The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-08-15
SIEGE RAILWAYS.

| Elaborate Preparations for Reducing
the Fortifcations of a Beleaguered
Town.
Our Regulations for Military Rail-
ways state that in the stores for a
| unit of siege train, consisting of thir-
! ty guns (such as was dispatched to
| South Africa in November laSD, the
| following plant for about five and a half
miles Of single track eighteen-inch
gauge railway is also provided-namely,
| three small tank locomotives, twenty
| five trolleys each mounted upon two
| four wheeled boges, including one troll
| ley specially adapted for moving heavy
guns; 20,333 rails, each eighteen feet
| long and weighing tWenty-four pounds
| to the yard; thirty switches, fifteen
| crossovers, 1000 light steel sleepers,
! $500 pairs of fishplates, together with a
large stock of platelayers TOOLS one or
two portable turntables and other mi
nor accessories
However, when the siege train left
these shores last November, the forego-
Ing plant, to constitute what Is termed
a siege railway" did not accompany
the heavy five-inch and four-inch guns
and six-inch howtzers. And from this
omission 1t Is to be assumed that the
siege railway, supposed to be ready in
store either existed only upon paper or,
for some reason or other, was not avail
able. In the then probable contingency
of Pretoria and Johannesburg having to
be besieged, steps were Immediately
taken to repair the deficiency, and a
contract for the plant, such as has Just
been described, was placed with a pri-
waite engineering firm located at Stoke
upon-Trent. This firm was allowed
only fifteen days in which to execute
the order, but, nevertheless they man
aged to accomplish it in ten.
AS we are all aware, affairs have
turned out so fortunately that no por-
ton of the siege train has to be requisi-
toned in respect Of a regular sit
down siege. though the heavy guns,
split up into small batteries of two or
three pieces, have proved of the greatest
utility in ousting the enemy from some
of his strong natural positions
At the present juncture, however,
there seems every probability that. al
though the British army has not been
called upon to undertake a siege in
South Africa, 1t may soon have to do so
somewhere in China. 1t is extremely
fortunate, therefore, that we at last pos
sess properly equipped siege train,
and that the same should be now so ad-
vantageously posted, If it is required to
dispatch 1t in haste to the far east In
this paper, though we are only con-
cerned with the railroad portion of the
material
A siege railway becomes divided into
two systems, q railway and tramway.
The railway commences at the general
engineer parks. These main parks-it
is convenient to have but one of each
should be out of sight and range of the
fortress besieged. and be located as
near as circumstances will permit to
the railhead of the ordinary railway
communication. From the outlying
works of the defence, nine thousand or
ten thousand yards ought to be the
minimum distance for a park contain
ing gunpowder or other combustibles.
From these two parks the siege railway
supplies In due course the intermediate
depots of each arm Most probably
there would be more than one main
line of approach, and on each a depot
connected with the general parks and
the siege works by line of the rail-
way. These depots might be about
three thousand yards from the fortress,
out of sight, and each should contain
supplies for one siege day-that is,
twenty-four hours. They are the Rug
bys or Granthams of the miniature sys-
tenn, in that all trains stop there to un-
load and load again; for from them are
supplied the trench depots, which are
not fixed permanently in position. but |
advance with the progress of the attack. |
AT the trench depots the railway stops, |
or rather proceeds as a tramway So |
far locomotive engines have been |
worked on the line from the artillery |
and engineer parks but now that the J
track is about to enter the zone Of fire