Civil War Railroad Historian & Author David Bright. Episode 6
David Bright, Civil War railroad historian and author, joins modeler Thom Radice for Episode 6 of the Turntable Discussions. Key Links:
David operates the Civil War railroad history website https://www.csa-railroads.com/
David is the author of "Locomotives Up the Turnpike."
Read the latest updates on Thom's HO Scale Western & Atlantic, North Branch : https://western-and-atlantic-rr.blogs...
As seen in the October 2020 issue of Model Railroader: https://www.trains.com/mrr/videos-pho...
About David... David says, "I've been a Civil War buff since I was a Junior High School student in the late '50's. I was the youngest member of the Central Texas Civil War Roundtable for several years. "I became interested in the logistics of warfare when, as a new Ensign in the Navy, I served aboard an oiler off Viet Nam. Without our fuel, passengers, mail, food, and spare parts, the destroyers and carriers would have spent considerably less time on station. "Almost the entire remainder of my 20+ year career was spent supporting Marines in amphibious warfare. My specialty was never the fighting, but always the logistic support. "In the late '90's, I read Black's Railroads of the Confederacy. I began to wonder what impact different logistic decisions would have made for the Confederacy. After much thought, I decided that I did not have enough information on any area of logistics support (mines, foundries, railroads, blockade running, horses, salt, wagons, manpower, etc.) to make any reasonable decisions. I decided to investigate several of these areas in detail -- starting with the railroads. "Black, and others, make statements without giving the facts to support them -- the statements may be correct, but I could not decide without seeing the evidence for myself. For example, the Confederate railroads were short of locomotives -- how many did they have? How many did they capture and manufacture? How many did they need? I began to hunt for the necessary numbers in various libraries. "Once I began to collect the information, I needed a way to tie it together. Spreadsheets or a database were not the answers, so I tried a web site. The easy linking to full pages of data made it work. And if I put the data on a web site, I might as well make it available and useful for anyone else interested enough to find the site." About the book "Locomotives Up the Turnpike"... When the Civil War began, the railroads of the Confederate States had the immense job of collecting the men, supplies and equipment needed to create a government and its armed forces. Railroads had never been used in the direct support of a war and the new nation soon learned that its railroad resources were far short of what would be needed. Thomas R. Sharp, a young Richmond-based railroad superintendent was tapped by the new government to haul to the Confederate railroads the cars and locomotives captured by the future Stonewall Jackson from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad near Martinsburg, Virginia. Sharp hired dozens of men and hundreds of horses and wagons to haul the rolling stock south on the Valley of Virginia Turnpike, from Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry to Winchester to Strasburg. Seventeen locomotives and well over 100 cars were hauled over the country roads to intersections with the Manassas Gap Railroad and the Virginia Central Railroad, then on to Richmond. The locomotives had been burned before Capt. Sharp could begin to haul them, and he had to essentially take them apart to reduce the weight to be hauled. This led to Sharp being assigned to repair the locomotives, as well as haul them. While some repairing was accomplished in Richmond, most was done in the Confederate Locomotive Shop, in Raleigh, created and run by Sharp. By the summer of 1863, Sharp had been assigned to be the superintendent of the Charlotte & South Carolina Railroad, a critical road in the supply chain supporting Richmond and the main Confederate army. Later, Sharp was given responsibility for coordinating the railroad transportation of all of central and western South Carolina. As Gen. Sherman approached, in 1865, Sharp assisted in the evacuation of Columbia, and then worked to improve the railroads between Charlotte and Salisbury, N. C. Capt. Sharp's story has never been told before and is a unique adventure.
