The Egyptian Expeditionary Force required huge amounts of ammunition and supplies and a reliable source of water for an advance to El Arish. To provide this, the British Royal Engineers built a railway and pipeline across the Sinai Peninsula to El Arish under the leadership of Brigadier-General Everard Blair. From the middle of August to the Battle for Magdhaba on 23 December 1916, British forces waited for this necessary infrastructure to be put in place. These four months have often been described as a period of rest for the Anzac Mounted Division as there were no major battles. However, the mounted troops were busy providing screens for the construction, patrolling newly occupied areas and carrying out reconnaissances to augment aerial photographs to improve maps of the newly occupied areas.