Talk:Railway sabotage during World War II

Requested move 2 June 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 02:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Battle for the railways → Railway sabotage during World War II – See below buidhe 01:58, 2 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Support as nominator: I am not sure what the common name is here, but searching "battle for the railways" on google is getting me as many unrelated results as not, eg   referring mostly to political conflicts involving railways. I am also concerned that the term "battle for the railways" may not be used for all countries that saw railroad sabotage during the war. I checked some of the English sources used in the article, eg.    which seem to mostly use "railway sabotage" or some variant thereof. For these reasons I think the generic term with natural disambiguation is probably best. buidhe 01:58, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You are probably right that this is a more clear name. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:45, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Support more justified name. ~ Amkgp ✉  07:40, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Soviet?
The article says, "Soviet partisans carried out a large number of attacks on German railway infrastructure". The infrastructure in question was surely in the Soviet Union, which has a different track gauge and rolling stock than German trains; the two are incompatible without major modifications. Does this sentence actually refer to Soviet track and rolling stock captured and used by the Germans? Did the Germans build a parallel rail system to German standards? --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 16:35, 7 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Rather late now, but yes the German army relied heavily on rail transport in occupied territories. They captured some native rolling stock, especially in the first months of Barbarossa. German freight cars were fairly easy to convert with longer axles. Locomotives were also converted, some with wide steel tires that reached out a few centimeters to rest on Russian rails. The Germans also made at least a few locos specifically for Russian Empire gauge. Mostly, however, the break of gauge meant the loads were merely transferred to Russian Gauge freight cars which clearly ate up time and labor. None of this was necessary in the Soviet part of Poland that Germany was recovering, as hardly any of those rails had been converted back from Stephenson gauge to Russian. Most of western Poland's rails had originally been laid to Royal Prussian standard anyway. Dual-gauge tracks and parallel lines of different gauge were rare and short. So yes, mostly those Soviet partisans were wrecking things that were either Soviet made, or German made to Russian standard, until the front line advanced beyond earlier Soviet territory. By then, guerrilla methods were less effective and less used anyway. Besides, railways were less vital to Soviet troops, because they had a more high-tech military transport system than the Germans. Jim.henderson (talk) 22:49, 28 January 2024 (UTC)