TOPIC:

Historians often celebrate the Victorian era for its transformative impact—an age when restless ingenuity and bold ideas forged much of the framework we still recognise in the modern world.

The Anglo-Boer War (ABW), erupting at the twilight of this long period of scientific confidence and imperial ambition, stands as a pivotal moment: a junction between nineteenth-century certainties and the emerging technologies, methods, and mindsets of the twentieth—and even the twenty-first.

In the next of my series of reflections on the key innovations the ABW fostered, seen through the lens of individuals caught up in it, I turn to a transformative innovation that, aside from the internet, delivered the single largest economic and social impact to the human race – the Railway.

I hope you enjoy and find something of interest. I've experimented by opening with a few paragraphs of historical narrative, before we get down to hard fact research and exploration.

Note : This account contains references to mental health and covers the experience of IED attack.

Innovation in the Boer War #2: Steam & the Fury - The Railway, Sgt Francis Alden Knott and the RPR

2205 Lance Sergeant Francis Alden Knott, 4th Railway Pioneer Regiment
QSA: Transvaal/ Also entitled SA01/ SA02 clasps
Roll Number: WO-100-265_05 p.2 + WO-100-265_05 p.71

Topics: The Railway & Transformation / GWR & Swindon Apprenticeships / Railways in War / Railway Pioneer Regiment / Railway Innovation in the ABW / IEDs

Read time : Longer read


Inside an Armoured Train : Waiting for the Boers (Source Black and White Budget 16 Dec 1899)

Through the loopholes in the armour you see flashes of the high Transvaal plateau with its dry, tawny grassland, dotted with thorn trees. The vibration and rattling of the train beneath you are reassuring. They have felt a part of you for over half your life now. Moving at a stately 12mph you can instinctively detect irregularities in the rails.

Inside the armoured compartment it's cramped and hot. You sense tense expectation amongst the thirty or so men in the three sections in this compartment that you, Sgt Knott, are accountable for.

Suddenly, up ahead, what you’ve expected but hoped against – a sharp, deafening explosion, the physics of violence, the angry sound of metal warping, the lurch of momentum as bodies around you decelerate and topple. Someone swears. It might have been you.

The squealing of brakes, the train coming to a halt. That awful momentary stillness that separates the previous normality from all that comes after. The engine letting off steam, like the angry beast it is, annoyed by someone daring to interrupt it's progress.

Dust and smoke drift, envelop and pass you, carrying the distinctive, thick, acrid, burnt chemical smell, turning slightly sweet, that tells you that dynamite, buried under the rails and probably triggered by a firing mechanism adapted from a Martini-Henry rifle, has just exploded under the front, sacrificial, carriage.

Quick check - No one in your carriage is injured. Good so far.

You know what needs to happen now. The damaged carriages need to be decoupled and the train moved off, the damage needs to be assessed and replaced. What you don’t know is whether they have buried the device and moved on, or are now watching and waiting to ambush the sections once you’ve detrained.

A moment's recollection breaks into the present. If the fellows back in Swindon could see you now. You were taught, then, to keep the rail open. What the old stagers of Swindon didn't reckon on is that you’d have people trying to blow you to kingdom-come, and then snipe you for your trouble.

How did you end up here?

...Deep breath... Focus.

As they taught you in Swindon, first fix the problem in front of you…


1/ Early Life

Thirty years previously, the town of Worcester, in the England of 1870 presented a very different scene to the chaotic destruction of that Transvaal explosion.

Like many towns, Worcester was balancing its agricultural roots with an emerging industrial influence. The River Severn carried barges of hops and timber, and smoke rose languidly from small factories where gloves, carpets and delicate porcelain were made before dispersal via one of the 2 railway stations in the town.

In May that year, Francis Alden Knott was christened in All-Saints Church, having been born into the well-off family of Henry Nicholls Knott, a solicitor, and Catharine Eliza Grimbly.

His mother, Catherine, was the daughter of James Grimbly, a ‘grocer, wine and spirit merchant, Alderman, J.P’. and one time Mayor of Banbury.
Worcester in 1870

Two younger siblings were to join 'Frank' before tragedy struck in July 1880, with the death of their father.

The cause of his father's death, at the comparatively young age of 36, is not known. It is known that he was admitted to Camberwell house, Surrey, a private lunatic asylum in 1879. Reasons for admittance at that time covered a wide spectrum of conditions including depression, epilepsy, alcoholism, and exhaustion.

Whilst no doubt a trying time for Frank, his future life experience would revolve around a maturing and stable technology that would impact every aspect of late nineteenth century Britain.
To understand the impact lets take a moment to consider the context of the journey young Frank is about to embark on.


2/ Transformative Impact of the Railway

The Railway’s origins trace to England of 1825 where the Stockton and Darlington Railway, building on the ideas of Watt, Bouton, Trevethick and Stephenson, became the first public railway to carry passengers and freight using steam power.

This new technology was formidable, moving people and goods, at volume and more quickly, than at any time in history. The editor of the Scotsman wrote in 1825 the railway was destined to be ‘an instrument of world change’.

Schivelbusch (1977) describes the railway’s arrival as ‘the industrialisation and annihilation of Time and Space.’ Wolmer (2009) asserts the railway transformed the world, from one where most people barely travel beyond their village, to one where crossing continents took mere days. A man born in 1800 existed in a world ‘closer to the medieval’ but by 1870 lived in ‘the modern world, where the railway supplied the necessities of life from steam driven factories in industrial towns’ and ‘ensured the Industrial Revolution would affect the lives of virtually everyone on the planet’ (Rolt,1970).

Its impacts were felt in every aspect of Victorian society.

Economic Growth and Industrial Expansion - Railways boosted industry providing cheap, fast transport of materials and goods and stimulated steel, coal, and engineering industries.

Urbanisation and Regional Development - Railways changed the idea of how large a city could be, encouraged commuter suburbs and connected rural areas to markets.

Agricultural and Dietary Change - The Railway opened new markets allowing fresh produce and dairy products to travel further. Lowering food costs in cities shifted agriculture to large-scale farming. By allowing fresh fish to travel beyond coastal areas they also created the first UK national dish in fish and chips.

Social Mobility and Travel - Affordable rail travel developed mass tourism. The Liverpool and Manchester railway carried 500,000 passengers in its first year of running.

Cultural and Political Impacts - Faster circulation of newspapers, mail, and people spread ideas and strengthened national identity, while standardised railway time shaped daily life where previously local variations were common.

Environmental and Landscape Changes - The railway reshaped landscapes with tracks and stations, moved cemeteries, tore down roman walls, increased coal pollution, and reduced dependence on canals and horse-drawn transport.

Spur to Engineering – Railway drove civil engineering evolution including bridge and viaduct construction supporting 800 tons of freight or creating magnificent buildings. Railways supported telegraph expansion driving system-wide communication and reducing crashes.

Political Unification - In France and Germany Railways were used to link regions, driving political unity and increased commerce.

Larousse in 1866 exclaimed 'Railway! A magical aura already surrounds the word; it is a synonym for civilisation, progress and fraternity'.

By 1885, British engineers enjoyed a supreme reputation creating railways in Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Holland, France and Spain. Nineteen thousand miles of track had been laid across the UK, 290,000 miles globally, and a new industry and profession had emerged to design, develop and operate it.

Let's re-join Frank as he takes his first faltering steps into the engineering profession.

3/ Swindon Apprenticeship and GWR

If you had stood outside the expanse of the Swindon Rail works in Wiltshire, on the morning of 22 August 1885, you would have seen a sprawling complex, covering 320 acres. Lines of newly manufactured locomotives filled sidings, towering brick buildings stretched along tracks housing 9,000 workers across workshops and, foundries, stretching over 300 feet, emanated smoke, sparks and iron.


You would have also seen the 15-year-old Frank Knott, on the first day of a 5-year apprenticeship at one of the world’s great engineering centres, as this was the very heart of the Great Western Railway (GWR), a place where science, engineering and innovation were building the modern world.


Swindon GWR Works


Founded by Brunel in 1833, and known as God’s Wonderful Railway, the GWR created a self-contained industrial town, with housing, schools, and social infrastructure around the Swindon Workshop. Opened in 1843 this attracted skilled engineers with its cutting-edge technology. To be a Swindon apprentice was to be ‘the aristocracy of the railway’ (Wolmar, 2009).

Frank’s apprenticeship was a period of ‘servitude and technical development that shaped thinking, attitudes, beliefs and future political stance’ and provided a common language and moral instruction (Matheson 2011). It was not meant to be easy – ‘If the youngster is inclined to be incorrigible, the craftsman gives him sound advice, a corrective cuff in the ear and a vigorous boot in the posterior, but he usually succeeds in bringing out the good and suppressing the bad’.

Apprenticeship contracts set out obligations; for the GWR, to provide nourishment, accommodation, technical skill and moral welfare. The apprentice provided obedience, hard work and resilience over 5 years of labour running 6 am to 5.30 pm 5 days a week, and 6 am to 12 midday on Saturdays.

The GWR taught 2 categories of apprentice - Trade apprentices, often the sons of time-served railway workers, who didn’t pay any fees. Frank was in the second category, Premium apprentices. Drawn from affluent backgrounds, they had to pay fees of £100, (equivalent to £16,400 today) alongside living costs for the 5-year duration.

Frank, and premium apprentices, rotated through most trades in the first 2 years (commencing with rivet-hotting as one of the most unpleasant tasks available) before receiving higher training in engineering, design, testing and management, in preparation for managerial and professional engineering careers within GWR.

Frank's trade of Fitter - someone who repairs, adjusts, and fits precision locomotive parts - was in a higher category of trades. It’s clear that Frank is being provided the best possible start to a railway engineering career and is well supported by his family.

Technical development was built in the Swindon Mechanical Institute teaching apprentices subjects including 'Practical Plane and Solid Geometry, Building Construction, Theoretical Mechanics, Magnetism and Electricity, Arithmetic and Mensuration, Inorganic Chemistry, Carriage Building and Steam and Steam Engines' along with 'Art Drawing, Shorthand and French'.

The training provided engineering problem-solving confidence. Matheson (2011) outlines apprentices having to know detailed engineering and mathematical formulae leading to one apprentice confidently stating, ‘I come from Swindon Works; I can do anything’.

These civil engineering and railway management skills were seen as a part of the imperial project on the global stage.

In 1896 Lord Herschel spoke at Swindon describing ‘Britain falling behind our German neighbours’ and that ‘training of the reasoning process from technical and scientific teaching was of incalculable importance to those who were going to fight the industrial battle of the world'.


In 1891 we find Frank, now aged 21, visiting Woodstock Rd, Oxford with his mother, alongside William Seymour another ‘student of mechanical engineering’, both in their final months of Swindon training. The following year Frank joins the Institution of Civil Engineers, building on professional certification and ready to play his part in extending the railway's reach.

4/ Rail in SA

In South Africa the first railway opened in 1860 with a 2 mile stretch between Durban and the Point in Natal. Expansion accelerated after the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley (1867) and gold on the Witwatersrand (1886), as colonial governments and the Boer republics raced to connect the interior to ports through their respective state-owned / backed enterprises of Cape Government railway, Natal Government Railways, the Orange Free State Railway and the Transvaal’s NZASM.

Sometime between 1892 and 1900 Frank, recognising opportunity for his skills, moves to South Africa where, by the mid-1890s, c.5000 miles of track linked Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London with the mining heartlands and Boer republics, reshaping trade and settlement patterns.

Railways became a tool of imperial rivalry too: the Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal all invested heavily, and by 1899, on the eve of the South African War, control of strategic rail lines was a critical factor in British and Boer planning.

5/ Rail in War

Such a powerful, adaptable, technology was soon turned to military usage.

Within months of the 1830 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, it was being used to transport troops to port for Ireland, where tensions were rising.

The railway’s value – large-scale movement of people and goods - meant that it was ideal to amass and supply ever larger armies.

In Crimea, 8-miles of rail delivered 150,000 artillery rounds in 4 days, turning Sevastopol into "the first victim of the modern application of artillery to war”. The American Civil War saw railways used for mass transportation and track destruction was a key target for both sides.

Wolmer (2010) states ‘Railroads were a major weapon of war and maintaining them in a workable condition was more important than battlefield military strategies. Constructing and rebuilding railways became crucial aspects of military planning, whilst destruction of the enemy's railroads became a key aim.’

The Franco Prussian war of 1870 saw major railway deployment and lessons learned including the need for unified control of the railways for military purposes and association of the military and technical elements.

In the Sudan in 1895, Kitchener extended the railway to extend control. A moveable railhead, building 3 miles of track per day, enabled the victory at Omdurman where 10,000 Mahdists were killed, at the cost of 50 British casualties. Churchill (1899) wrote ‘in savage warfare the power of modern machinery is such that flesh and blood can scarcely prevail. Fighting the Dervishes was primarily a matter of transport. The Khalifa was conquered on the railway.’

6/ Girouard and the Railway Pioneer Regiment

And so to the Anglo Boer War, where, in 1900, a Canadian-born Royal Engineer, Lt Col Hubert Girouard, is appointed Director of Railways.



Having developed military railways and organisational expertise during the Sudan campaign, Girouard realised the vast distances of the veld and a single rail network meant transport would be key to supplying garrisons, moving troops, controlling territory and ultimately to victory.

He also realised that he was woefully short of skilled staff for the mission of defending, repairing and extending over 4,600 miles of vulnerable track.

Fortuitously, Cape Town, in late 1899, was inundated with tens of thousands of volunteers, skilled in engineering and problem-solving in harsh conditions. These were the Uitlanders - largely British-born miners, railwaymen and engineers, forced to leave their homes in the Transvaal, as tensions increased between Britain and the Boer republics.

Girouard's formation of the Railway Pioneer Regiment in December 1899 provided a ready home for these men and their skills. The regiment’s purpose included repair, construction, and operation of lines, building bridges, preventing sabotage and operating trains.

Often under fire, the Railway Pioneer Regiment provided so successful a model of improvised military engineering, that within 12 months, 4 battalions were created.

Here we find Frank Knott, now age 30, in December 1900, offering his railway engineering skills and attesting in Cape Town with the 4th battalion. His experience supports early promotion, and he is raised to sergeant by Dec 1901. This appointment would place him at the centre of an evolution of use of the railway in war.

7/ Rail in the ABW

Let’s explore why this was technology so readily suited to the ABW.

The Railway’s ability to annihilate distance makes it ideal for the distances over which the ABW is fought. Wilson (1993) describes ‘no factor more important to the British Army's campaign than retaining possession and securing the railways’ with ‘operations over an extended period not possible without rail transport’.

Use of the railway in the ABW mirrored 2 distinct phases.

7.1 Early Phase - Primarily Logistical Transportation

In early phases of the war, characterised by more rigid areas of control, the railway was used in a way consistent with the previous 50 years - movement of people and material.
Transportation of men, horses, ordnance and supplies – The British shipped 100,000 troops to South Africa in the opening phase with the majority being moved by rail to the interior.

Both Boer republics used railways to transport burghers, their supplies and heavy ordnance into Natal and to reinforce commandos on the southern front.

Railway Adaptability - Hospitals to Horses


Transportation of Wounded and Prisoners – The British used the railway for casualty evacuation, including via two hospital trains. A Manchester Regiment soldier describes being’ put on a stretcher and carried three miles to the railway, where our regiment was drawn up to cover the entrainment of the wounded’ (Wolmer,2010).

In the early phase both sides used railways for prisoner transport (Wolmer, 2010).

Transportation of Refugees – The opening months saw large movement of refugees – primarily from the Boer republics. One British refugee described a ‘week-long journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town in forty coal trucks and six carriages. At night we slept on the veldt. Whenever a stoppage was made, the occupants of the train were made the butt of Boer insults … and found the muzzle of rifles placed under their noses by cowards who called them ‘venom rouineks’ to their faces’. ((sic) Wolmer, 2010)

A telegraphist at De Aar junction recorded seeing ‘a sight I hope I may never see again – open cattle trucks densely packed with men, women, and children, refugees travelling to Cape Town, and all craving food. It was pitiful to see them in the blazing hot sun, with a fearful wind, laden with fine dust …. It was heartrending to see.’ (Wolmer, 2010)

Refugees by Rail - From Transvaal and from Kimberley post siege


Early Armoured Trains for Reconnaissance - Armoured trains were used for reconnaissance, including examples from besieged towns and the notorious derailing incident leading to the capture of Winston Churchill.

7.2 Later Phases

Active use for Drives - In the later guerrilla phases of the war we see an evolved armoured train in use, not only as a form of transport, but as an offensive weapon.

The No.3 train, introduced in January 1901, included trucks carrying rails, sleepers and repair materials; armoured trucks with Maxim machine gun and a naval 12-pounder with a 7-mile range; a truck containing a dynamo to power a searchlight that could be set up for illumination and communication at distance.

Nineteen trains were used to keep lines open, for patrolling, reconnaissance and reinforcement of points, and as offensive weapons in conjunction with field columns.

The new train model also enabled the blockhouse system, curtailing the movement of guerrillas by sectioning off the land and working in conjunction with mobile units on drives. The armoured trains supported 50,000 men and black auxiliaries on blockhouse duty with a system of water and ration trains every two days, and supply trains every twelve days, sustaining garrisons (Spiers, 2015).




Enabling Concentration Camps - The Railway also enabled the creation of concentration camps for Boer Civilians.

Moving large numbers of internees, rations, medicines and staff was feasible only where trains could reach. Sidings/stations provided space, existing water supplies, quick access to garrisons whilst denying guerrillas local support.
The Camp at Meere bank station, near Durban. Established in 1901 this was to house 9000 Internees, including 309 fatalities.


Kitchener believed he could not maintain the counterinsurgency, or meet the needs of a dependent civilian population, without the railway.

Protecting the railway and using it both defensively and offensively therefore proved critical components of an attrition strategy that ultimately prevailed. (Wolmer, 2010)

8/ Countering Innovation

Texeira (2016) states for every innovation an equal, opposite reaction is created.

The widespread use of the railways for logistics and now offensive capability led to a Boer strategic campaign targeting the British railway.

Rogers (2023) outlines Boers had strong familiarity with explosives from the mining industry, no shortage of supply, and deployed them to: destroy key bridges, culverts, damage rails; attack trains and rolling stock with explosives or sabotage; and attack supporting infrastructure, such as watering points.

A specialist Boer sabotage unit, the Hindon Scouts, had been created led by ‘Dynamite Jack’ Hindon. Kitchener later stated Hindon caused more difficulties for British forces than any other Boer commander.

Over 270 major railway bridges required reconstruction following Boer attack. Repairs to railway were often carried out under fire.

Foreshadowing the widespread use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in the twentieth century, pressure sensitive and electrically initiated IEDs were first used in the ABW using an adapted Martini-Henry trigger placed under the lines, activated by a train's weight passing over the rail (Mills, 2010). The war also saw first use of experimental wire-controlled, remotely-operated vehicles (moving along the track well ahead of the train) as a counter to IEDs (Rogers 2023).


A selection of the 278 blown bridges (Source: The Sphere May 1900)
Inset : Martini-Henry trigger adapted as IED firing mechanism, explosive not present.



It was this situation that Frank and the RPR would have been encountering daily.

With no specialist explosive ordnance units in the British Army at that time it is the RPR, and some Royal Engineer units, that would have encountered and dealt with explosive devices and worked to rapidly recover lines and infrastructure damaged by IEDs. Normal protocol was not to deactivate discovered devices but to make safe by detonating.

Day after day, under constant threat of Boer snipers, he and his comrades repaired sabotaged tracks, rebuilt bridges, and laid new lines across veld.

10/ Reframing

Earlier wars had largely used railways as a means of transporting troops to the frontline.

The innovation of the British in the Boer war was to bring the full power of the late 19th century railway into use, not only to move personnel, stores, ammunition, food and medical supplies, but as an offensive instrument of war, controlling movement and weaponising static enforcements such as block houses and barbed wire.

I would argue that the ABW is in fact the world's first large-scale railway war.

The conflict in the guerrilla phase then becomes a race of speed, testing whether one side could destroy critical infrastructure choke points, bridges and rails faster than the other side could repair and defend that infrastructure.

It is the RPR and Frank Knott that would be at the forefront of that effort.

11/ Peace and Later Life

For a technology that played such a key role in the ABW, the Railway also featured on the path to peace, with delegates to the peace conference at Vereeniging in May 1902 arriving by train.

Boer General Smuts remembered ‘excitement at travelling by rail for the first time after nearly two years of rough fare and hard living. We had luxurious cabins, with soft beds to lie on; a steward with coffee in the morning’ (Spiers, 2010).

For Frank, the end of the conflict brought a commitment to remain in South Africa, where he continued to work as an engineer until retirement.

In 1934 in Wynberg, Cape Town, at the grand age of 64, he marries Sybil Irene Hart, the daughter of a cashier from Brighton. Sybil is 39. Though a 25-year age gap between spouses was not uncommon at that time, it perhaps demonstrates an adventurousness of spirit.

Frank was to live in the Pinelands district of Capetown, until his death in 1948, age 77.

Frank, with decades of railway engineering experience, having played his part in the first railway war and witnessed first-hand the devastating, systematic use of IEDs against railway infrastructure, would later apply that same talent at the De Beers factory in Somerset West, 28 miles outside Cape Town.

The irony is that this factory was the major supplier of explosives for South African mining.

And Francis’s trade on retirement ?

He is listed as an explosives engineer.


So, thank you, Frank, for your service.

Thank you for reading this life narrative.
All corrections / builds or insight on Francis, or any topic raised, are warmly welcomed.


Select Bibliography

Churchill, W.S. (1899) The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan.
Girouard, H. M. (1903) History of the Railways during the War in South Africa, 1899–1902
Matheson, R. (2011) Doing Time Inside: Apprenticeship and Training in GWR’s Swindon Works
Mills, I.P., MBE (2010) RAILWAY ATTACK! An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902. Military History Journal, 15(1)
Rogers (2023) Standing Well Back, 2020. Strategic IED Campaign on Railways 1899–1902. [online] Available at: www.standingwellback.com/strategic-ied-c...-railways-1899-1902/
Rolt, L.T.C. (1970) Victorian Engineering.
Spiers, E. M. (2015) “Railways on the Veld: The South African War, 1899–1902.” In: Engines for Empire: The Victorian Army and its Use of Railways.
Wilson, A. H. J. (1993) The railway war: A study and assessment of the British defeat of the Boer guerrillas, South Africa, 1899-1902
Wolmar, C. (2009) Blood, Iron & Gold: How the Railroads Transformed the World.
Wolmar, C. (2010) Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways.

Really interesting - thank you! I have a soft spot for the RPR so your story provides some very nice context - good job!
J