Railroading in Korea

Capt. Max N. Brown, 714th Transportation Railway Operating Battalion

An American can teach a Korean to run a railroad by our standards, but it takes patience.
There are many things we can do in fifteen minutes that take Koreans two hours. This
wouldn't make much difference if combat didn't make all operations urgent. But when
you realize that the Korean railroads moved approximately 95 per cent of all tonnage to
the front, you know the Koreans (and the Americans who assisted them) gave a pretty fair
account of themselves.

I commanded Company C, 714th (later 724th) Transportation Railway Operating

Battalion. Company C is the operating company—it furnishes the men who run the trains.
In Korea we had to tailor our operations to the situation, and many changes were made.

The Koreans provided full crews for their trains, and their hands were on the throttles. In
late 1951 we began to bring some diesel engines into Korea, and we placed our own men
in the cabs of these—plus a Korean pilot engineer.

Except for this late development, it would appear that we had no job. This was not true.
We provided about a hundred conductors. The Korean conductor on each train was in
command and, in a sense, our man was an advisor. But on one thing our conductor had
absolute control: dropping cars. To prevent wholesale pilferage we insisted that no car
could be cut out of a train at a way station unless our conductor approved. He had to
check each claim of a hotbox or other failure.

Beginning at Pusan, the 714th Battalion operated beyond Wonju on the eastern railroad
and to Tacjon on the double-track main line. Normally, an operating battalion controls 90
to 125 miles of track, but we covered 500 to 600 miles. In this situation Company C was
assigned 400 of the 511 men in our battalion, even though the T/O&E gave us

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only 289. To get the conductors we needed for our operation we used our unassigned
steam engineers and gave others on-the-job training.

The shortage of freight cars placed a severe strain on the railroad system. We had
approximately 7,000 cars, but 500 of these were in very bad shape. Estimating a seven-
day turnaround between Pusan and the front, we figured 8,500 cars were the minimum to
handle the load. We received a one-day advance notice of our requirements, and that kept
us jumping to have cars on hand. More than once the cars were not in our yards and we
could not meet the demand.

The shortage of cars and their constant use led to several problems. We could not take
cars out of circulation to repair them as often as we should have. Also, we could not
allow cars to remain on the sidings— something that had to be drilled into commanders
in the forward areas.

Looking back at our operations in Korea, I believe our biggest problem was keeping the
tracks open. We had an unbelievable number of derailments—I recall six in one day—
and we had only one car with a hook on it. The derailments were caused most frequently
by the worn-out equipment, but sabotage did occur. We were fortunate in having a group
of experienced Koreans clearing the tracks. I marvelled at the ingenuity of the Koreans as
they put freight cars back onto the rails with little or no equipment. Everything
considered, the Korean railroad personnel have done extremely well.