Bad taste or an interesting model?

[LBSC123]

Hi all,

 

While I have been I'll I have been musing over making a model of a railway based on a what if scenario Imagining that The battle of Britain had been lost and Operation Sea Lion had taken place in September 1940.

 

 

Its October 1940, Southern England,

The Germans have taken a beach head in Kent, Sussex and parts of Hampshire and Dorset, They have Held this position for nearly a month and have began putting there own mark on this rural part of England. Bringing stock from the continent and making town halls and fields there HQ's and Camp's. Meanwhile vicious battles are taking place in Ashford and Dover for which Supply trains are required.

 

Picture this:

 

A column of tanks swerves past a line of British Prisoners of war, destruction lies everywhere British tanks and equipment is strewn amongst bomb craters. A few houses are cluster around a level crossing they all look somewhat worse for where one is just a pile of rubble, behind this some resistance members plot how to take out the German HQ unwary at the presence of the tanks and the numerous MG nests.

 

German Locos and stock are already making a presence hear in the munitions trains destined for the front. With British stock Mainly forming the Troop and Ambulance trains

 

What do you think then, Likely to offend or an interesting model?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Pinkmouse]

Interesting, but a few things to think about. Without German air superiority, the Royal Navy would likely have just sailed down from Scapa Flow, and cut off German supply lines and the invasion would have only lasted about a week, and with air superiority, the British tactic of stop lines, each intended to only hold for a few days, would mean that after a month the battle would probably have passed London and be well into the Midlands where the real fighting was due to happen. Also, it's unlikely continental locos would have been shipped over here due to the much bigger Continental loading gauge. And if they got here, unlikely as the Germans only had converted river barges as landing craft which couldn't carry heavy steam locos, most of the rail infrastructure would have been completely destroyed and would take much longer than a month to get up and running again.

 

Other than that, I like it!

[Ozexpatriate]

Many people won't be offended - I'm not.

 

Some people will be very offended and will likely be very vocal about it.

 

I would agree with Pinkmouse's observations, although if a port city, even a smaller port like Dover or Folkestone, was secured, then it is plausible that locomotives could operate. (You'd still need to suppose that U-Boats and the Luftwaffe were successful in scaring off the Royal Navy.) I think that the biggest issue is that with their Blitzkrieg principles, the Germans would not have relied on the railways in a forward area.

 

While there is a lot of Soviet propaganda about how the Soviets used their railways during the war, I'm not aware of the Germans using captured Soviet rail equipment - particularly in forward areas. (Of course this could just be due to my ignorance.)

[station cat]

What they said really. I wouldn't be offended by it but I bet a lot of people would be.

 

Agree with all the more practical objections raised by pink mouse, although the Germans did have larger ships available for the invasion I don't know if they'd have had anything suitable for trains, and even if they did it would have been a low priority.

[Pinkmouse]

While there is a lot of Soviet propaganda about how the Soviets used their railways during the war, I'm not aware of the Germans using captured Soviet rail equipment - particularly in forward areas. (Of course this could just be due to my ignorance.)

 

 

Mainly because the Soviets didn't leave anything useful behind, the "Scorched Earth" policy. They even had a special train made up with a huge plough/hook thingy on the back that would rip up the rail lines behind the last loco out.

[Guest Max Stafford]

One of the main reasons the Wehrmacht didn't use captured Soviet rail equipment was that as they advanced into the USSR, they converted lines to standard gauge (Russian gauge is broader - 5'00 or 5'03 - not sure which).

 

Bear in mind in a Sealion scenario that the BEF left nearly all its heavy equipment in France. Not much armour remained in the UK apart from obsolete Matilda 1s and a few more moder types retained at home for training purposes. It's pretty unlikely we had sufficient to equip a regiment at that time.

 

Still had plenty of bayonets and angry Tommies though...!

 

Dave.

[Russ (mines a pint)]

Bad taste or an interesting model?

 

Would think it had potential to be both and that it would largely be down to how the modelling was presented & interpreted by others, there would be some people offended at the very notion though, even now so long after.

 

It could be interesting, but has already been pointed out much continental rolling stock would be out of gauge, but might SR stock start to be seen in contemporary German livery?

-they would be very keen to do that as a matter of propaganda, even if there was a paint shortage due to the war effort?

 

As a personal excercise in 'alternative history' maybe - but I think someone who modelled this with a view to making it 'publically exhibitable' could expect a rough ride?

[Burkitt]

I think this is a really interesting concept for a model, but your history needs to be really solid to mitigate accusations of bad taste. As previous posters have said, use of railways by the Germans during the invasion is unlikely. They would probably have been badly damaged in the fighting, sabotaged by the retreating British, and be to easy a target for resistance fighters.

 

By the time the Germans could concentrate on repairing the railways it would be an occupation rather than an invasion. You would than have to consider the issue of the uses to which the Nazis put the railways in occupied countries, ie transporting their Jewish populations to the gas chambers. Both acknowledging or ignoring this would be seen in very bad taste in the model, and personally I think that regardless of the merits of the idea, this aspect makes the whole thing too much of a minefield for it to be modellable.

 

Paul

[lezz01]

Well this one should set the cat amongst the pigdins.

I should think that it would offend a lot of people as it happens.

Not least of all my Uncle Sid who flew Lancs and Liberators against the U-boats in the Atlantic where he met my Aunty Doris who packed paracutes. Or my Dad who built Lancaster cockpit assemblys in Dunstable at night and drove an Ambulance in the day time whilst Mum packed bullits and hand granades.

I personaly am not offended by the idea. Although even if the attacks on the airfields in southern England had continued the Luftwaffe would have been completly destroyed in another 90 days whilst fighter command would have doubled in strenth over the same period of time. German industry did not go over to a war footing until 1943. Even with local air superorty over south east England the Germans would not have been able to maintane it long enough to land in any meaningfull strenth. Add to that the fact that the weather in the channel "bats" for England and the British Royal Navy would, as said, steam out of Scapa Flow like an avenging angle with a flameing sword and blow the c**p out of anything even vaugely German. But hey if you can live with that lot you should be able ignore the fact that Europian stock wouldn't go through the tunnels

[Sam '43003' Tanner]

 

Still had plenty of bayonets and angry Tommies though...!

 

Dave.

 

They do not like it up 'em..

 

 

I'll just end up repeating what's been said, so I'll save the effort and thread space.!! I like the initial idea.

[Russ (mines a pint)]

just a further thought, I know we've done all this debate already with 'pilotfriends' model of Auswizch which in a way was completely different as it was a 'commissioned historical exhibit'

 

If someone was to construct such a model there is the possibility it might just be seen as more than 'bad taste'

 

I'm thinking of the 'PC brigade' here it might be construed as 'condoning facism' etc. -which might have you put on the 'incitement to hatred' or whatever list even though you thought you were just playing trains?!

 

- You have to be very careful these days?

[Bloodnok]

The thing is England wasn't invaded, and for a few reasons, as out-lined up there in the thread, its likely that, even had an invasion been launched and initially successful, it probably would not have ended in the "occupation" scenario envisaged...

 

I recall seeing a simulation done for TV a few years ago. They started from historical data, and investigated what may have happened if the Germans planned invasion of England had gone ahead. They looked at the various invasion locations that the Germans had identified, and what military strength could be called on by both sides, what the tactics may have been. In order to ensure a beachhead was established at all, they had to assume a series of German favourable conditions - e.g. the Navy were all up at Scapa Flow rather than lurking around in the Channel, and that Britain had not discovered any substantive invasion plans, and so on. Given these conditions, they concluded that it was possible for the Germans to have secured beachheads at more than one location, and pushed inland to the tune of about 10 miles. The first stop line may have held, or may have fallen - but they could not see a way for the Germans to break the second stop line. After that, it was a case of how long they could hold out - and what proportion of the invading force could be evacuated...

[Coxswain]

Humm

assuming the weather holds out for many times the exsisting record and the royal navy obligingly sinks itself or some such and chirchill fails to get himself killed, your scenario may have happend. However this is just the start of your problems, almost all your contennentel stock will need to be scrathbuilt and someway to stop the layout being your typical southern branch with added swastikas will need to be found.

apert from that, shouldnt be to hard

On the plus side german logistic and support units aren't hard to find (1/76 and 1/72 scale at any rate)and the military modeling types will be fairly suportive

If you do go with it, it should be fairly intreasting

[jwealleans]

Slightly off the point, but in my research into ferry vans I discovered that the Deutsche Reichsbahn built some vehicles to the british loading gauge in 1940 "to cope with an anticipated increased cross-channel traffic". Someone clearly anticipated that the train ferries woudl be coming back into use.

 

We happened on the Wartime weekend at the Kent & East Sussex a few years ago and they worked on the basis that one of their stations has been captured and is under occupation. They made quite an effort to show it as a continental location, though (a bit of 'Allo, 'Allo' going on) and as an illustration of how things must have been in Occupied Europe I though tit was an interesting idea.

[DavidB-AU]

Bear in mind in a Sealion scenario that the BEF left nearly all its heavy equipment in France. Not much armour remained in the UK apart from obsolete Matilda 1s and a few more moder types retained at home for training purposes. It's pretty unlikely we had sufficient to equip a regiment at that time.

IIRC the only full Division in the UK in 1940 with all its equipment was Canadian.

 

Back to the original topic, there is a historical precedent which could be followed without inventing one. "England" wasn't occupied but the Channel Islands were. The German army rebuilt much of the Jersey Railway as metre gauge and some of the Jersey Eastern Railway as 60cm gauge for carrying construction materials for fortifications.

 

Cheers

David

[Forward!]

If you fancy mixing wartime invasion/occupation with railway operations whilst (in the UK at least) raising the least controversy, try modelling the American Civil War railroad operations. Running battles fought from railways- US Military Railroad stock and locomotives used on 'foreign' metals, infrastctrure destroyed several times over; herculaen efforts to keep lines open etc etc. There is huge scope for accurate historic modelling and in the UK nobody gets riled up about it!

 

The HO scale kit situation for this period is actually really quite good, which suprised me when I looked in to it!

 

Will

[zabdiel]

I think the trouble is that people expect model railway either to depict something between a realism and idealised scenario. Your scenario isn't either (unless you think a Nazi invasion would've been a good thing - I'm assuming you don't). I think the fact that people expect model railway to be "nice" or "realistic" is why people are likely to be more offended by a model railway depicting a German invasion than say a film. People are used to films that depict scenarios that are worse than reality - and it's far easier for a film maker to make it clear that they aren't supporting the Nazis, whereas I think it'd be very difficult to make it immediately obvious to viewers that you didn't think a Nazi invasion was a good thing. I'd say don't build it since I can't see any reason to do it that's worth the offence it'd cause to some people.

 

If you want an excuse to run German locos and Southern locos together then how about an alternative history where the World Wars didn't happen and Britain bought German locos?

[APOLLO]

If you want to model a battlefield try Wigan on a Friday / Saturday night. Choice of 2 stations (North Western & Wallgate) which are both in the town centre. Don't forget a few police horses, hooli & dog vans. Plenty of kebab and fried chicken (and pie !!) shops, with crowds of drunken yobs outside. Also the taxi rank at the side of Wallgate, with the usual late night commotion, as your Pendolino's and Stobart container trains fly through !!!!

 

Brit15

[Guest Max Stafford]

There is also Carlisle with the Botchergate 'theatre of operations' just a few yards from the station...! ;-)

 

Dave.

[gwrman]

Hi, The railways played an important role in the war effort, which a layout showing the aspects of this, would be quite impressive. Also recreating wartorn scenics would be challenging aswell.

Nigel

[LBSC123]

Thanks you for all the feedback you have given me,

 

Frankly I got the awnser I expected, I just thought I could be an intresting model and no I'm not pre Nazi!

 

I don't think I will be opening this can of worms But thankyou for spending the time awnsering my question.

 

I wonder if there is someway I can combine British and Continental stock and a battlefield (using History and not a what if scenario).:icon_confused:

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[bike2steam]

I'm showing my age, but saw this years ago;-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Happened_Here

[The Stationmaster]

Mainly because the Soviets didn't leave anything useful behind, the "Scorched Earth" policy. They even had a special train made up with a huge plough/hook thingy on the back that would rip up the rail lines behind the last loco out.

 

The track ripping hook (or whatever it was called) was a German device. The main German problem going into Riussia was getting track regauged to take their locos and stock.

 

As far as the invasion of SE England isconcerned I too doubt the Germans would be far enough clear of the coast to get a major rail rebuilding programme underway as the original scenario suggested.

[Pinkmouse]

The track ripping hook (or whatever it was called) was a German device. The main German problem going into Riussia was getting track regauged to take their locos and stock.

 

I stand corrected!

[Bernard Lamb]

 

 

I wonder if there is someway I can combine British and Continental stock and a battlefield (using History and not a what if scenario).:icon_confused:

 

Cheers,

 

Will

 

 

There was some stock left in Belgium after the evacuation from Dunkirk that was put to use by the Germans. A Dean Goods loco was used for shunting in the docks and did make the odd trip further afield. There were some LMS coaches that got as far as Hamburg during the war and these survived to be used again by the British after the war ended. That's off the top of my head. I could probably provide more info if you are interested. Move to the middle east and you can have Stanier 8Fs alongside German locos. After D day the scope becomes much wider with British stock used quite a long way into Germany in the early months of 1945. The short answer is yes you can but you need to pick your area and stock with a bit of care.

Bernard