but the decline continued, and in December last year 4,141
engines were in working order. In January this year the
number was 3,969, rising slightly in February, when the
number was 4,019. A calculation was made before the war
that in the best possible conditions the maximum Russian
output of engines could be not more than1,800 annually.
At this rate in ten years the Russians could restore their
collection of engines to something like adequate numbers.
Today, thirty years would be an inadequate estimate, for
some factories, like the Votkinsky, have been purposely
ruined by the Whites, in others the lathes and other
machinery for building and repairing locomotives are worn
out, many of the skilled engineers were killed in the war with
Germany, many others in defending the revolution, and it
will be long before it will be possible to restore to the
workmen or to the factories the favorable material
conditions of 1912-13. Thus the main fact in the present
crisis is that Russia possesses one-fifth of the number of
locomotives which in 1914 was just sufficient to maintain
her railway system in a state of efficiency which to English
observers at that time was a joke. For six years she has
been unable to import the necessary machinery for making
engines or repairing them. Further, coal and oil have been,
until recently, cut off by the civil war. The coal mines are
left, after the civil war, in such a condition that no
considerable output may be expected from them in the near
future. Thus, even those engines which exist have had their
efficiency lessened by being adapted in a rough and ready
manner for burning wood fuel instead of that for which they
were designed.