Railroad lines

[Florent]

In BOA there are different filters available for seing friendly area or influence won or lost. It woud be nice to have filters to have railroad lines shown so that you can see all the strategic crossroads rapidly. To see the portion threatened by the ennemy and that you intend to use to make concentration. The CSA used railroad concentration to good effect before first Manassas and Chickamauga where Longstreet 1st Corps was send to the west. I 'm sure the game will reflect that perfectly. This filters could help the player a lot. If not included, perhaps you should consider a double page in the rulebook showing the railroad network available in the game for Union and CSA.

[bountyhunter]

I would also like to see the ability to construct additional railroads throughout the campaign (for both sides). Obviously it will be considerably more difficult for the South to do this but still should be a possibility.

[Spharv2]

I would also like to see the ability to construct additional railroads throughout the campaign (for both sides). Obviously it will be considerably more difficult for the South to do this but still should be a possibility.

This is going to be in, so no worries there.

[Pocus]

I don't think additional filters will make it, until at least we are sure we can be on schedule for our planned release date. On a patch no problem though, we published 10 updates for BOA in 9 months, so don't worry, you will get a ton of free contents in AACW too

[Florent]

Thanks, sure that for the support of your games you are among the best if not the best. Being able to resolve the small problems in BOA along producing a new game (AACW) is simply outstanding when some game are patched every 6 month or more. I totally agree to have the game on schedule an get some chrome later. The every day features simply show that the game many aspects of the civil war. Keep day features alive.

[Remise]

I don't suppose there is any way to replicate the South's most serious problem with their railroads (besides aging equipment and poorly maintained lines, I mean; some tracks were actually made of wood). This was the fact that unlike in the North, where the Federal government had a large degree of control over the rails, and the Army even had its own railroad, in the South, each state controlled the railroads, and troops were permitted to use the system only at the whim of the local governor. Often, the shipment of commercial goods took priority over sending troops from one location to another.

Similarly, each Southern state had substantial numbers of militia which were never made available to the national government, and this was a serious crimp on already-scant Confederate manpower.

B.C. Milligan

[Pocus]

Often, the shipment of commercial goods took priority over sending troops from one location to another.

let's say that the low railroad pool of the South is an abstract answer to this problem

Similarly, each Southern state had substantial numbers of militia which were never made available to the national government, and this was a serious crimp on already-scant Confederate manpower.

the Confederate have many militia units, some locked in place, some allowed to move elsewhere but with some combat penalties. Not the perfect solution but it must remains a game.

[Remise]

Both of the above sound bully!

B. C. Milligan

[Korrigan]

Both of the above sound bully!

B. C. Milligan

What do you mean by "bully"? (do not forget we're not native speakers).
1 - You find Pocus's English inapropriate
2 - You find Pocus proposition inapropriate
3 - You find Pocus's proposition really great

[Feralkoala]

He means 3, I believe he was using it in the sense of Theodore Roosevelt

[saintsup]

Similarly, each Southern state had substantial numbers of militia which were never made available to the national government, and this was a serious crimp on already-scant Confederate manpower.

Very interesting ... I didn't know that the South had such a decentralized governance.

[Spharv2]

Very interesting ... I didn't know that the South had such a decentralized governance.

Hehe...that was (Depending on who you talk to) the main point of the war to begin with.

[bountyhunter]

In other words one of the key arguments was "States Rights" which you could argue was developed as a result of arguments about slavery. In any case this states rights theory really limited what the Confederate government could "acquire" from the states especially manpower and resources.

[Fouche]

In regards to what Remise has posted...I would assume that the South then would have less movement points to move items (supplies and troops)...since also the southern rail net work also were of different gauges.
I include this tidbit of information....
"At the time of the Civil War, even though nearly all of the Confederacy's railroad equipment had come from the North or from Britain (of the 470 locomotives built in the U.S. in 1860, for example, only 19 were manufactured in the South), 113 different railroad companies in the Confederacy operated on three different gauges of track. This lack of standardization was, as historian James McPherson points out, one of the many reasons the Union was able to finally vanquish the Confederacy militarily."
Of course for those of us who will play as the Southern player we will try to use brains over brute force to win ([thinking of Longstreet's approach]...

[Remise]

He means 3, I believe he was using it in the sense of Theodore Roosevelt

And it was slang for a positive comment as far back as the Civil War. An officer might, in praising his troops, say, "Bully job, boys!"

Or I could just say, "Bien!"

B.C. Milligan

[Remise]

In other words one of the key arguments was "States Rights" which you could argue was developed as a result of arguments about slavery. In any case this states rights theory really limited what the Confederate government could "acquire" from the states especially manpower and resources.

Yes. One serious problem the Confederate government had was that the whole concept of states' rights worked against their need to centralize the control of the resources. Davis was never able to really overcome this contradiction, and it was one of the factors that eventually proved fatal to the Confederacy. Many states, for example, flatly refused to permit their militia units to serve outside the state borders, regardless of whether or not a neighboring state was threatened.

B.C. Milligan

[WallysWorld]

In James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom", he mentions that at the end of the war, one Confederate state (Alabama, I think) was found to have about 35,000 brand new uniforms in storage while the Confederate armies were marching in shreds. The state refused to release the new uniforms to the federal government and instead was keeping them for their own militia.

[Sol Invictus]

I think my own State's motto, "United We Stand, Divided We Fall", aptly applies to the Confederacy. The individual Confederate State's selfish regard for only their own local and immediate needs surely lead to the fall of them all. A time of war is not a good time to insist on pressing the finer points of constitutional decentralization. This was the greatest gift that the Confederacy served up to the Union.

[LMUBill]

In James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom", he mentions that at the end of the war, one Confederate state (Alabama, I think) was found to have about 35,000 brand new uniforms in storage while the Confederate armies were marching in shreds. The state refused to release the new uniforms to the federal government and instead was keeping them for their own militia.

That's partially true.

The reason the amount was so big was that there were other storage areas in the south that the US had captured (like Nashville, Atlanta, etc.) and the one in Alabama was about the only one left.

In the case you mention (Alabama) the main reason that uniforms (and shoes) had not gotten to the troops was because they had no way to get them there.

There were a few governors (North Carolina's is the one I have read the most about) who wouldn't let anything "out of state" but when they did it usually went to the troops from that state. For example, if the governor couldn't keep it all for the in-state militia and had to send it to , say, Pickett's Division, then the 26th NC Infantry would get it instead of other non-NC units.

The only Confederate "distribution" service that didn't break down (and actually made a profit) was the Postal Service.

[PhilThib]

Something that would really help me would be to get some indication of the CSA railroad assets wear and tear (and ultimate breakdown) during the course of the war.

In the game, each camp has a certain number of railroad "points", used to rail move units. I want to have this number regularly decreasing for the CSA, to represent that historical fact.

Of course, in terms of gameplay, the CSA player may "invest" war supplies and money into his railroad network, but that would be at the expense of other military purchases leure:

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I have an interesting book called Victory Rode the Rails (George Edgar Turner, 1953), which discusses the use of railways in the American Civil War.

Here are some extracts from the chapter on rolling stock.

[color="Sienna"]Less than adequate at the beginning, the supply of rolling stock available in the South dwindled rapidly as the war wore on. Capture and overwork without timely repairs took a heavy toll of the ever-scarce Confederate engines and cars. In the whole Confederacy there was not a single plant in which a locomotive could be built -- at least not under wartime conditions ...

... the North had no less than a dozen established locomotive manufacturers as well as numerous railroad and other shops in which construction was possible ... [and] it had a near monopoly of mechanics skilled in the business. Little less complete was its control of car construction.

While the Confederate roads desperately drove their rolling stock to ruin, most roads in the North maintained or increased their supply. Between 1863 and 1865, the Illinois Central increased the number of its locomotives from 112 to 148, while over the same period the number of its freight cars of all types grew from 2312 to 3337.

Few of the older roads in the South had replaced the original U-type rail with the newer and more durable T iron. Roads of such vital importance to the Confederacy as the Virginia Central and the Nashville & Chattanooga entered the war laid with U-type. Some U rail was still found in the North but by 1861 it was no longer a factor in operation or construction.

Even the best T rail was light, made of malleable iron and subject to rapid wear. At the end of the war, only a few miles of experimental track were laid with steel.

Modern methods of tie treatment had not been developed and the older tracks, particularly in certain sections of the South, were beginning to suffer rapid deterioration from rotting timbers.

Next to the lack of terminal connections in the South, perhaps no single factor worked a greater hardship on wartime railroading there than the divergence of track gauges. The fault was common to both North and South, but with its otherwise less adequate rail facilities the effect was more serious to the South. On both sides the loading and unloading of freight went on interminably ... So distressing did this become that while fighting was at its height many miles of track were converted from one gauge to another ... The guns were scarcely silenced when the American railroads set about establishing the standard gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches which now prevails.[/color]

Unfortunately the book tends to give eloquent descriptions of the poor state of the Southern railways and the inadequacies of Confederate government policy on the subject, without quantifying anything. I don't find figures for the number of functional locomotives available in each year, for instance.

On the last page of the book:

[color="Sienna"]On the fateful day of Appomattox, the railroad system in the North was stronger than when the war began. Except for the lines taken over by the Federal army and rehabilitated for its military use, practically all the railroads of the South were a pitiable mass of wreckage.[/color]

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I've discovered a Web site dedicated to "Confederate railroads": http://www.csa-railroads.com/.

[Director]

It is hard to differentiate between the reduced capacity of the Southern railroads due to wear and the collapse brought on by Northern invasion. What is certainly true is that urgently needed construction (the Selma to Montgomery gap, for instance) either could not be built or (as in Virginia) built only by ripping up other railroads.

Southern railroad rails were needed for ironclad armor, replacement of worn-out rails and for (limited) new construction. Far from filling one need at the expense of another, ALL these needs went unfilled.

For rails, the South needed iron and labor. The labor was in the Army and the iron was in Alabama and Tennessee. Getting the iron required labor and transportation... and all the transport was tied up with military cargos or civilian shipping. The iron industry (and locomotive works) in Tennessee was overrun when the North took Cookeville (I think) and Nashville. The iron in Alabama mostly stayed in the ground for lack of labor and transport. This at a time when Tredegar in Richmond was struggling to work at more than a third of capacity!

IF the South had committed the labor and boxcars to move the iron to Richmond they'd have had more guns, rails, locomotives, ship engines and cannon. BUT they would have needed labor gangs to lay rail and skilled workers to build locomotives. Many of the skilled mechanics and artisans in the South 'went North' when the war began and almost all the able men were in the armed forces.

So my conclusion is the South COULD have gotten the iron, made the rails and engines, and laid new track... but this would have drawn thousands of men out of the Army by exemption or furlough. It is very hard for me to see a Confederate government allowing that to happen.

The US Military RR organization mostly rebuilt and ran railroads in occupied Southern territory. To my knowledge, the South built no major line and the USMRR mostly repaired and maintained previously-existing lines. Army campaigns were conducted around the existing pre-War RR lines. So restricting the players to the pre-War lines and not allowing them to build new railroads fits in with the historical record.


When a rapid troop movement was needed the South could manage one. Braxton Bragg did in 1862, and Longstreet's corps did for Chickamauga. The North could move more men quicker, but only rarely did so: moving troops from the Army of the Potomac to Grant at Chatanooga is the only large-scale movement by rail I remember.

The effect of railroad capacity on supply, however, is striking. Lee's Army was almost unable to subsist in Virginia from 62-64 while Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi were producing ample foodstuffs and forage. Food and hay rotted on railroad sidings and the citizens of the larger cities had bread riots, all because the existing Southern railroads couldn't carry the load and couldn't be improved.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

The US Military RR organization mostly rebuilt and ran railroads in occupied Southern territory. To my knowledge, the South built no major line and the USMRR mostly repaired and maintained previously-existing lines. Army campaigns were conducted around the existing pre-War RR lines. So restricting the players to the pre-War lines and not allowing them to build new railroads fits in with the historical record.

Although the South built no major new line, it did build some extensions and connecting lines, e.g. connecting the Florida lines to the rest of the country, and connecting Danville to Greensboro.

The CS government had a very laissez-faire attitude to the railways. A more committed government could have accomplished more.

[bountyhunter]

So restricting the players to the pre-War lines and not allowing them to build new railroads fits in with the historical record.

I think if the player (as commander-in-chief) should choose to allocate resources to building railroads (and obviously away from other war production) he should have that option. That does not mean I propose the Confederacy have the ability to build a railroad across the map on the first turn of the game. If the costs are weighted properly then it shouldn't be easy. If the player is more successful than history why should they be restricted to what is history? As you pointed out, there was historical potential.

[Pocus]

the historical potential is there, as we have some regions who have a buildable railroad graphic. And as you can expect, even doing that in a single region for the Confederates will be a hard choice, as they don't have much war supplies production (the asset representing heavy materials, steel and such), and will have to choose between that, or more guns, 1-2 ironclads, and such.

The Union will have no problem making some extensions otoh.