Great Siberian Way - 100 years (updated)

Construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway



The progress of mankind is impossible without reliable transport routes. The more of them, the more it is possible to establish trade, administrative and other relations between remote regions. Roads are one of the factors that turn a certain geographic region into a state. The importance of roads understood in ancient Rome. Understood this and in Tsarist Russia, when the project of the Great Siberian Way (historical name) or the Trans-Siberian Railway was launched.



The Trans-Siberian Railway is now called the entire railway, which connects Moscow with major Far Eastern and Eastern Siberian cities. Historically, the Trans-Siberian Railway was called the section from Miass to Vladivostok. The length of the entire highway is 9288.2 km, and this historical section is 7000 km. The construction of the railway began in 1891, and ended in 1916.

Construction Transsib

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Transsib Scheme: the historical route, the northern route, the Baikal-Amur Mainline, the span of the southern route to Siberia (source: Wikipedia)



The official start of construction is May 19, 1891. It was on this day that Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (the future emperor Nikolai II) took the wheelbarrow to the road. The project was initially allocated a budget of 350 million rubles in gold (for those times it is a huge amount). According to the information already provided in the Soviet encyclopedia, the project as a result spent much more funds than planned: 1.5 billion rubles in gold.



The construction of Transsib was discussed in the Russian Empire for several years. The fact is that the government understood the fact that the vast regions of Western and Eastern Siberia and the Far East were detached from the central regions, the European part of the Russian Empire. Getting to the Far East before the appearance of the Trans-Siberian Railway was a difficult task. Therefore, in 1857, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia officially filed a request for the creation of a railway that would link the outskirts of the empire with its center.



To solve the issue, as mentioned above, the government began only in the 1880s. The project attracted several prominent scientists who were engaged in planning further work. Nearly 20 years, exploration continued and projects of various sections of the road were created. In 1881, the committee of ministers, after considering the reports of the engineering commission, decided to start work at once from two sides - from Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok.



The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was carried out in very difficult climatic conditions. The route was laid across practically deserted areas, mostly in the taiga. Workers had to pave the way across rivers, lakes, swamps, and permafrost areas.







Tens of thousands of people participated in the construction. At the very beginning, 9.6 thousand people were involved, in the midst of construction, this number increased to 85-89 thousand people. In spite of the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century, progressive tools were created for laying the railway, workers only used such simple tools as a shovel, saw, ax, pick and wheelbarrow. Every year, it was possible to lay between 500 and 600 kilometers of railway.



Both construction sites were united on November 3, 1901. Transsib was introduced in 1903. Then began regular communication between St. Petersburg, Vladivostok and Port Arthur. True, then the path was not continuous, the trains were transported via Baikal by ferry. This problem was solved a year later, in 1904. The launch of the entire route meant the first in history history of traveling by rail from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacific Ocean without using ferry crossings.



October 18, 1916 the construction was completed. It is clear that during the First World War and the Civil War some sections of the road were almost not serviced. Therefore, after the completion of conflicts, the path began to recover.

Some facts about Transsib

The main thing you need to know about the line is that it is the longest railway in the world. The length of it, as noted above - 9289 km. There is a road through the whole country, connecting remote regions with the center.



The Trans-Siberian Railway passes through the territory of two parts of the world at once. The first is Europe (the length of the route in this section is 1777 km) and the second is Asia (the length is 7512 km).



The railway passes through the territory of 13 regions of the Russian Federation, 4 territories, 2 republics, 1 autonomous region and 1 autonomous region. Transsib passes by 87 cities, and the population of five of them exceeds 1 million people (this is Moscow, Perm, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg).







The road crosses at once 16 large and major rivers: the Volga, Vyatka, Kama, Tobol, Irtysh, Ob, Tom, Chulym, Yenisei, Oka, Selenga, Zeyu, Bureya, Amur, Khor and Ussuri.



Now more than 100 million tons of cargo are transported by Trans-Siberian Railway annually. These are minerals, equipment, and food products. Of course, transport and passengers. The duration of the journey for the whole Transsib is 7 days and 6 nights. It is 146 hours. The average speed of the train on the way is 64 km / h.

What's next?

The Trans-Siberian Railway continues to evolve. Now Japanese enterprises are dealing with the problem of modernizing one of the sections of the highway. We are talking about the path between Kazan and Vladivostok. The Japanese claim that it is possible to speed up the cargo transportation at the site due to the renewal of trains and railroad tracks.



In addition, there is the possibility of extending the way to the northern island of Hokkaido through bridges or tunnels to Sakhalin Island. According to the authors of the project, the implementation of such a project will positively affect the turnover of goods between countries. Also, the presence of railway lines between the countries will have a positive effect on the exchange of tourists.







The Government of the Russian Federation also approved the passport of the project for the modernization of Transsib and BAM. The total investment in this project until 2018 should amount to 560 billion rubles. Of this amount, 300 billion is allocated by Russian Railways as part of its investment program. The reconstruction of the BAM-Transsib is included in the “list of self-sustaining infrastructure projects implemented by legal entities whose financial assets accommodate funds of the National Wealth Fund on a returnable basis.”



UPD: “Yandex” shamed all the ignorance of the old and new calendar styles. We apologize to the readers and attach congratulations to Trassib on the occasion of the search engine.