The repair and maintenance of locomotives as sources of innovation and technology transfer. New insights from the Ryazan–Uralsk private railway (Russia, 1890–1914)

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the practices of the repair, maintenance, and appropriation of locomotives on Russian railways at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, exemplified by a case study of the Ryazan–Uralsk railway. Particular attention has been paid to the function of repair and maintenance in the railway context. Repair and maintenance have therefore been considered complex phenomena bringing together infrastructure, things to be repaired or maintained, and people involved in these actions on the one hand, and field research, innovation and business on the other. Based on a broad range of sources regarding the legal prescriptions, statistics, reports of railway employees to their superiors, financial documentation, and drafts of repaired locomotives, the diversity of the repair and maintenance of locomotives in late imperial Russia is analysed.