Railway transport & movement house rule

[burroughs]

Playing my TOAW III scenarios I have come to the conclusion that there should be some limitations regarding the availability and use of the railroad movement. Namely playing the Falotti's WWI strategic study where the counters are divisional and regimental or brigade sized it dawned on me that units of that measure comprised in a large proportion of heavy equipment like medium and heavy guns, high calibre trench mortars etc. are unable to load uand uload just like that anywhere in the field so mostly I gree with my opponents that each unit or subunit of such characteristics is eligible for railway transport only while loading or unloading in urban or dense urban locations on assumption that if there is a rail line in such a location it's quite obvious that there should be some infrastructure available to service that type of transport. The rule of thumb though is to assess the situation on the spot - if we have a light infantry element whose the heaviest piece of equipment is a medium machine gun easy to be disassembled and then deployed manually or they have light guns that may be mountain pack arty pieces then it is legitimate to transport them freely as one sees fit.But in TOAW III it's easy to estimate such instances as the complete TOE&O is displayed in detail in the unit panel.

In PC or MC it's unavailable, but still do I feel there should be such thing taken into consideration for the sake of realism; can we have a Soviet motorized battalion which, according to the Soviet military doctrine, is actualy a heavily mechanized travel by railroads unhindered by the necessity of using the railway stations?

Any ideas or feedback on how to come to terms with that, please?

[Lowlander]

Don't underestimate the Russian's railways.
Did'nt they move a load of factories before the famed German Blitzkrieg could capture them.
Read this very interesting and detailed paper, which was posted at the Matrix site, on the Russian transport system.

IMO the rail capacity and movement in the PZC games is very realistic.