Dislocation of the Transbaikal railway workshops in the 1900s-1910s: technology or policy?

The article studies the process of decision-making on the transfer of the main Transbaikal railway workshops of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Chita to Verkhneudinsk. Such technical reasons as the ill choice of workshop space in Chita because of straight-freezing does not explain their redeployment for hundreds of miles. Based on archival documents we put forward a version of the necessity of transfer workshops to Verkhneudinsk to service the future Kyakhta railway branch, which was to pass through Mongolia to Beijing and connect to Verkhneudinsk with the Trans-Siberian Railway. It seems obvious that Verkhneudinsk as a center of the commercial and industrial district and the point, which had connected the future branch with the Trans-Siberian Railway was more suitable for this role. The documents show that Verkhneudinsk understood the expediency of such a decision long before it was recognized by official Petersburg.