Horses were dying daily in their endeavors to pull carts up the hills to the siege lines, and with few supplies reaching the front, the troops suffered terribly from malnutrition and frostbite. Unless a solution could be found, the entire operation was doomed to humiliating, disastrous failure.

When news of the terrible plight of the troops reached the UK, a leading railway contractor and his partners undertook to build a railway at cost from Balaklava to the front line – and promised that they could construct it in just three weeks after they arrived in the Crimea. Though it took almost seven weeks to complete the railway, in that time a double track which rose 500 feet from the port and traveled for seven miles to the siege lines had been laid.

With food, clothing and ammunition at last able to reach the front, the British along with their French allies were able to capture Sevastopol and bring the Crimean War to an end.