The Somme Stations

Historical note

The North Eastern Railway did raise its own battalion for the Great War, and it was called the 17th Northumberland Fusiliers. The men were known as the ‘Newcastle Railway Pals’ although there were plenty from York among their number. Much of the early training of the battalion was roughly as described. It went to France in early 1916, and my account of the role of the battalion on the first day of the Somme is quite closely based on fact.

Generally, the men were involved in trench construction and maintenance, and in building railways, mainly standard-gauge ones. Their involvement in the operation of railways seems to have been slight.

Narrow-gauge lines did play an important part in the bringing forward of munitions, and on both sides of the conflict. The first British lines were constructed (by the Royal Engineers) during the late phase of the Somme campaign. But Burton Dump is imaginary, and the narrow-gauge lines did not come into their own until the following year, with the construction of the extensive networks around Arras and Ypres.

It was observed in The Railway Gazette Special War Transportation Number of 21 September 1920 that the light railways of the Great War, and the men who built and operated them, had ‘played no small part in civilisation’s struggle’.