Strategic railway

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (July 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,055 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Strategische Bahn]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Strategische Bahn}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

A strategic railway is a railway proposed or constructed primarily for military strategic purposes, as opposed to the usual purpose of a railway, which is the transport of civilian passengers or freight. Although the archetypal strategic railway would be one constructed solely as part of a military strategy, such a railway has only ever existed in theory.^[1] Thus, a strategic railway is, in practice, one for which any intended or contemplated civilian purpose is subordinate to the military strategic purpose.

Strategic railways are not to be confused with military railways, which can take several different forms. A military railway is established or operated not as a strategic measure, but for tactical, training or logistical purposes. However, it is possible for a railway to be proposed or constructed for more than one military purpose, including a strategic purpose. An example of such a railway is the notorious Burma Railway, the hasty construction of which was as much a strategic measure as a tactical one.

Apart from the Burma Railway, the best known of all strategic railways is probably the so-called Kanonenbahn (English: Cannons Railway), which linked Berlin with Metz, and was opened progressively between 1850 and 1882. As its name suggests, the Kanonenbahn was intended primarily to facilitate the movement of soldiers and materiel, including cannons, from central Prussia towards eastern France, during an era of diplomatic tension and warfare between the two countries.

Although most of the world's strategic railways had been constructed, not always to completion, by the end of World War II, a number of additional strategic railways were built and operated in eastern bloc countries during the Cold War. Progressive changes in military technology, combined with the always high cost of constructing heavy rail systems, make it much less likely that a strategic railway would be constructed in the 21st century than in the 19th or 20th century. However, western and Indian observers have accused China of having military-strategic goals when constructing the Qinghai–Tibet railway or another high speed rail line through sparsely settled territory to Ürümqi in the region of Xinjiang.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]}