The Crimean War, fought by the alliance of Great Britain, France, and
the tiny Italian Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia alongside Turkey against
Tsarist Russia, was the first 'modern' war, not only for its vast scale
(France mobilised a million men) but also the technologies involved,
from iron-clad battleships to rifled artillery, the electric telegraph
and steam. Best known for the blunder of the Charge of the Light
Brigade, the fearful conditions in the trenches at the front, and the
quiet heroism of Florence Nightingale, the Crimean War saw the railway
go to war for the first time. The Grand Crimean Central Railway was the
brainchild of two Victorian railway magnates, Samuel Morton Peto and
Thomas Brassey; in order to alleviate the suffering at the front, they
volunteered to build at cost a steam railway linking the Allied camps at
Sevastopol to their supply base at Balaclava. In the face of much
official opposition, the railway was built and operational in a matter
of months, supplying hundreds of tons of food, clothing and materiel to
the starving and freezing men in their trenches. Largely worked by
civilian auxiliaries, the Grand Crimean Central Railway saw the railway
transformed into a war-winning weapon, saving countless thousands of
lives as it did so.
