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Sabotaging the railways

From the OSS Simple Sabotage Manual:

Transportation: Railways
(a) Passengers (1.) Make train travel as inconvenient as possible for enemy personnel. Make mistakes in issuing train tickets, leaving portions of the journey uncovered by the ticket book; issue two tickets for the same seat in the train, so that an interesting argument will result; near train time, instead of issuing printed tickets write them out slowly by hand, prolonging the process until the train is nearly ready to leave or has left the station. On station bulletin boards announcing train arrivals and departures, see that
false and misleading information is given about trains bound for enemy destinations.
(2) In trains bound for enemy destinations, attendants should make life as uncomfortable as possible for passengers. See that the food is especially bad, take up tickets after midnight, call all station stops very loudly during the night, handle baggage as noisily as possible during the night, and so on.
(3) See that the luggage of enemy personnel is mislaid or unloaded at the wrong stations. Switch address labels on enemy baggage.
(4) Engineers should see that trains run slow or make unscheduled stops for plausible reasons.
(b)Switches, Signals and Routing
(1) Exchange wires in switchboards containing signals and switches, so that they connect to the wrong terminals.
(2) Loosen push-rods so that signal arms do not work; break signal lights; exchange the colored lenses on red and green lights.
(3) Spread and spike switch points in the track so that they will not move, or place rocks or close-packed dirt between the switch points.
(4) Sprinkle rock salt or ordinary salt profusely over the electrical connections of switch points and on the ground nearby. When it rains, the switch will be short-circuited.
(5) See that cars are put on the wrong trains. Remove the labels from cars needing repair and put them on cars in good order. Leave couplings between cars as loose as possible.
(c) Road-beds and Open Track
(1) On a curve, take the bolts out of the tie-plates connecting to sections of the outside rail, and scoop away the gravel, cinders, or dirt for a few feet on each side of the connecting joint.
(2) If by disconnecting the tie-plate at a joint and loosening sleeper nails on each side of the joint, it becomes possible to move a section of rail, spread two sections of rail and drive a spike vertically between them.

Wow... like someone actually included this in the Indian Railways official training manual!
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Comments

  1. Anonymous8:14 PM, June 03, 2010

    First post in ages and we get THIS?? Where is all that chatpata masala you promised?

    Sky

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4:55 AM, June 06, 2010

    Anon it is called the "shaadi effect". Give the guy a breather will ya... :)

    Let him get bored of his newly married life.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sudipta Chatterjee2:21 PM, June 10, 2010

    Sky, sorry madam: hope the new post gives you enough mental fodder for a weekend.

    Chanakya, sire, thank you for revealing the secret of all married regular bloggers. :)

    ReplyDelete

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