A selection must also be made in advance of the stations at which troops on long journeys can obtain food, as well as of the stations to be used as depôts for stores and supplies, all the necessary arrangements being provided for.
After the initial great strain on the railway resources involved in mobilisation and concentration, there will still be an enormous amount of transport to be done during the campaign. In the one direction there will be a constant despatch of reinforcements, provisions, clothing, munitions and supplies or stores to the front; in the other direction there will be a steady flow of sick and wounded, of prisoners of war, and of materiel not wanted at the front, followed by the final return home of the troops at the end of the campaign.
At each important point along the lines of communication where special services in connection with the rail transport, in either direction, are to be rendered, there must be organisation of such kind as will ensure that whatever is necessary shall be done promptly and efficiently under the control of persons of recognised authority and responsibility, and without any of the friction that would, inevitably, lead to delays, traffic blocks and other complications.
Nor can the same system of organisation apply to the whole line of communication, from the base to the limit of the rail service at the front. A point will be reached therein where the control, if not the actual operation, of the railway lines must needs be transferred from the civil to the military authorities, rendering necessary a scheme of supervision and working different from that which can be followed on the sections not within the actual theatre of war.
Then, if the army should be compelled to retreat before the enemy, there should be available a sufficiency of forces skilled in the art of rapidly and effectively destroying lines, bridges, viaducts, tunnels, or other railway property, with a view to retarding the enemy's movements until, it may be, reinforcements can be brought up in sufficient number to check his further progress. If, alternatively, the army should advance into the enemy's country, there must again be a provision of Railway Troops fully qualified by previous training and experience both to repair quickly the demolitions or the damage which the enemy will have carried out on his own lines and to construct hastily such new lines—light railways or otherwise—as the circumstances of the moment require. These things done, and still further advance being made into the invaded territory, the need will also arise for a staff capable of operating, under war conditions, the lines of which possession has been taken, in order that communications with the advanced front and the forwarding of reinforcements and supplies can still be maintained.
All these and many other things, besides, must needs be thought out and prepared for in time of peace, long in advance of any probable or even any possible war. They are, in fact, made the subject of exhaustive and continuous study alike by military officers specially entrusted with the task and by railway managers commanding all the technical knowledge requisite for making arrangements calculated to ensure the prompt and efficient satisfaction of all such demands for military rail-transport as may, with whatever urgency, and under whatever conditions, some day be put forward.
Still more practical do the preparations in peace for war become when they include the construction of a network of strategical railways expressly designed to facilitate the mobilisation of troops, their speedy concentration on the frontier, or their movement from one point of attack to another at the theatre of war.