Has anyone mention this before, it concerns

[PA. Dutchman]

Has anyone mention this before, it concerns the use of railroads as a weapon/equipment option?

I watched a documentary on the use of railroads by Germany as they advanced into Russia. The Russian rail lines were spread apart more than the standard German rail lines. In the documentary the German Army moved one side of the rails over physically to the width of their own locomotives and rail cars. It was said using width gages and moving one side of the rails they were able to adapt about 5,000 miles of track into Russia.

Later on they started transferring the loads to Russian trains they had begun to capture for their own use.

I have seen this documentary twice but have never read anything on any of the sites.

[phylo_roadking]

It rarely comes up as a topic on its own; more usually it appears inside threads dealing with logistics and supply trends, flow of resources etc..

[PA. Dutchman]

I was able to answer my own question. There are more links but this link gives a lot of information concerning the gages of the Soviet Railroad and the German gages.

Apparently the Russians had rail lines that went back to the Czar and their design and condition was poor. Germany had to build bridges and correct the gages of many lines to move supplies into Russia.

Russian benefited from the German invasion because they were sadly lacking decent railroads, even the Russian grade of coal was poor and was sometimes soaked in oil to get it to burn better.

This link gives plenty and there is more if you search.

http://www.feldgrau.com/dreichsbahn.html