Rhea Cole
Major
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2019
- Location
- Murfreesboro, Tennessee
“Professionals discuss logistics, amateurs discuss tactics.” Was something an ROTC instructor said that stuck in my mind because it seemed so odd to me at the time. When I owned a business that involved goods that were shipped from Japan & later was sending container loads to Great Britain, I received a real life lesson in exactly what my instructor had meant.
Civil War railroading is a buffet of fascinating topics to explore. Living as I do in Murfreesboro TN, the historic Nashville & Chattanooga RR & present day CSX Railroad are an everyday reality. I often cross the single track mainline going to & from errands. By the same token, you can’t study the Civil War in Tennessee without constantly criss crossing the N&CRR. While chatting with a retired RRer recently, he said something that opened my mind to a new understanding of why Chattanooga was so vital to the CSA logistical system.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of bacon & corn were shipped on rails from the Atlanta Depot to the Army of Northern Virginia via Chattanooga. What my friend said that caught my attention was that every boxcar that carried freight from Atlanta to Virginia went through Chattanooga three times. He called it railroad math. Customers only care about when an empty car is loaded & when it is unloaded, the RR cares about what happens in between. Every 100 miles a loaded car travels is equal to 300 RR miles.
As we all know, once Lee became head of the Army of Northern Virginia he took a through the soda straw focus on the needs of his command vs the overall strategic needs of the CSA. I have listened to very knowledgeable historians debate exactly what it was that motivated Lee to send Longstreet to Chattanooga. We know that in retrospect he would have sent Longstreet to Knoxville. He could have been supplied from Atlanta via the link to Knoxville. Holding Knoxville & threatening Chattanooga with a secure supply line would have revolutionized the situation. In either case, what was it about Chattanooga was it that Lee thought was worth fighting for? Was RR math also RE Lee math?
The Atlanta to Virginia logistical system was a one way, point to point operation. An empty car had to be returned to Atlanta where it was loaded, returned to Virginia & sent back to Atlanta. From the RR’s point of view, it took three trips to deliver a single load of bacon to Lee’s army.
My RRer friend believes that the additional distance it took to deliver the absolutely vital supplies from Atlanta to Virginia is why Lee relented & allowed Longstreet to be sent to Chattanooga. It was simple RR math.
In round numbers, the loss of the direct route between Atlanta & Virginia added 500 miles one way. Using RR math, that was a 1,500 mile net additional mileage/round trip. Anybody familiar with the decreasing ability of Southern RR’s to operate understands what a blow the loss of the direct line was.
Not only did the loss of Chattanooga mean that it took considerably longer & his reduced the number of loads that could be dispatched, the maintenance downtime per load increased. Just by loosing Chattanooga, the gross tonnage of supplies that could be transported from Atlanta was severely restricted. The South had no possibility of stepping up frequency to overcome the time delay, this assets simply did not exist. Quite the contrary was true, the increased distance wore out existing equipment & further restricted the flow of supplies. The net impact of the loss of Chattanooga was longer wait times between deliveries & fewer cars/locomotives to carry the freight.
Loosing Chattanooga was a disaster for the CSA on any number of levels. The inexorable effect of RR math is a new one to add to the list & one that the CSA couldn’t bear.
Civil War railroading is a buffet of fascinating topics to explore. Living as I do in Murfreesboro TN, the historic Nashville & Chattanooga RR & present day CSX Railroad are an everyday reality. I often cross the single track mainline going to & from errands. By the same token, you can’t study the Civil War in Tennessee without constantly criss crossing the N&CRR. While chatting with a retired RRer recently, he said something that opened my mind to a new understanding of why Chattanooga was so vital to the CSA logistical system.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of bacon & corn were shipped on rails from the Atlanta Depot to the Army of Northern Virginia via Chattanooga. What my friend said that caught my attention was that every boxcar that carried freight from Atlanta to Virginia went through Chattanooga three times. He called it railroad math. Customers only care about when an empty car is loaded & when it is unloaded, the RR cares about what happens in between. Every 100 miles a loaded car travels is equal to 300 RR miles.
As we all know, once Lee became head of the Army of Northern Virginia he took a through the soda straw focus on the needs of his command vs the overall strategic needs of the CSA. I have listened to very knowledgeable historians debate exactly what it was that motivated Lee to send Longstreet to Chattanooga. We know that in retrospect he would have sent Longstreet to Knoxville. He could have been supplied from Atlanta via the link to Knoxville. Holding Knoxville & threatening Chattanooga with a secure supply line would have revolutionized the situation. In either case, what was it about Chattanooga was it that Lee thought was worth fighting for? Was RR math also RE Lee math?
The Atlanta to Virginia logistical system was a one way, point to point operation. An empty car had to be returned to Atlanta where it was loaded, returned to Virginia & sent back to Atlanta. From the RR’s point of view, it took three trips to deliver a single load of bacon to Lee’s army.
My RRer friend believes that the additional distance it took to deliver the absolutely vital supplies from Atlanta to Virginia is why Lee relented & allowed Longstreet to be sent to Chattanooga. It was simple RR math.
In round numbers, the loss of the direct route between Atlanta & Virginia added 500 miles one way. Using RR math, that was a 1,500 mile net additional mileage/round trip. Anybody familiar with the decreasing ability of Southern RR’s to operate understands what a blow the loss of the direct line was.
Not only did the loss of Chattanooga mean that it took considerably longer & his reduced the number of loads that could be dispatched, the maintenance downtime per load increased. Just by loosing Chattanooga, the gross tonnage of supplies that could be transported from Atlanta was severely restricted. The South had no possibility of stepping up frequency to overcome the time delay, this assets simply did not exist. Quite the contrary was true, the increased distance wore out existing equipment & further restricted the flow of supplies. The net impact of the loss of Chattanooga was longer wait times between deliveries & fewer cars/locomotives to carry the freight.
Loosing Chattanooga was a disaster for the CSA on any number of levels. The inexorable effect of RR math is a new one to add to the list & one that the CSA couldn’t bear.
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