Enormous traffic poured into the new railway, and lines of wagons were kept waiting for months on end in the insufficient siding accommodation provided. They did their best, but years later, in the war with Japan (1904- 05), Russia was to pay dearly for this false economy.įrom the first the road and equipment proved completely inadequate. Thus they had to build one of the greatest main lines in the world on a light branch line standard. For their transcontinental railway they were obliged to use light rails weighing no more than 54 lb to the yard. They were allowed to build a road bed thinner and more primitive than that standard in Russia, and the Russian State criterion was not then high. They were told to build their line as cheaply as possible. Once they were east of the Urals they had before them an enormous stretch of country without towns, without roads, sparsely dotted with settlements which were too mean to be dignified by the name of villages, and subject to one of the cruellest climates in the world.Įven then, the State backing given to the engineers was meagre. Under the cloud of Imperial displeasure, the Government at last allowed the surveyors to go out into the wilds, and the future route of the great highway was plotted by them across the lonely steppes, through the mountainous forest land beyond Lake Baikal, and in the farthest regions of the Ussuri country, the uttermost part of Siberia where it is flanked by the North Pacific.įar too little record has been left of the experiences undergone by those plucky men. “I have read many reports of the Governors- General of Siberia,” he said, “and must own with grief and shame that until now the Government has done scarcely anything towards satisfying the needs of this rich but neglected country.”Īctive and courageous engineers chafed at the delay people pointed at transcontinental lines in North America, especially the Canadian Pacific, which was then attracting a great deal of attention. By 1886, the Tsar Alexander III was exasperated with the lack of progress. The Government contented itself by backing a relatively short line connecting the Orenburg and Ekaterinburg routes. But another two years passed before anything more was done towards opening up the recesses of Siberia.įresh proposals were made, but the building of the Trans- Siberian Railway did not progress. Later in the same year railway builders in Siberia, helped by the Government, pushed the Ekaterinburg line forward to Tyumen. The year 1880 saw the completion of the great bridge across the River Volga, connecting the Orenburg line with the main European Russian system. They thus crossed the Ural Mountains and entered Siberia, though they were still a long way from opening up the country. The engineers reached Orenburg in 1877, and completed a mining railway between Ekat- erinburg and Perm in 1878. Despite this delay engineers in European Russia were gradually linking up strategic points along the boundary, with railways that were to prove of additional value once Siberia was penetrated. Then followed a great deal of delay, aggravated by the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877- 78. These ran as follows ( see map below): Kineshma- Vyatka- Perm- Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk)- Tyumen Nizhni- Novgorod (now Gorki)- Kazan- Krasno Ufinsk- Ekaterinburg- Tyumen and Samara- Ufa- Chelyabinsk. Between 18, during the reign of Alexander II, surveyors sent out by the Russian Government covered three possible routes for future railway lines designed to open up Siberian territory. Thus, several factors contributed to the importance of railway building in Russia’s great Asiatic possession.Īs far back as 1851 a governor of Eastern Siberia had suggested the building of a transcontinental railway. There were also political considerations. The soil of that country was known to be suitable for agriculture and to have considerable mineral wealth but without rail transport Siberian agriculture was dormant and the mineral wealth of Siberia was unexploited. THE vast territory of Siberia was little known and virtually undeveloped until late in the nineteenth century. Through the taiga the railway engineers had to clear a way for the track before it could be levelled and graded. This name has lent itself to the town of Taiga, a junction on the Mid- Siberian section of the line. WORKERS CARRYING SLEEPERS for the new railway through the dense rolling woods which are known as taiga. Despite enormous difficulties imposed by the nature of the country, which included steppes, rivers, lakes, mountains and desert, engineers at last succeeded in linking East and West with a steel highway across the largest stretch of unbroken land in the world
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