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Old 06-28-2019, 08:07 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic View Post
I'll add my voice to the section about the road network.
The quality of any roads in different areas of Poland can vary from average to well below poor.
Drivers in northern Poland generally avoid puddles on the road when they see them, the attitude is that you never know how deep or wide the pothole is, so you go around it to avoid damaging your vehicle.
I saw potholes repaired by simply dumping rubble in them and then covering them over with asphalt. In other places they were repaired by pouring concrete into the hole or by using paving bricks. Over time the area around the repaired section degraded to the point where you no longer had a hole in the road but a higher section that was effectively now a speedbump (or sump remover depending on how low the vehicle was!)

So it's not just the quality but also the consistency of the roads that you have to worry about. Saying that some road repairs were 'slapdash' is probably being kind.
The road quality & consistency did appear to improve the further south I went, I vaguely remember the roads in Krakow where decent, far better than many of the roads I saw in Warsaw and further north.
With several months of heavy traffic I believe most of the roads useful for the military will be severely degraded and only off-road capable vehicles will be able to use them.
About all I remember from the major roads in Poland when I was there was under construction. A lot of EU money going in there. I don't want to think what they were like in communist times! Postwar Bosnian roads were no joke either, and they did support heavy wheeled military traffic on a continuous basis.

The rail network was reasonably intact according to Going Home, but NATO, as mentioned in the document, wasn't set up to use rail in an offensive manner. Very few or no rail repair or operating units, no locomotives or rolling stock, no cargo handling units...
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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