In two earlier posts I wrote about how Lawrence of Arabia and Bimbashi Garland used rifle trigger mechanisms to blow up Turkish trains in World War 1, and that they appeared to have been copying an earlier design used by the Boers and Jack Hindon against British trains in the Boer war in 1901. To remind you here’s the diagram again.
I’m grateful that Dennis Walters in South Africa, who is writing a book on the Boer attacks on trains, has forwarded to me photos taken in the Royal Engineer Museum in Chatham, Kent, of a recovered trigger mechanism found under a railway in the Orange Free State on 20th June 1901. I’ll pass on details of Dennis’s book when it is published, but in the meantime, here are the photos:
Update – I’ve found several other conflicts where “triggers” were used – US Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, WW1 search under the “Railway Attacks” category.