History of the Trans-Siberian Route

The need to link Russia’s European part with its remote eastern boundaries became obvious in late 1880s. In 1890 A.N. Gorchakov set up a commission “On the Issue of a Railway Across Entire Siberia”. The project was headed by eminent engineers K.Ya. Mikhailovsky, O.P. Vyazemsky, A.I. Ursati. 350 mln. rubles were earmarked for TransSib creation – a staggering amount for those times. The first brick in the foundation of the Great Siberian Way was laid on May 19, 1891. All works were done manually in very extreme geological conditions. Laying the railway across thick Taiga woods, marsh and inaccessible mountainous areas required technical solutions unheard of in the world. Quite often entire sections of the laid railway disappeared in bog or were buried under a landslide. Cast across major Siberian rivers, bridges (overall length – 58 km.) deserve special attention. Reasonably called “Amur’s wonder,” the bridge over the Amur river was to become the longest in the Eastern hemisphere (2,600 m). It took manual labor and 2,5 years to build a 900-meter bridge crossing over the Yenisei river. In spite of all difficulties it took less than 15 years to build a 7,500-km main line that joined Russian cities of Chelyabinsk and Nakhodka. The average of about 710 km was laid a year. This rate is high even by present-day standards. TransSib has gone down in history as the greatest monument to manual labor - every year over 80,000 workers were hired to build it along with prisoners and soldiers. Actual costs amounted to 530 mln. rubles. F. Nansen, a renowned traveler and scientist, called the Trans-Siberian Main Line “a wonder of technology.”

Basically, it was this railway that brought about Siberia’s economic renaissance. After building the railway many workers remained here for good and became fathers of new worker dynasties. There was an increase in shipments of industrial and agricultural goods to the country’s central regions. Cultural ties between Siberia and European Russia were strengthened.

At present the overall length of the Trans-Siberian Railway is 9,300 km. The main part of the line lies across Asia. The railway’s 1,778th kilometer is thought of as a conventional border between two parts of the world. The whole trip from Moscow to Nakhodka takes nearly 150 hours. But picturesque views of Middle Russian nature gradually giving way to austere Siberian beauty are sure to grip the traveler’s attention. Besides, the Great Siberian Way enables us to see Russia’s major cities and historical monuments: Ekaterinburg, Ural’s cultural and commercial center; Omsk and Novosibirsk, cities with populations above 1 mln.; Irkutsk, one of Russia’s most cherished cities; Vladivostok, the base of Russia’s fishing industry.