| Two questions I wanted to answer when I started my
research was how much rolling stock did the Confederate railroads
have when the war started and how much did they add during the
war. Though my numbers may be refined a bit in the future, I believe I
now have enough information to answer those questions well enough to
be useful for any analysis. |
| Below is listed the total inventory, as well as I
can determine it. There are still a few roads for which I have no
numbers, but their total inventory was probably too small to make
any meaningful difference to what is reported below.
Unfortunately, the railroads did not all report their cars in the
same categories, so I have a rather large number of Unknown car
types (700 from the Georgia RR). For the
Louisville & Nashville RR, I have only counted those cars
retained on the southern end of the road. |
| I have also divided the
inventory into the Eastern and Western (Trans-Mississippi) Confederacy totals, since
they were not interchangeable. Even in the Eastern section, there
were isolated roads (all of the Florida roads, the New Orleans
city roads, the short Mississippi River port roads, etc.). |
| In the East, these numbers
give about 11 cars per locomotive, but only 9.5
Passenger/Baggage/Freight cars per locomotive. Since trains were
typically 12-15 cars long, it is easy to see why there are so many
documents on car usage and requirements. |
| The South captured and put to
use 27 locomotives and an unknown number of cars (probably about
200) and manufactured 1 locomotive and an unknown number of cars
(probably about 200). |
| This rolling stock serviced
9,194 miles of Eastern track and 752 miles of Western -- a total
of 9,946 miles. |
| Also see Confederate Rolling Stock Production |