Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
It all really comes down to the tracks. As has been mentioned in many places, including canon sources, tracks are often pulled up by locals after the steel. Fires can rip though a track causing untold damage to the wooden sleepers, or at least warping the tracks enough to potentially cause derailment.
Security as mentioned is also a big issue. If units are having trouble securing their fields, how are they expected to secure hundred of miles of track as well. Yes, a field of potatoes is more concentrated value than a steel track, but there's still value.
Given the vast distances tracks cover, and some rather remote locations it goes through, they're prime targets for ambushes. A train forced to stop because of a fallen log, missing section of rail, etc is a prime target for marauders bent on stealing whatever cargo is on board. Yes you can mount troops on the train with machineguns, mortars, artillery and so forth, but as has been illustrated in history, a determined attacker definately has the advantage as long as they've planned ahead and set up in a suitable location.
Rail in my view will be very important for the reconstruction of the country, but it's going to be near useless early on. Maybe by 2010 when some order has been restored, and infrastructure rebuilt, but certainly not in 2001.
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Who is going to move what, where, and with what fuel? The trucks are being used on the fronts, the factories are nuked, the ability to pump oil and refine it gone.
During the U.S. Civil War Scout trains were used. I had a flat bed filled with stone to detonate torpedoes (mines), then flat cars with troops armed with cannon, gatlings, calliopes, and rifles, the locomotive, fuel car, water car, freight car with rations and such then a caboose. Sometime even another locomotive on the other end facing the other way to hasten a retreat.
These scout locomotives would run ahead of the troop or supply train to see that the rails were open and good. A company of Rifle infantry to secure and clean rails. Sometimes even gandydancers, rail, and ties to repair the track.