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0t----Vladivostok rail-----1915

JHolland:

Thank you for posting the youtube of the Vladivostok car shops. I found it especially interesting since my maternal grandmother & 1 uncle (an infant at the time), emigrated to the USA through Vladivostok. The year was 1917 and with WWI going on, the usual ports of embarkation to the USA for Russian emigres could not be used. The result was my grandmother and her infant son travelled by rail from an area on the Pripyet River, possibly about where Chernobyl is located, to Vladivostok. There, they travelled by ship to Yokohama, Japan. From Yokohama, they then travelled as steerage passengers on the "Siberia Maru" to the USA, with San Franscisco, CA being their port of entry.

I had always wondered what the railway equipment was like as I heard stories from my grandmother when I was a kid about that train journey. My grandmother did say that at station stops, she would get a teapot (known as a "Chainik" in Russian or Yiddish) filled with hot water from the locomotive boiler. Whatever was in the locomotive boiler water could not have been all that bad as my grandmother lived to be 102 years of age, and her infant son made it to 94.

In the photos, I was struck by several things:
-the railway shops had modern equipment, particularly the use of pneumatic tools
-the shop complex and yards had electric power, and in one photo, there are pole-mounted transformers
-the trucks for the railway cars looked to be US pattern 'arch bar trucks'
-the car wheels have "Central Car" cast into them
-in the mechanical workshop photo, there is a camelback drill in the lower portion of the photo with a planetary reduction rather then the more usual open back gearing. This could well be a Barnes, US made drill.
-Westinghouse airbrake systems are used, which also struck me as advanced for the place and time
-the use of spray painting was also advanced for the times, let alone the place
-the completed train of boxcars has a handrail on the catwalk along the top of each car. Someone actually thought of the safety of brakemen ! US boxcars never had that handrail, and brakemen have had to walk (or run depending on the circumstance) on catwalks with nothing to grab hold of if they miss their footing or slip. Could be due to the extreme winter conditions in Vladivostok that this handrail was found to be a necessity.

Of note also is that some of the crates are stencilled in English: "Vladivostok" and some have what appears to be Chinese writing chalked on them. The fact the workforce contains a large portion of Chinese is also of interest. I wonder if the Chinese were brought to Vladivostok as contract labor, due to WWI ?

I also wonder why all the management in the photos are tricked out in what look like military uniforms. Did the Russian military take over the railroads during WWI, or was this just the Czarist government's way of making sure everyone knew who was in charge at the railway shops ?

Interesting set of photos, for sure. My grandmother came from a small village called "Luninetz", and to hear her and other relatives describe the place, it may as well have been in medieval times. Seeing the railway shops and the advanced level of things there is quite a contrast to the village my grandmother came from. I know it os O/T to go on the tangent I did with this post, but I do appreciate your posting this youtube not only for its technical content, but for the connection to my family history.
 
The Trans-Siberia railroad had always been under quasi-military control since it was built (or finished) during the Russo-Japanese War. Some of the uniforms are military but others are the uniform of the Mining & Engineering service (I forget the exact name)...Many years ago the son of a pre-revolutionary general mentioned to me that it was unusual to see a man in anything but a uniform on the street in St. Petersburg before WWI. I suspect that was an exaggeration but every state-related service had a uniform.

A major portion of the railroad ran through Manchuria...this was to avoid Lake Bikal. The original roadbed ended at the Lake and the trains had to be ferried across. During the Russo-Japanese war a second line was built to circumvent that. Also, for a period in 1918 and 1919 the railroad was controlled by the Americans under an Engineer named John Frank Stevens - formerly Chief Engineer in building the Panama Canal. Stevens was commissioned a Colonel for the job.

The railroad was guarded by a special military force created for just that purpose.

I think I have a photo of a student at the Mining & Engineering school in uniform...if I can find it, I'll post it.
 
JHOLLAND1,
Thanks for sharing the link.
My maternal grandfather was part of the little known Canadian Siberian Expedition in 1918-1919.
Canada's Siberian Expedition
I have this book written about the Expedition.
UBC Press | From Victoria to Vladivostok - Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917-19, By Benjamin Isitt.
The ship he went over on was posted about in post #4 of this thread
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...tory/scapa-flow-282735/?highlight=Vladivostok
There are some more pictures in the digital archives in the earlier links and also in the Vancouver Archives .
Here is one Loading big guns for Vladivostok - City of Vancouver Archives
I can't save the search links so you can search for Vladivostok
As mentioned by 99Panhard the U.S. Army was also involved in a mission there too.
I am less familiar with.
American Expeditionary Force, Siberia - Wikipedia.
There is a video I noticed about it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H3Y_qvwGdY
I had also read something in an old book or magazine about it on archive.org. several years ago but I can't find it now .
Regards,
Jim
 
Joe Michaels mentioned the railway equipment looking much like that built in the U.S.A.
I thought I had remembered reading in some of the old railway and other journals that Baldwin and perhaps other American locomotive builders had sold locomotives .
The locomotive engineer : Hill, John A. (John Alexander), 1858-1916 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The locomotive engineer : Hill, John A. (John Alexander), 1858-1916 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
and this mention about these Baldwin Decapods that could not be delivered because of the Russian Revolution
History of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1923. - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library | HathiTrust Digital Library
So there were no doubt other suppliers involved there too.
Jim
 
Joe and Jim

really interesting back story info you provide
I had no knowledge of US and Canadian intervention linked with the
October revolution

btw--all thread drift==good :)
jh
 
JHolland:

The US military sent troops from Michigan, with the belief the men would be better able to tolerate the cold winter weather around Vladivostok. Even before the US forces had landed, they dubbed themselves "the Polar Bears". Sadly, no one had any idea why they were sent to Vladivostok, and the US and Canadian forces got caught between the White Russians, Bolsheviks, and Czechs. The Armistice of 1918 did not end the involvement of the troops sent to Vladivostok, and it was until 1919 or 1920 that the last of them came home. The belief was President Wilson was covertly trying to stop the Bolsheviks, without giving any direct statement to that effect.
 
The US troops in Russia were armed with American-made M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifles in the Russian 7.62x54 caliber. Two American companies, Westinghouse New England and Remingon had made them for the Russians during the war although most were actually delivered under the Provisional Government. It's long been reported that those that remained in the US were left-overs from the Russian contracts but that isn't true. In fact, the US government wanted to use the Westinghouse plant to manufacture machine guns but, until that was organized, they did not want the skilled work force disbanded so they agreed to have them continue to manufacture the Russian rifles for the US. (This is from testimony before Congress on the subject by the Chief of Staff, General Tasker Bliss.) Because they were in a different caliber, they were used for training purposes and to arm units that remained in the US. Ironically, I've seen a photo of the military guard of the Springfield Armory during the war - all armed with Russian rifles!

Huge quantities of war material had been sent to Russia in preparation for the 1919 campaign. When the Bolsheviks seized power, and declined to honor the debts of the previous governments, the allies intervened. It was, as we might imagine, a political morass...but one of the interesting consequences was that the Russian ability to control the railroad dissolved. While large portions of it were occupied by the Czech Legion, which was retreating across Russia, the Americans organized a special railroad unit made up of experienced American railroad men under civil engineer J.F. Stevens. Stevens was commissioned a colonel but threatened to resign when the US government didn't want to grand similar commissions to the senior railroad men who would serve under him...and non-commissioned rank to foremen etc... He got his way for the obvious reason that he couldn't recruit skilled men if they were all going to be privates in the Army.
 
I believe it was just after the Russian revolution, that Sir Winston S. Churchill, sent over a couple of detachments of Britishb soldiers to try and thwart the soviet take over of Russia, Well it ended up being a total disaster, For a start he sent no food for the poor blighters, They were starving and the people they were sent over to stop ended up feeding them, they wer known as "Churchills Forgotten Army" BY all accounts when they arrived back home they were in a very poor condition.
 
Churchill was Minister of Munitions in the Lloyd George government at the time of the intervention. The British troops went to Murmansk and Archangel, largely for the same reasons the Americans and Canadians went to Vladivostok. There were huge dumps of allied war material intended for the 1919 campaign stored there. In the case of Murmansk, the Reds were literally stealing it in that they were taking it for their own use and refusing to pay for it. Needless to say, it was a political quagmire but Churchill, who was in favor of the intervention as an MP, had relatively little to do with sending troops.
 
I got watching another National Film Board of Canada Video

This segment of the video starting here show another shipment of rail cars from Canada to the U.S.S.R. after the second world war.
https://youtu.be/EAeI8FzSaHk?t=411
Something I hadn't known about before either so I thought I'd add the link to this thread.
I see eastern car shown on one car that probably was from Trenton Nova Scotia and perhaps Canadian Car and Foundry in Montreal and National Steel Car from Hamilton could have been the other car builders who supplied the cars.
Perhaps some of the U.S rail car maker shipped some also ?
There are more a couple of more Canadian Screen Magazine videos on You Tube and perhaps some more on the NFB site its self
Search - NFB
Jim
 
I was looking through some more old magazines looking for information about a ship The Empress of Ireland that sank in 1914 and the inquiry that followed .
In my searching around I noticed a mention about Vladivostok so I did a little more searching and found these links from 1916 and 1918.
The first article on this page mentions knocked down box cars being shipped to Vladivostok from the U.S.A. so no surprise that as mentioned in earlier posts about the boxcars looked similar to those made in U.S.A.
Here are some other related links
From 1916
and 1918
There are several other volumes of this magazine on line here
For those who might be interested.
Jim
 








 
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