WW1 Reserved Occupations, Railways & Tunnelling(Mining) (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Thursday, August 16, 2012, 22:24 (4488 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

Hi Roger, thanks for that, very interesting. As expected the Long Long Trail site has good references wrt the French railways supplying the lines from the ports.
http://www.1914-1918.net/ASC_Railroutes.htm

I was thinking more of the narrowgauge lines at the Front itself.
http://www.1914-1918.net/lightrail.htm
I see now as you correctly say these only operated towards the latter part of the War.
Your comments re rail working in the UK are very interesting, it's hard to imagine this was a time where road travel was still virtually nonexistent and the rails (quite sensibly) did all the real work. Thanks for mentioning Hook; I've been thro it a few times when I was working not so far away at Farnborough (another area that grew hugely during WW1), and I did wonder why little Hook had such a large station. It's relative proximity to the Army areas of Larkhill(Royal Artillery) & Salisbury Plain were an influence too no doubt.

I've greatly enjoyed watching reruns of the Great British Railway Journeys programmes, I imagine you may have too. This episode discusses the "secret" new port that was built near Sandwich/Folkestone in 1916 as the existing ports couldn't cope. It was also the first use of rollon-rolloff railway ferries, so trains of Army supplies could quickly cross the channel without laborious & timeconsuming unloading & loading at the ports. Some great old filmclips in this excellent report, starts abt 4minutes into this programme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcAGFZrYEiA&feature=relmfu

http://www.open-sandwich.co.uk/town_history/richborough_port.htm

Re the Miners, yes since the Middle Ages & Crusades Foresters were "underminers for the King". As usual for WW1 info see http://www.1914-1918.net/tunnelcoyre.htm