Major Walter seems to have had the idea, rightly or wrongly, that the success of this performance was mainly due to the Engineer and Railway Volunteer Staff Corps. He says concerning that body:-- Not the least valued result of the Windsor and Edinburgh reviews of 1881 is the having introduced with becoming prominence to public knowledge the necessary and indispensable services of the "Engineer and Railway Volunteer Staff Corps." Until these reviews bore testimony to the national importance of this Corps, few knew anything of its duties, or even existence, beyond a list of officers recorded in the Army List.... Since the embodiment of the Volunteers the Engineer and Railway Transport Corps has done much service, invariably thorough and without a hitch.... These several officers of the Railway Staff Corps set about their transport work of the 1881 reviews in a manner worthy of their vocation. They proved to the country that their Corps was a reality and necessity. In 1893 the authors of the "Army Book for the British Empire" wrote (p. 531):-- There is every reason to believe that, in case of the military forces in the United Kingdom being mobilised for the purposes of home defence, and being concentrated in any part or parts of the country for the purpose of guarding against or confronting an invasion, the railway arrangements would work satisfactorily. The remarkable success which has attended the concentration of large bodies of Volunteers gathered from all quarters of the Kingdom for military functions and reviews, on more than one occasion, has shown the extraordinary capabilities of the British railway system for military transport on a great scale. Rolling stock is abundant. The more important lines in England have a double line of rails; some have four or more rails. Gradients, moreover, as a rule are easy, an important point, since troop trains are very heavy. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR While no one was likely to dispute these conclusions, it had to be remembered that the transport by rail even of exceptionally large bodies of Volunteers, carrying their rifles only, was a very different matter from the conveyance, under conditions of great pressure, of large forces of troops accompanied by horses, guns, ammunition, road wagons, stores and other necessaries for prospective actual warfare. So the accepted capacity of the British railways had still to stand the test of actual war conditions, with or without the accompaniment of invasion; and this test was applied, to a certain extent, by the South African War.