Thank you for these numbers, Mil-tech bard!
I numbered some of your points for ease in reply.
1 Where are you? You can use the
Profile-update page to list your location.
2 Both the Union and the Soviets were working near
farmers, who might have food to provide them.
They were also going through regions which had tools,
and many other supplies, possibly availible to them.
Of course they always knew where they were,
and what was near them.
4 The Sharonans are running their RRs through wilderness.
All their supplies, they must bring from Homeworld,
or at least a more inner Outworld, over those RRs.
This must slow them down "somewhat."
3 We are shown approximately how fast TTE constructs:
At the beginning of the story, the railhead has not yet
reached Fort Salby, and the bridge over the Strait of
Tears (Bab el Mandeb) is maybe-a-quarter-finished.
Book 2 (HHNF) begins with Darcel riding a train
through Traisum Cut to Salby, where he finds a Uromath
cavalry brigade which arrived by RR over Tears Bridges.
Perhaps six-eight weeks have passed.
By the end of HHNF:
3.1 The first Hummer-message has just reached New Arcana
3.2 Darcel has reached Tajvana, Sharona, via Larakesh
3.3 Div-Cap chan Geraith is 2 days from Salby
Anndddd ...............
3.4 The TTE Railhead is 200 miles from Ft. Mosanik,
which is more than 800 miles past Salby "as the crow
flies" not counting necessary detours.
Please note: miles, not kilometers.
EDIT: oh yes, and the TTE has 2,000 in that workforce.
(Their safety is exchanged for release of 300 POWs.)
Total time of both books: perhaps 3 months, more or less.
TTE seems to be track-laying a bit, but not much,
faster than the estimate here.
Which is veryclose indeed for a guess about DW's numbers!
Well Done, Mil-tech Bard!
Howard True Map-addict
Mil-tech bard wrote:1 People here
are having some real order of magnitude error issues concerning Sharona's railway logistics.
The American Civil War Union Army railroad construction force consisted of roughly 10,000, usually railway engineers plus whatever troops were on hand at the moment not needed for combat and garrison duty,
and as many of the local able-bodied black population who they paid or were willing to work for food. The skill set of any given Union volunteer regiment was astonishing.
They could repair or rebuild railways and bridges very quickly, with
1) A railway rebuild rate of around 7-10km a day,
2) A railway repair rate of 25km a day and,
3) A gauge change rate of 30km a day.
2 By way of comparison, the labor forces of the Union
and Central Pacifics engaged in building the first
trans-continental railroad, which was about 10,000 men.
It takes a population of about 100,000
to support 10,000 men in such an effort.
The 1862-1865 Union Army was backed up by a civilian agricultural and industrial population of 22-25 million people.
An idea of what a partially mobilized circa 1900 technology Sharonan military-railway organization could do comes from the Armchair General web site below:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... p?t=133563.
"A short description of Soviet logistical methods is that they depended entirely on railways for strategic movement up to the frontline. In order to achieve this the NKPS (Soviet State Railways) was fully integrated into the RKKA Rear Services Command and was under command of their VOSO Military Transport Directorate. The Railway Brigades were from 1943 under the NKPS to provide light engineering support while heavy engineering was provided by UVVR Groups of the GUVVR Directorate of the NKPS. Command ran through the military command structure while the civilian NKPS provided the railwaymen and materials. The RKKA Railway Brigades numbered around 30 and 250,000 men towards the end of the war and a similar number were in the Highway Construction Battalions.
To give you an idea of the size of this operation, the NKPS numbered around 2,500,000 men in peacetime and 4,000,000 during the war.
2 They achieved what the Union troops achieved during
the American Civil War, that they could repair or rebuild railways and bridges at a fantastic rate (even when they had been mined to prevent their rebuilding) with a rebuilding rate of around 7-10km, repairs at 25km and gauge change of 30km a day. Given that Combined Arms armies advanced at an average rate of 25km per day, the railways were mostly not far behind them. Of course Tank Armies advanced at 70km per day and so far outstripped the railways but then came to a halt on their objective and waited for the main force to catch up. They matched the Union troops claim that "They can rebuild bridges faster than the Rebs can burn them down." so although the Germans destroyed often 100% of the railways, they were back up and running in a matter of weeks. There are lots of examples in the Armchair General thread which go into the details." The Soviet Union's population was 196,716,000 in June 1941.
Sharona's population is 10 billion.
3 The Sharonans will cover a 1,000km distance in
100 to 150 days. That is three to five months.
_Per workforce of 10,000 workers_The mass that even a Sharonan single track railway
delivers is a large multiple of what an Arcanian
"Mage-way" can deliver.
4 Exactly how many of these 10K railway building units
do you think the Sharonans can field given a 10 billion person population and a huge Multiverse spanning railway NGO corporation to pull railway experts from?
