was what he saw on a daily basis,

from talking to people on the station,

listening to what their conversations were, and so on.

The poem was printed in the Daily Express

and became an overnight sensation.

In 1918, Chappell's collected works were published

by which time he was mixing

with some of Britain's most eminent writers.

He knew Kipling, that's for sure,

and I know that Kipling came on the train up to Bath to meet him

and shake hands with him after he'd written the poem The Day.

So, if The Day was really rather well known in its day,

why is it that we don't know about him today?

Well, I think he was a very self-effacing man,

he was offered the job of station master here

and he turned it down, because he wanted to stay in contact

with what he saw as his source material for his poetry.

The railway's own war poet

illuminates how many people felt at the outbreak of war.

Our view today has been conditioned by the harrowing verse

written by other poets,

by soldiers on the front line, like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

By spring 1915, British morale was flagging.

In Turkey, the Gallipoli campaign had got off to a bad start.

Then on the 7th May, the cruise liner the Lusitania

was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland,

killing 1,198 people.

And then, a fortnight later,

Scotland's railways were the scene of another tragedy.

By 1915, the railways carried an enormous burden,

not least at home.

With unprecedented demand from civilians, soldiers and casualties,

fuel, freight and munitions,

and with the trains so overcrowded, it's perhaps not surprising

that at that time, Britain suffered

its most devastating railway accident,

when the nation was reeling from the death toll at the Front.

Men boarding troop trains to join the action,

must have felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

But when the 7th Royal Scots Territorial Battalion

entrained for Liverpool en route to Gallipoli,

they could have no idea how their journey

on the West Coast Main Line would end.

I'm retracing their route with author Adrian Searle.

What sort of train were the troops travelling on?

It was an antiquated train, to put it politely.

Formed of old Great Central railway coaches,

they were wooden bodied, wooden framed

and crucially they were illuminated by gas cylinders beneath the floors.

Pushed at any speed, they were a hazard.

These outdated coaches had been pressed into service

to meet the war's demands.

And to get the troops to Liverpool on time,

the driver was doing express train speeds

as he approached the English border.

The signals were clear ahead, but unbeknownst to him,

at Quintinshill signal box,

his path had just been blocked.

The local train, coming from Carlisle was shunted across the tracks,

onto what one might call the wrong line

because there was no other room to put it,

to make way for express trains coming up from the south

and the troop train ran head-long into it.

So, the train carrying the troops moving south,

hits the local train. What happens?

Well, because of the venerable state

of the fast-moving troop train,

it simply splinters.

You have this terrible, sort of, storm of flying timbers

and bits of steel flying about.

You might say as deadly as anything an enemy force

could throw at our forces on a foreign battlefield.

And this disaster was about to become a catastrophe.

Because hurtling north, towards this carnage,

was the London-to-Glasgow express, travelling at 50mph.

An express from the south ploughs into the wreckage,

what does that cause to happen?

The troop train and the front of the express train burst into flames

and before long the whole pile of wreckage is burning.

These soldiers, those trapped inside the wreckage of their troop train,

were now being burnt to death.

Their comrades who had not been seriously injured,

and had not been killed, did heroically arise to the occasion

and tried to get them out, but it is almost impossible.

230 people were killed that day,

214 of whom were men of the 7th Royal Scots.

At the time, the tragedy was blamed

on the negligence of the two signalmen on duty.

It was found they'd broken various railway regulations,

and they were jailed for culpable homicide.

But Adrian has his own theory about what happened.

So, here, we're looking down on the scene of the accident

Yes, and it's pretty much as it would have looked 100 years ago,

at the time of the crash.

The signal box has gone,

that was to the left-hand side of layout here,

but apart from that, it's pretty much the same,

the passing loops are still intact.

And the passing loops are fundamental to understanding the accident.

They are indeed, yes.

They were both occupied by freight trains

at the time the crash occurred.

With this wartime traffic clogging the system,

the local had to be left on the main line.

But that doesn't explain why the troop train

was given the signal to approach,

while the local stood just yards from the box.

It's too simple to say that the signalman simply forgot

the train was there, he was an experienced, capable hand.

The strong suggestion is that he was probably suffering

from the effects of an epileptic seizure that morning,

which both the Caledonian railway, his employers,

and the government were not keen to broadcast at that time,

it would have caused all sorts of questions to be asked.

We'll never know for sure why the signalman made his fatal error.

But Adrian believes that with wartime morale already low,

the authorities were keen to pin the blame on him and his colleague,

ignoring other factors.

That troop train should not have been running at that speed

given its venerable condition.

You had the heavy wartime usage, the extra freight trains,

the troop trains, but the passenger trains were still being operated

to peacetime schedules. It was madness.

Too many trains, it was a disaster almost waiting to happen,

and it happened here on that fateful Saturday morning.

While Britain's railways struggled to adjust to the challenges of wartime,

over in France, the pressures on the small web of lines

serving the Front were almost unimaginable.

And there was one cargo the Tommies anticipated with relish.

Napoleon once said that an army marches on its stomach.

For the British Army, bogged down in the trenches,

pounded by artillery, called upon to charge the barbed wire

and the machine guns, good military order depended

on a steady flow of nutritious food.

From the ports on the French coast,

the railways formed the backbone of a complex supply chain.

One vital link was at Abancourt,

a junction serving the Somme Valley

and home to a vast British stores depot.

At its peak, the place would have been buzzing

with men unloading supplies and trains coming to and fro.

But today, all that remains is this sleepy station.

Geoff Clarke, a war studies scholar,

is going to help me to bring its history to life.

So, what do we have here?

What we have here is the basics of a soldier's ration.

So, bread, corned beef in this case,

bacon, onion, potato, cheese, I take it, biscuits -

quite a nice-looking biscuit that! - oatmeal and jam.

How many calories was a soldier at the Front getting?

Basically about 4,100.

By comparison with what we're recommended to eat today

4,000 seems a lot.

Yeah, unless you're really doing heavy labour

which is what these guys were doing.

They were digging, they were building barbed-wire entanglements,

they were just existing in wet, cold conditions.

It's what the medics of the day and the scientists recommended

as the kind of diet that you needed to actually survive

in those kinds of conditions.

But supplying all this to the men at the Front, day after day,

was no mean feat.

At the height of the British operation on the Continent,

between '14 and '18, how many men were we trying to feed?

2.5 million?

2.5 million British men?

Yep, and Canadian, and Australian, New Zealand and so on.

-That is an amazing logistical challenge.

-Absolutely.

How was it met?

The railway was absolutely critical.

The depot here was feeding over 800,000 men on a regular basis.

At its peak, it actually fed 1.2 million men daily.

21, 22 trains of rations a day,

these go forward to the railheads,

and at that point, it tends to go to road.

There are places where it goes on the narrow-gauge railway to the divisional dump,

from there, they issue it to battalion transport,

and that is horses. That goes forward to the battalion,

and after that, it's carried forward to the men.

The horses, too, needed vast quantities of food,

around twice the bulk of the rations for the men.

Feeding the trenches was a British success.

Unlike the Germans,

whose supply chain crumbled in the final months of the war,

British soldiers rarely went hungry.

What else did the British Army do

to help sustain the morale of the Tommy?

They kept them in touch with folks at home.

There was a very good postal system,

it used the supply-train network to move the bags around,

Basically, you could get a letter from home to the Front

somewhere between 24 and 72 hours.

There were little things like food parcels,

it was a great day if you received a cake

and you'd share that with your mates.

Certainly, the more well connected

were receiving pheasants and salmon

from the family estates that were coming forward.

Must have been extraordinary to be in such terrible conditions

and yet, so in touch with their home?

Oh, yes. But, of course, they were so close to home.

Certainly, if you lived in the south of England,

you could be home within 24 hours of leaving the front line,

and again, it was the leave trains that enabled that to happen.

Keeping two and a half million men and hundreds of thousands of horses

in France and Belgium fed,

equipping the front line with shells and bullets,

and getting men home on leave,

all of these were challenges on an extraordinary scale.

Had the supply chain failed, no amount of gallantry

in the trenches could have staved off defeat.

The crisis required one who was a railwayman to his fingertips.

Eric Geddes is one of those who won the war.

Next time, I'll be learning how the war fundamentally changed British society...

-Women wearing the trousers.

-Yeah, quite.

..about the extraordinary exploits of Belgian spies...

They used several different methods.

-You know the pole...

-Pole vaulting?

-Yes, pole vaulting.

..and how the end of the war marked the beginning

of the decline of the railways.

In future, road transport would become more important

than rail transport as a source of army logistics.