ORIGINAL: harding
Chester Wilmott,s excellent book "The Struggle for Europe" has a map on page 210 showing rail centres badly damaged or destroyed. In fact the predominant damge was done to the centres in northern France and Belgium, which not only interdicted Normandy but also Pas de Calais which helped maintain the feint of a landing there. Every bridge over the Seine between Pais and the sea was destroyed (as you have modelled). The supply was so disrupted that Cherbourg could not be adequately stockpiled with supplies.
Well, damage to the Pas de Calais area won't be felt for a long time in this scenario by which time it would have been repaired and reblown multiple times. It doesn't seem worth doing, but I might give it some consideration.
In his chapter "the Battle for the Buildup", he describes only 2 trains a day being able to run the through the Paris-Orleans gap, these could not carry troops, only high value supplies. The troops had to march 150 miles from Paris.
I really can't model rail lines that can only carry supplies.
Page 341 desribes the movement of 9th and 10th SS (2nd SS Pzr Corps) from Poland. they left on June 12 and arrived in Lorraine on June 16th. There the tracks had been cut and they travelled 400 miles by road! arriving around Alencon by June 25.
I don't know if this site is still up (edit: it still works!), but it was a source on the Germans in Normandy that I used extensively:
http://home.swipnet.se/normandy/gerob/p ... pzdiv.html
The above page had the following:
"Together with the Hohenstaufen the Frundsberg division was ordered on 12 June 1944 to transfer to Normandy. At this time these divisions were located near Lvov. Since trains were available, the first elements departed in late afternoon on the 12. On 18 June it was reported that 20 of the trains carrying the division had entered France, four of these had reached Paris. Two days later 38 trains were in the Saarbrucken - Nancy, while 13 had unloaded in Paris. On 23 June 67 trains had reached the OB West area. Of these nine had unloaded in Saarbrucken, 39 in the area around Bar-le-Duc and 21 in the Paris - Dreux area."
The page on the 9th Panzer said "Its movements to Normandy resembled those of 10th SS ZPz Div." Clearly, most troops were delivered beyond Lorraine and about a third of them even to Paris.
Its worth noting to that 2nd SS Panzer took nearly 3 weeks to move from southern france to Normandy, delayed by bombed railways and French Macquis.
They will do about the same in the scenario. They were primarily delayed by needing to perform anti-partisan actions.
