With a view to overcoming, as far as possible, the trouble due to the wide extent and the great variety of duties falling on the department of the Inspector-General of Communications, it was arranged, during the latter part of the war, to relieve that department of all responsibility for the railway services and to transfer the control and direction of these to the Executive Commission established at the Royal Head-quarters. In this way it was hoped to utilise the rail-transport facilities to greater advantage, to decrease the risk of collisions and delays, and, through a central organisation, to distribute the transport demands more equally among the various railways concerned. By means of these provisional modifications in the original scheme a better system of operation was obtained during the remainder of the war. But the complete reorganisation that was really necessary was then impracticable, and much friction in the working of the railway services was still experienced, partly because this needful reorganisation could not be carried out, and partly because of the conflicting orders coming from different authorities, each of whom, under the conditions then existing, was perfectly within his right in giving them.[22] The difficulties due to the attempts to rush supplies in excessive quantities direct to the fighting-line, or as near thereto as possible, were also met, to a certain extent, during the course of the war, by the setting up of additional railway magazines or depôts where the forwarding of necessaries could be better controlled; but it was not until the end of 1870 that any approach to regularity in supplying the wants of the German forces was finally secured. No sooner had the war come to an end than the work of remedying the defects which had been developed was taken in hand by the Minister of War and the Great General Staff. Following the creation, on October 1, 1871, of a Railway Battalion on a permanent basis came, on July 20, 1872, a new Regulation cancelling the one of May 2, 1867, which had been in operation during the war, and substituting a new basis of organisation in its place.