Not only did the railway shuttle coal, coke and ore for the Ural-Kuznetsk Combine, it also hauled shipments of petroleum, industrial machinery, agricultural equipment and military material for eastern Siberia and the Soviet Far East; grain and timber for transshipment on the Turksib to Central Asia; and animal and fish products, foodstuffs and tea for European Russia. Between [M 014 / Omsk and Novosibirsk], for example, east and westbound freight increased from 5,400,000 tons in 1931 to nearly 8,105,000 tons two years later.
To cope with demand, education of railway employees in technical and apprentice schools received more attention. Boys and girls also received preliminary training on scaled-down trains that ran on narrow-gauge track a mile long. Rolling stock was increased with powerful locomotives, four-axle freight cars and all-metal passenger coaches. In 1936, workshops were begun in Novokuznetsk for the overhaul of nearly 1,100 engines annually. A year later, the largest plant east of the Urals for building and repairing locomotives and cars went into operation at [M 013 / Ulan-Ude]. Heavily worked sectors of the Trans-Siberian were double-tracked and strengthened; the number of sidings and marshaling yards was increased; and bottlenecks at single-track bridges were eliminated with a second span.
