When, owing to the advancing season, the ice on the lake could no longer be trusted to bear either railway trucks or sledges, and when navigation was again open, dependence had to be placed on the ferry services. There were, however, only two vessels available for the transfer of railway trucks across the lake, and each of these, accommodating twenty-seven trucks at a time, could make no more than three return crossings in the twenty-four hours.
Only in one way could an improvement be effected in these obviously inadequate facilities for getting an army to Manchuria, and that was in carrying the railway round the southern end of the lake, thus avoiding the delay caused by the hitherto unavoidable transshipment and crossing, and ensuring a continuous rail journey. The need for this Circum-Baikal link had, in fact, become urgent, and the work was pushed on with the greatest vigour.
Mention has already been made of the engineering difficulties which the construction of the line involved. These will be better understood if it is added that the 160-mile link passes through thirty-four tunnels, having an aggregate length of over six miles; that it is carried across valleys, or open spaces, on two hundred bridges, and that numerous cuttings and many large culverts had also to be provided. The total cost worked out at no less than £52,000 per mile—probably the largest sum per mile ever spent on a railway designed, in the first instance, to serve a distinctly military purpose, and exceeding by £35,000 the average cost per mile, down to that date, of the entire system of Russian railways. Delays occurred, also, through strikes and other causes, and, in the result, it was not until September 25, 1904—more than seven months after the outbreak of war—that the line was ready for use, and that an interruption of the rail journey by the crossing of Lake Baikal became no longer necessary.
Meanwhile, an inadequate supply of engines and rolling stock had been a serious hindrance to traffic alike on the Trans-Baikal section of the Siberian line and on the Eastern Chinese lines. The locomotives and wagons taken across Lake Baikal either on the ice-railway or on the ferry boats had served a useful purpose, but six months elapsed before the Eastern Chinese lines could be worked to their full efficiency.
There were other directions, as well, in which traffic hindrances arose. The freezing, down to the very bottom, of the rivers between the eastern side of Lake Baikal and Harbin (Manchuria) was a cause of serious difficulty in the early part of the year in getting water even for such locomotives as were available. In the western Siberian section the supply of water was impaired by the great percentage of salt in the streams. In Manchuria the fuel reserve was inadequate; soldiers were the only reliable portion of the subordinate railway staff; the railway workshops were poorly equipped; there were not nearly enough engine depôts; large supplies of rails, fish-plates, sleepers and ballast were needed, and much work had to be done in the construction of additional sidings, etc. All these shortcomings required to be made good whilst the war was in actual progress, though for the transport of most of the necessary materials and appliances there was only a single-track line of railway already overtaxed for the conveyance of troops, munitions and supplies.
The number of trains that could be run was extremely limited. The capacity of the line of communication as a whole was fixed by that of the Eastern Chinese Railway between Chita and Harbin; and after three months of war it was still possible to run from west to east in each twenty-four hours no more than three military trains (conveying troops, supplies, stores and remounts), one light mail train, and, when necessary, one ambulance train; though these conditions were improved later on.
The speed at which the trains ran—allowing for necessary stops in stations or at crossing places on the line—ranged from five to eleven miles an hour, with seven miles an hour as a good average. For the journey from Warsaw to Mukden the military trains took forty days, including one day's rest for the troops at the end of every 600 or 700 miles. In April and May the journey from Wirballen, on the frontier of Russia and Germany, to Liao-yang, situate between Mukden and Port Arthur, took fifty days—an average speed of five and a quarter miles per hour.
What with the transport and other difficulties that arose, it was not for three months after the outbreak of hostilities that the Russian troops in the Ear East received reinforcements. It was not until after seven months of war that the three Army Corps sent from European Russia to join the field army were all concentrated in Manchuria.
Under these conditions the Japanese, free to send their own armies by sea to the theatre of war, and able to concentrate them with far greater speed, had all the initial advantage. The Russian reinforcements arrived in driblets, and they were either cut off as they came or, as regards, at least, the fighting from May 14 to October 14, provided only 21,000 men to replace 100,000 killed, wounded or sick; whereas the Japanese were able to maintain a continuous flow of reinforcements to make good their own casualties.
General Kuropatkin is of opinion that if the Russians had been able to command better transport from the outset the whole course of the campaign would have been changed. He thinks that even a single extra through troop train per day would have made a material difference, while the running, from the start, of six trains a day would, he believes, have secured for Russia alike the initiative and the victory. Referring to the Siberian and Eastern Chinese Railways he says:—