The single-track line from Aix-la-Chapelle along the Belgian frontier, supplemented by a light-railway branch from Weismes to Malmédy, met all the traffic requirements of a scantily-populated and primitive district, devoid alike of industries and of local resources, and offering very little traffic; but in 1908 the Prussian Government suddenly decided to double the line, first as far as Weismes, and then to St. Vith, notwithstanding that there was no apparent justification for such a procedure. The widening involved, also, the reconstruction of a high embankment originally designed for one set of metals, a fact which showed that only a few years previously--since when the local traffic had not materially increased--there was no idea that a double-track line would ever be wanted. Still more significant was the fact that, in addition to the second set of metals, sidings were provided on such a scale at the stations _en route_, in localities possessing only a dozen or so of cottages, that, in the aggregate, trains containing a complete Army Corps could have been accommodated on them. At one station three sidings, each about 500 yards long, were supplied, and at another a perfect network of sidings was constructed, including two which were at least half a mile long and were, also, equipped with turntables.[54] The provision, more especially, of sidings such as these at local stations where the trains were few and far between and the ordinary merchandise was represented by some occasional coal trucks, could have but one purpose. They were obviously designed--in conjunction with the substitution of double for single track--to permit of a large body of troops, whether from Aix-la-Chapelle (an important point of concentration for the Prussian Army, on mobilisation), or elsewhere, being assembled in the immediate neighbourhood of Weismes, the junction of the branch line to Malmédy, for an invasion of Belgium. The doubling of the rails as far as Weismes was completed by May, 1909. It was afterwards continued to St. Vith, and so on to Trois Vièrges. We have thus far, however, got only the first chapter of the story. The second opens with the further attempt of the Prussian Government to secure an extension of the Weismes-Malmédy line as a "light railway" across the frontier to Stavelot, three miles east of Trois Ponts, thus giving a shorter route from Aix-la-Chapelle and the camp at Elsenborn to Liége, Namur, Louvain and Brussels, and a second route to Gouvy for Libramont, Bertrix and the north of France. As the result of the influence they were able to bring to bear on them, the Germans succeeded in persuading the Belgian Government, not only to agree to the Weismes-Malmédy branch being continued to Stavelot, but themselves to build the greater part of this connecting link, and even to cut, on the north of Stavelot, a tunnel without which that town would have remained inaccessible by rail.