Effect of Murmansk railway on Russia in WW1

LordKalvert

Banned
Even if the initial railway doesn't have the capacity to make a huge difference in terms of supplies, wouldn't its existence make further expansion during the war easier than what they had to deal with in OTL?

A large part of the problem wasn't Russian capacity to receive the material as it was suppliers to deliver

A case in point- Russia ordered 3,600,000 rifles from Winchester, Remington and Westinghouse in America. Delivery was supposed to be 100,000 a month by July 1915 and 200,000 a month by July 1916. By the time the Revolution broke out only about 300,000 had reached Russia

In 1915, America and Britain were supposed to ship about 13,000,000 artillery rounds to Russia but managed to deliver on a tenth of that

Military equipment is sophisticated and has to be finely calibrated to work. A rifle for example had 1000 parts that needed to fit within hundreds of an inch. It takes time

For a good discussion on the issue

See Norman Stone The Eastern Front chapter 7

For prewar developments see-

Peter Gatrell Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument ...
 

BooNZ

Banned
For prewar developments see-

Peter Gatrell Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument ...

He certainly offers some candid observations regarding Russian naval ambitions including:

The military objectives behind Russian naval rearmament were difficult to fathom, as Durnovo acknowledged in 1914. He regarded Russia as a continental power rather than a maritime power.
...
A German threat to foreign trade could not realistically be prevented by a large Russian fleet, whose mobility and capacity for action could be (and was) curtailed at one stroke. The outbreak of war made a nonsense of these confused and ambitious plans, because the navy was immobilised by the German blockade of the Baltic and the closure of the Dardanelles.
 
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BooNZ

Banned
For prewar developments see-

Peter Gatrell Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument ...

To further generalise, it paints a rather bleak picture of the ability of Imperial Russia to wage a prolonged war, in part because such considerations did not feature in military planning. In that environment, it is doubtful if rail network enhancement or stockpiles would have been contemplated in the build up to WW1. The most likely scenarios that would provide for either stockpiles or a Murmansk railway, would have been pre-1900. IMO
 
I'm afraid that this isn;t a war winner. Russias primary shortage from 1916 onwards was not inability to produce enough millitary material- it was inability to get it to the front with the avaliable rail capacity.

In order to supply the front to the extent it did, the government basically starved the cities, including the workers in the munitions factories, of rail capacity needed to transport food.

The critical shortage was not in track, but in moving stock, railway engineers, etc.

OTL, a track to Murmansk was completed in 1916. Allied supplies quickly became bottlenecked in the port.

A dardanelles victory or Neautral Ottoman TL offers some advatage to Russia since the south west front (and the Rumanian front) are farther from Russia's industrical centers, making it more difficult to supply from domestic production. Hence, Western supply would offer a major advantage. Also, South Ukrainian grain production plummeted during the war due to traditional markets being cut off. Opening the ports to exports would make Trains carrying supplies to the Front more profitable as they could bring export Grain on the way back.

The same advantages do not hold true for the Northwestern Front and an earlier Murmansk track- even if the port was not Icelocked for much of the year.
 
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