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 ...