German Railways in the East

[Der Alte Fritz]

The points of interest to take from this passage is
* The GTR had been the mainstay of the 1941 campaign and had comprised 3 Regiments with a total 60,000 tonnes capacity but the heavy use and poor roads and reduced it to a shadow of its former self by the end of 1941, so it was recalled to Germany and refitted. On return from Germany it was broken up and given to all the Armee Gruppen along the front. The 10,000 tonnes mentioned here seems very low to support the offensive, less than 1 AG would get in 1941 and certainly not enough to support 2 AG.
*Given that the distance from Rostov to Baku is 1600 km and from Rostov to Stalingrad 400km, the 2k of rails given to the FEDko seems small and the 3k given to the HBD would be taken up in repairing the destruction of the Soviets in the Don Basin. They must have counted on capturing significant lengths undamaged.
* The 50,000 men of the DRB must refer to across Russia because the HBD Rostov only had 4698 Germans on staff and the total German railway staff by 1.1.1943 of the HBDs was 65,000 Germans. Perhaps he does not count the Grau Eisenbahner of the FEDkos as DRB mannen.
* The 3717 trains sounds large but spread over more than 6 months it translates to only 20 trains a day which is in line with our previous calculations.

[Der Alte Fritz]

So what was the Soviet effort in 1942.

The German railway effort of July 1942 (as shown above) 229 trains from the GG and 9 from Transistra, total 238 of which 89 (40,050 tonnes) are economic/railway leaving
149 military trains crossing from the Reich plus around another 10 from Russian supply sources of food which breaks down into:
75 trains of supplies (33,750 tonnes)
84 trains of reinforcements (37,800 tonnes)
German trains carry 450 tonnes net.

The Soviets were loading 12,100 military freight wagons a DAY which translates to 202 trains of 120 axles and relates to Supplies and 30,570 economic wagons a day or 510 trains. Soviet troop movements are not recorded directly but the 40% fall in passenger traffic is probably balanced by military movements counted in the 'other freight' category at 21%. Applying this principal we might estimate:
202 trains of military freight
107 trains of troop movement
403 trains of economic activity being loaded a day
Given that Soviet trains are 120 axles and carry a net weight of 750-1,100 tonnes we arrive at the following estimate:

German........Soviet

Supplies.........33,750........151,500.......x 4.5
Troops...........37,800.........80,250........x 2.1
Economic.......40,500.........302,250......x 7.5 - this figure ignores internal Russian economic traffic which might add 31 extra trains or 13,950 tonnes making the ratio x 5.5

[Dann Falk]

As for Soviet troop movements, I can add something from my own research of the 64th Army.

Quoting from my July 1942 chapter:

"As individual units completed their movement preparations, they would have been sent off to their assigned railroad stations for entraining (loading). Provided that trains were at the station, the entraining process would normally proceed quickly. A pure troop train of just infantry and small arms could be loaded or unloaded quite rapidly. But a mixed train of heavy weapons, vehicles, supplies or other equipment could require 2-3 hours or more to load at a station under ideal conditions. Infantry can just carry their personal weapons, supplies, and equipment with them when they climb into a boxcar or a passenger car. But it’s another thing altogether to load artillery, trucks, tanks, or tractors onto a flatcar. A train station or loading ramp is the best way to load or unload heavy equipment.

It is known the 214 RD required 14 trains, of approximately 50 cars each, to carry all of it men, horses and equipment. The 29 RD required 15 trains, the 229 RD 14 trains.7 The 18, 112 and the 131 RDs would have needed a similar number of trains and rail cars to load. The HQ of the 64th Army with attached support units would have required another 20 trains or so. In all, the 64 Army would require at least 96 separate trains and 4800 rail cars to move its combat elements to the Stalingrad area.8 Even with this great effort, some army level supply, medical and support units would remain in the Tula area for several weeks awaiting transportation. They would not reach the army until late July or early August. General Chuikov complained that, some “units of the 229 RD and HQ Staff were particularly delayed in route and the last of their troop trains did not arrive in the Stalingrad area until July 23.”9

Entraining for 64 Army HQ would take place at the Maklets station. The 112 RD and 18 RD would entrain at Ryazan station and the 131 RD at Venev station. I’m forced to assume the three remaining divisions that had orders to move on the July 11, would have entrained near their training locations. The 29 RD would have entrained at or near Volovo station, the 214 RD at or near Uzlovaya station and the 229 RD at or near the Ryazan station. (See map #1?)

The army HQ would entrain at a rate of 3 echelons (trains) per day for the first two days and then 7 echelons every 24 hours until finished. The 18 RD would entrain at 5 echelons per day. The 112 RD and 131 RD would each entrain at 7 echelons per day. The 29, 214 and 229 RD would entrain at similar rates. So once started, the plan was for the 64 Army to be entraining at a rate of 43-47 trains per day. It would still take 3-4 days just to entrain the combat elements of the army. Support and medical units, supplies and spare parts would still have to wait until more trains were made available."

Note: the 64th Army at this time was composed of 6 Rifle Divisions, 18,29,112,131,214,229. The armies total strength was approximately 72,800 men.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Destroyed lifting and temporary bridge over the Don at Rostov, August 1942

[Der Alte Fritz]

Drawing of a Feldbahn Diesel shunter like in the previous picture

[Der Alte Fritz]

From the Organisational History of Organisation Todt

Organ Todt.png

[Der Alte Fritz]

X. Excellence
Diagram 8 comparative figures of the districts in percent in January 1943

At the end of the year 1942, which is operated by the German railway workers in the East route network with approx. 42,000 km reached its greatest extent. The German Reichsbahn itself comprised at that time the home area approx. 79000 km. The German Federal Railways operates around today. 31000 km. The percentage distribution of the network on the Gedob the RVDen and FEKdos shown in Figure 8 The eastern boundary of the operating points on 01/12/1942 can be seen from the map at Appendix 5. In Figure 6, the development of the route length of the 4 major RVDen Riga, Minsk, Kiev and Dnjepropetrowsk is shown. The investment value when operated by 5 RVDen railways has been calculated in the financial closure of the assets of the railway in the occupied eastern territories of the RVM for the 31.12.1942 with 9.5 billion RM. The performance and actual load of individual main lines increased to 60 to 70 trains in each direction within 24 hours. As a daily operating performance was released on 1 Januar 1943 636 500 train-km calculated (percentage of individual directorates see Figure 8).
The numbers of Train dispatchers increased, for example, in the district of Kiev
from 15.08.1942 to 29 trains
from 01.10.1942 to 89 trains
from 02.11.1942 to 78 trains
The train programme for the RVD Kiev saw in January 1943 for the front direction at the borders a total transfer target of 150 and a transfer target of 136 trains. During this time together 94 trains to the front from the Gedob, the RBD Königsberg and the RVD Riga were taken in the daily average of the RVD Minsk and handed over 87 trains on the eastern crossings to the FEKdos and RVD Kiev. The IV quarter of 1942 brought the largest transport performance in economic transports. In this period were promoted:

Direction west-east 557.192 t economic goods
In the inland transport of the eastern territories 2,400,980 t economic goods
Towards Germany 1,471,808 t economic goods
and 613.900 head of cattle

In the district of RVD Dnepropetrovsk 1942 59,000 cars were made available for economic traffic in October.
74
Of the total stock of the Deutsche Reichsbahn in standard gauge cars German and foreign types of 1 132000 piece found themselves in the Occupied Eastern Territories
on 01.01.1942 84,000 cars
on 01.06.1942 142,000 cars
on 12.01.1942 203,000 cars

The wagon turnaround time (note 26) rose in the east in September 1942 to 9.6 days versus 5.4 days in the home area of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the Ostbahn. The daily wagon provision was in the Gedob, the RVDen and FEKdos as it stood on 01.01.1943 16.637 item together. The comparative figures for the individual districts in Figure 8 show the proportion of this amount.
The car inventory benefited from the regauging operation repair workshops. As of July 1942 regauging construction trains and regauging squads were set up with the help of entrained or stationary t-200 wheel presses, the wheel disks of the removed broad-gauge wheelsets were pressed by the difference in measurement of the two gauges (1524 and 1435) or 8.9 cm inward. The individual directorates were involved with from 8.000 to 15.000 wagons in this action, their overall success with a total of approx. 42,000 car was specified.
These were primarily freight wagons, to a lesser extent also to Russian passenger cars, snow ploughs and other special vehicles. However, the converted gauge Russian wagons were not freely usable, since there was in Russia two variants for the standard track clearance (note 27) and 5 vehicle boundary lines (note 27) of which 3 for wagons in part considerably exceeded the extent of the German Railway Construction and Rules of Procedure. Part of the former broad gauge wagon was thus wider than the German vehicles had specially marked (triangle with circle) and are excluded from the transition to the Reich. The performance of the repair works were also notable in other fields, in the Riga and Kiev districts were from 01.6. until 01.10.1942 per 600 locomotives provided frost proofing. The servicing at the Carriage Works were not only achieved but at times even exceeded. However, the accumulation of repair of locomotives could not be dealt with in the Ost-EA W, so that part of the damaged locomotives had to be returned for repair to the Reich and long empty locomotive runs could not be avoided. It is therefore the construction of a new RA W for the maintenance of 500 locomotives in the western Ukraine in Rowno was planned. The Locomotive Park was at the turn of 1942/43, mainly in Ukraine through economic traffic extremely tight and had from 20.11.1942 to 10.01.1943 to 321 train locomotive and 110 shunting locomotives, which is an increase of 8.5% of the previous operational stock. The number of operational locomotives and for their distribution to the individual Directorate districts as it stood on 01.01.1943 is shown in column 3 of Figure 8. The utilization rate of the locomotives was in part very good. In the district of Kiev in November 1942 were found a peak performances of 9.000 km a month and a monthly average of all operational locomotives of 6.000 km

[Der Alte Fritz]

From Lexicon der Wehrmacht

Eisenbahnpioniere Regiment Nr.3
The III company: Bridge building efforts in the area of AG Sud
The III Company continued in South Russia, among others following bridges in status:

Makeshift and war bridge over the Don at Rostov

Date 2. August - 1. September 1942
Length of bridge 296 m
width of river 242 m
height of river 11 m
NUmber of supports 16
Length of the temporary bridge 120 m
Length of the war bridge 176 m
paid working hours ?

Makeshift bridges across the Bjelaja in Beloretschenskaja

Datum 16. Oktober - 8. November 1942
Länge der Brücke 176,75 m
Flußbreite 118 m
Flußtiefe 2,80 m
Anzahl der Unterstützen 11
Länge der Behelfsbrücke 102,27 m
Länge der Kriegsbrücke -
geleistete Einsatzstunden 114.700

The two battalion staffs were replaced by the railway pioneer staff 13 and the field train-battalion staff 22. On 7 December 1940 was the regimental staff then to Rekodeis West, also retaining its regimental leadership. On 10 December 1942 was the regimental headquarters for the railroad pioneer Brigade staff 1 and by the railway engineer battalion adjutant-staff 9 replaced. At about the same period, several steel construction trains of a large German companies came to the staff of the regiment. These were but a short time assigned to the staff of the Second Battalion. The regiment was used in the years 1942 to 1944 in South Russia. In the spring of 1943 the regiment was the Railway Construction Battalion 106 with a 5 Turkestan company and the entire machine zbV 1 assumed.

[Der Alte Fritz]

The attack on Stalingrad
The summer offensive of 1942 began on 28 6 from north to south, continuing initially in the direction of Voronezh, on the 6 7. which was taken On 15 7. was Millerowo, on 17 7. Kamensk, on 19 7. Wassilowsky and 25 7. Rostov captured. The end of 1941 the Russians improvised reconstruction of the railway bridge over the Don at Rostov which was blown up again. A single-track replacement bridge was only on 1 10 1943 brought into operation. As long as the Don was bridged by a cable car and LKW trucks. Up to 25 7. was practically the entire area west of the Don in German hands, secured to the east only by a few organizations. Within a month, the front was located more than 300 km from their initial position. The Russians had retreated on schedule. There was space but no decisive battles won.
The few tracks were largely emptied and thoroughly destroyed, all Railway bridges over the Donets among others Belaya Kalitwa 214 Kamenskaja and Woroshilowgrad the Tschir bridge at Parsehin and the Don bridge eastwards of Tschir had been blown up. The route Taganrog-Rostov was so badly damaged that its recovery practically amounted to a new construction 215 When, after the offensive began in the rear area extremely difficult operating and supply conditions occurred, so in Dnepropetrovsk was created a General of Transportation South Russia (Bevollmächtigte General des Transportwesen Südrußland) in September 1942 215.
This agency is formed in November 1942, to be the Wehrmacht Transport Command Ukraine (Wehrmachttransportleitung Ukraine) of the Authorized Representative General of Transportation South Russia (Bevollmächtigte General des Transportwesen Südrußland). On the railway side, a Higher Operation Command South Russia (Oberbetriebsleitung Südrußland) was established.
In assuming this was the last chance to prevent the Russian oil supply, the railway line Tichoretzkaja Stalingrad should be interrupted. This was not successful at the first attempt, Rather, the enemy met the German advance from the bridgehead of Zymlinskaja on this railway with considerable resistance 219 • The 1st Panzer Army reached then on 1.8 the railway line Tichoretzkaja-Salsk, as well as the 4 Panzer Army at Remontnaja. The bridges over the Manytsch and Sal had also been blown up.
The end of July there were supply problems with fuel and ammunition. On 23.7 took place at Army Group South in Stalino a meeting about the supply situation for the 6th Army, attended by the chief quartermaster of the armies of Army Group South and the Army High Command, the Quartermaster-General, representatives of the Organization Department and the Army Administration Office participated, this was the discrepancy between leadership and supply capabilities, open speech was needed without which the High Command could draw the  necessary conclusions.
On 25.8 the 16th Pz Div. reached the western bank of the Volga north of Stalingrad 222 Here were occupied two berths for railway ferries on this shore. Thus on the Volga were interrupted all western railway lines after Stalingrad. Between Hitler and Halder there had been clashes due to different assessment of the situation, at the end Halder on 24.9 from his post was removed. General ZEITZLER became his successor.

[Der Alte Fritz]

So this narrative does not change too much.
The Don bridge at Rostov is still the main supply route for both Armee Gruppen until end September at around 12 trains a day each, those running to Stalingrad go through Salsk to 4.Pz Armee. At this point the northern route is opened at 12 trains a day and the trains run as far as the Kalach.
The status of the main bridge at Rostov is confusing as one source is saying that there was a road bridge carrying trucks (for trans shipment) and a cable way and then a single track railway from October while the other source says that trains did not cross until Jan 1943.

Does anyone have a complete order of battle for both Armee Gruppe that lists which Eisenbahnpioniere and other construction troops were used for the offensive? The Lexicon der Wehrmacht seems to list Brigades 2 and 3 with the offensive with Eisebahn Regimenter Nr.2, with AG Sud and Eisenbahnpioniere Regimenter Nr.5 and 6 with with AG A.

[GregSingh]

More info about German field railway south of Don river, shown on the map in the earlier post.

Apparently there were up to 100 locomotives on those three main, narrow gauge lines (578km in total):
0-2-0T (6), 0-3-0T (2), 0-4-0T (29), 0-3-0 (24 - HF110C, 3 French 110PS, 35 - HF130C)
6.Eisb.Pi.Rgt. was identified in the area, with its 5th company stationed in a village Burazkij (Buratsky or Бурацкий) near Tschir rail station from August to November 42.

Sources:
Encyclopedia of narrow gauge railways of the former USSR
ЦАМО РФ Фонд 331

[Der Alte Fritz]

We have been trying to build up the EB OOB (Kodeis) for the Stalingrad campaign but most of the records are lost/destroyed but there was this entry:
From T78R398_H1_44_Units_lost_at_Stalingrad

3/EB Bau Btl 2 - a bridging unit
Feld EB Betr. Abt. 4 - unit running the field railway across the steppe
EB.Stw.Kp 180 - steelworks unit working on the bride
4/EB Pio. Rgt. (mot) 3 - EB Pioniere company
7/EB Pio. Rgt. 6 - EB Pioniere company

so some of your trains must have been run by Feld EB Betr. Abt. 4.

Also previous documents show that EB units were deployed by Kompanie and very muddled up, so that the Regimental staff just acted as control units and commanded who ever was in their area.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Another thorny issue that I have been wrestling with is the layout of the Soviet railway network. This is important because the German writers stress the variable track strength of the Soviet network and it is important to know the geographic layout of the network so that we know which parts the Germans were in.

"Soviet locomotive technology during industrialization 1928-1952" by J.N. Westwood has some clues:
p99 at a Party Plenum, resolution (ref TRUD 17 june 1931 p3 and ST no6 1931 p 10 to decide which future locomotives operate on which lines. They use the NKPS division into Group I, II and III lines. Group I lines had the proposed 23 ton engine, Group II lines the engines proposed were locomotives of the Eu type with 20 tonne axle load (Westwood makes the point that the Eu actually had a load of 17 tonnes) and one supposes that the Group III lines used the old O type with its 14 ton axle load.

Another part of the book concentrates on the introduction of the FD Heavy Freight Locomotive onto the railways in 1931 because this was a step up in axle weight compared to the old E and SO classes and the extra power of this big class of engines meant lots of broken couplings since the manual types were not strong enough to bear the load. They also had axlebox fires from higher speeds. The FD ran on the Donets Line the lines in the Urals-Kuznetsk combine, lines around Belgorod and Kharkov. Although I cannot find it at present, I think that the FD locomotive ran on about half the railway companies

Then there was the trial of 5 Baldwin (Tb) 2-10-2 and 5 Alco (Ta) 2-10-4 units in 1931. From these reports we can see that the STALINSK RAILWAY had long lengths of IIa rail where these heavy engines could only travel at 25 kph (and they had special lines gangs out to repair the damage after they had passed through!) Even so in 7 weeks of 1932 they had 1102 broken fishplates (the plates that join rail lengths together) and 10 cases of new rail breaking

From Scott Dunn we have the following:
In 1941
2% track was 43 kg/m Class 1a
16% track was 38 kg/m Class II
82% track was under 38 kg/m (in 1930 39% was 33 kg/m) Class IIIa or IV

Class Ia 43 kg/m
Class II 38 kg/m
Class IIIa 33 kg/m
Class IV less than 33 kg/m

It is difficult to connect all these pieces together but a picture is emerging of a railway network of quite widely varying capacities.

[Der Alte Fritz]

What is curious is that although German authors are censorious of the Russians about this situation, they themselves had had a similar situation after the Great War. The first volume of "The most valuable asset of the Reich" has a table that shows the German railway network in 1913 was composed of five different weights of rail under 30kg/m 30-35 35-40 40-45 and over 45 but from 1924 until 1929 the DRB had a huge amount of investment from the Weimar Republic and upgraded the track, bridges and other superstructure to bring the rails up to the 49 kg/m standard.
...............1913........1924........1929
<30............2.............2..........1
30-35..........31..........22.........15
35-40..........8............4...........2
40-45..........33..........33..........29
>40............7............14..........27

So by 1929 55% of all lines and and 72% of all through lines could handle the new 20 tonne axle load.
Likewise the bridge classification system was introduced :
N - load of two locomotives with 25 t axle load and two large capacity freight cars with 20 t axles loads
E - load of two locomotives with 20 t axle load and two large capacity freight cars with 16 t axles loads
G - axles of loads of 18 tonnes

So this new uniformity of track strength was a relatively new feature only 12 years old by the time of the invasion of Russia.

But in that time the new 'standard locomotives' Einheitslok, starting in 1925 with the DRG Class 01 had come to replace the older Prussian and Bavarian locomotives and had the new standard axle load of 20 tonnes. The German steam locomotive fleet of 1925 was 27,104 strong but had 1,800 unemployed ones with an average age of 12 years and 135 HP, despite this the DRG continued to purchase and design new ones in order to maintain the locomotive builders. By 1929 the fleet had dropped to 23,418 engines with 600 a year surplus ones being paid off but 633 new ones delivered between 1925 and 1929 and the age was slight older at 12.5 years but a higher horsepower of 149. This trend would continue up to 1932 with new locomotives being purchased for no other reason than to maintain employment at the main locomotives builders plants from an industry that had over capacity for its single home customer. By 1938, 1,500 Einheitslok had been purchased and made up around 6% of the fleet. With many older Prussian locomotives P8, P10 and P12 still in service with axle load in the 17-19 tonne range, Germany would go through the 1930s with a steadily ageing fleet as the locomotive manufacturers such as Hanomag were switched to other war work and funds for new locomotives dried up and the DRB had to expend its capital reserves on financing the autobahn programme.

[Der Alte Fritz]

As a comparison I have drawn up this little table of typical locomotive types for their period. You can see the German jump to a 20 tonne axle load around 1928 although they are still producing smaller locomotives with lower weights like the Class 50 of 1939 to be used for smaller jobs.

The details of the Soviet engines are less widely available but you can see the split in 1932 between the light axle load O and E classes working the lighter track and the heavy weight FD and IS classes working the trunk lines. Of around 52 railway companies the FD worked on 25. So for our purposes in Western Ukraine, you would find E class, after Kiev the FD would appear, especially in the Donetz area. It is interesting that the NKPS at first sought an American type locomotive for this technology jump with an axle weight of 23 tonnes but tests with imported ones should that it was too heavy for the track then in use. The NKVD and the Party got fed up with this shilly-shallying and so arrested the designers on their return from America and the initial draughts for the FD were produced by a GULAG design institute from which the drawings were then produced by the locomotive factories. Which is probably why it is named after Felix Dzerzhinsky and of quite conservative design although with a number of new American style features such as the front end.

locos.jpg