Week after week, the guns of the British expeditionary force battered
away at the defenses of Sevastopol, eight miles away from Balaklava, the
port through which all besiegers' supplies arrived. As autumn turned to
winter, rain and frost turned the track from Balaklava into a muddy
quagmire and soon it became virtually impassable.
Horses were dying daily in their endeavors to pull carts up the hills to
the siege lines, and with few supplies reaching the front, the troops
suffered terribly from malnutrition and frostbite. Unless a solution
could be found, the entire operation was doomed to humiliating,
disastrous failure.
When news of the terrible plight of the troops reached the UK, a leading
railway contractor and his partners undertook to build a railway at cost
from Balaklava to the front line - and promised that they could
construct it in just three weeks after they arrived in the Crimea.
Though it took almost seven weeks to complete the railway, in that time
a double track which rose 500 feet from the port and traveled for seven
miles to the siege lines had been laid.
With food, clothing and ammunition at last able to reach the front, the
British along with their French allies were able to capture Sevastopol
and bring the Crimean War to an end.
In this comprehensive and detailed account of the construction and use
of what became known as the Grand Crimean Central Railway the author
describes the astonishing achievement in building the first railway ever
employed in warfare, and the first to be used for casualty evacuation,
thousands of miles from the UK.