Ukrainian Armed Forces strike railway tracks in Kursk’s Lgov, says mayor
According to Klemeshov, four arrivals were recorded in the city. Two residential buildings and the railway tracks of the Lgov-Kyiv station were damaged. There was also a fire in a warehouse of one of the city’s factories. No residents were injured.
“I do not recommend that anyone who left the city return until the situation has finally stabilized,” the mayor wrote.
(Obligatory youtube)
Additional:
This is what it takes to break up actual railroads: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_plough
Note that these things were pulled by two locomotives, and moved at roughly a brisk walking pace. It’s VERY hard to destroy a railroad.
A much safer (for the perpetrators) and effective way would be to unscrew a number of the locking bolts, which could be done at night, in silence, even with hand tools, on the outward side of the rails in a curve.
I live near a train station, and over a number of days they replaced hundreds of the traverses, in place, working at night. Simply unbolting a few tens I think would make the trick. Having a few cargo trains derail could wreak major havoc.
If combined with a couple of cuts to the track (easily done with a battery angle grinder, under a 100€) the damage would be amplified.
In a lot of places the wood has been replaced by reinforced concrete, I’m not sure if the ploughs can be used anymore.
I’m not a railroad person, but the locomotives have gotten bigger too
Was just thinking about this. Probably can’t run high speed over that section of track, but it surely won’t halt operations
That’s a section of track where the break has been found and documented. At the very least, significant damage that is suspected to be related to sabotage would require additional thorough inspection of the surrounding railway.
Cool vid… thanks for sharing. My takeaway is that this sabotage will do nothing.
Slowing them down and damageing carts is worth while. And accumulates as they do multiple passes on broken rail. Not to mention needing more patrols to catch the Ukrainians doing this. The game is about attrition and headache.