Seige of Leningrad 1941-1944
#1
I have just been re-reading a book of mine about the Seige of Leningrad and came across some information which might be of interest to all you fellow train buffs.

The Siege lasted a total of 900 days.

Following the disasterous winter of 1941-1942 where many in Leningrad perished due to starvation and cold the Soviet authorites had to ensure that Leningrad was better prepared for the next winter.

In the first winter they had used trucks to transport supplies over the ice road [the original ice road truckers?], and this was repeated in the second winter.
In the second winter they even began to lay a rail line on the ice [ice railroaders??] by laying track from both directions, however it was decided to then lay the track on land.

On the 6th of February 1943 the Soviets opened a 33 km long rail line in the narrow land corridor to Leningrad not occupied by the Germans. This line was under constant artillery fire which caused frequent casualties and interruptions, but inspite of the problems, the Soviets also managed on the 18th of March to open a bridge over the Neva River enabling through traffic to get through to Leningrad.

In May 1943 the Soviets opened a second shorter rail line of 18 km which was closer to the lake and not as exposed to German fire.

In the period 6 February 1943 to 6 March 1944 [an odd period of 394 days I know] the Soviets managed to run 5,334 cargo trains with a total of 225,859 railcars. These railcars would have been of the four wheel kind as seen in WW11 docos of Europe.

I have calculated that the average train was 42 railcars long and that there were an average of 14 trains per day, so 7 trains per rail line in a 24 hour period.

Now obviously averages count for little when you have two rail lines and one is nearly twice as long as the other and subjected to artillery fire and you have a Russian winter and then spring thaw to contend with, but it gives some idea as to just how busy the two lines were.

Mark
Fake It till you Make It, then Fake It some More
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#2
I'll bet the details of that operation were fascinating. Just maintaining the ROW under enemy fire would be a herculean task by itself.
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#3
I was just talking with a resident of Leningrad about two weeks ago at a WW2 and Airshow in Reading Pa. They has a small russian camp with real equipment.

As he explained it to me, Leningrad had it doubly bad, for not only were the germans trying to invade, but Stalin personally disliked the city and was suspicious of its residents. the city itself had become great before communism, which angered Stalin. As a result, he did not do very much to support the city.

In Leningrad, the citizens actually designed and manufactured their own weapons, from scratch. The PPS sub machine gun was supposedly one of the best ever designed, at the very least superior to most existing Soviet designs.

Apparently, they also wore wool-felt boots during the winters. As it turns out, it was SO dry that you could stand on the snow with what was essentially a thick boot liner, and your feet would not get wet because there was no liquid water around. only in the summer did they need rubber waterproof boots.

Also according to the russian, socks were "Capitalist wastes of energy", and so they just wrapped their feet in a 1 foot square piece of cloth. As he described it, "If you wear a hole in it, just take it off and wrap it around a different way!"

Fascinating stuff, you rarely hear the russian side of the story.
Modeling New Jersey Under the Wire 1978-1979.  
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#4
IIRC, the citizens of Leningrad had no choice about building their won weapons, cut-off as they were from parts and raw materials from outside.
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