On March 29, 1891, Emperor Alexander III signed a decree on the construction of the Great Siberian Way, better known as the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The anniversary date is not widely celebrated in Russia. Society and the state treat the Trans-Siberian without any emotions: there is, and it's good.

Meanwhile, contemporaries called the Trans-Siberian one of the greatest technical achievements of mankind, compared its launch with the laying of the Suez Canal and even with the discovery of America.

According to the modern historian Alexander Goryanin, Russia has no less reason to be proud of the Trans-Siberian Railway than the first satellite.

Interesting facts about the Transsib and not only

The first steam locomotives in Russia were called steamboats.
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For 40 pre-revolutionary years, 81 thousand kilometers of railways were built in the country, and from 1920 to 1960 - 44 thousand kilometers. More than half of the main lines now at the disposal of RAO "Russian Railways" are the royal heritage.
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For a vast country, railway construction was a vital necessity. In the middle of the 19th century, the delivery of a pood of coal from England to St. Petersburg cost 12 kopecks, and from the Donbass - a ruble. Periodic outbreaks of famine occurred mainly not because of a physical shortage of bread, but because of the inability to bring it from productive provinces to lean ones.
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Having built railways from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo (1842) and from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1851), Nicholas I did not welcome their further development. "Railways are not a consequence of an urgent need, but more often an object of artificial needs and luxury. They encourage unnecessary movements from place to place," said Finance Minister Yegor Kankrin.
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Alexander II revised his father's policy as the Crimean War showed that the lack of transport infrastructure weakened military power.
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The Ministry of Railways in Russia was established on June 15, 1865. The total length of railways at that time did not exceed 3 thousand km.

The state corporation "Main Society of Russian Railways", created to build a route from Moscow to the Crimea, did not build anything and went bankrupt, causing a loss of 130 million rubles to the treasury, but its director bought himself a mansion in St. Petersburg and an estate in the Oryol region.
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In 1866, it was decided to transfer railway construction, as well as the production of rails, steam locomotives and wagons, to private hands. Over the next three years, investors received 139 licenses.
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The world's first electrified railway was supposed to appear in Russia. In 1913, it was decided to launch electric trains from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, but the war prevented the implementation of the plan.
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The Trans-Siberian project was born in 1837. A certain Nikolai Ivanovich Bogdanov (nothing more is known about him) proposed to stretch the railway to Kyakhta, the main transshipment point for Russian-Chinese trade.
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The idea had opponents who called it madness and swindle. The Minister of Internal Affairs Ivan Durnovo, two years before the start of construction, argued that the creation of the Trans-Siberian Railway would lead to a mass resettlement of peasants in Siberia, and labor costs would rise in the internal provinces.
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“The first thing to be expected from the road is an influx of various swindlers, artisans and merchants, then buyers will appear, prices will rise, the province will be flooded with foreigners, it will become impossible to maintain order,” the Tobolsk governor was worried.
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Anton Chekhov traveled three months from Moscow to Sakhalin in 1890.

Construction officially began on May 31, 1891. The heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich, in the tract of Kuperov Pad near Vladivostok, filled a wheelbarrow with earth and poured it onto the canvas. The builders began to move towards each other from Vladivostok and Miass (Chelyabinsk region), to which the path had been laid earlier.
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The future Nicholas II was appointed chairman of the State Committee for Construction Supervision. Sergei Witte, then Minister of Railways, claimed in his memoirs that the proposal came from him. Alexander III was allegedly surprised: “The heir is still a boy, how can he head the committee?”, And Witte replied that if you do not entrust anything important to the crown prince, he will not learn.
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The initiators of the creation of the Trans-Siberian were inspired by the example of the longest Union Pacific railway from Omaha to San Francisco at that time, commissioned in 1870 and also breathed life into the underdeveloped lands. But the length of the Union Pacific was 2974 km, and the Trans-Siberian - 7528 km (together with the section from Moscow to Miass - 9298.2 km). Together with branches, 12,390 km of tracks were laid.
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The American road was technically more difficult in one respect: the builders had to overcome higher mountains (the Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada has a height of 2191 meters above sea level, and the highest point of the Trans-Siberian, Yablonovaya station, is 1040 meters).

The Trans-Siberian Railway cost 1 billion 455 million rubles (about 25 billion modern dollars). Unlike most Russian railways, government funding was also involved.
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The average laying speed was one and a half kilometers per day.
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Construction took 25 years. The last object, a 2.6 km long bridge across the Amur, was put into operation on October 18, 1916.
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Regular traffic began much earlier, on July 14, 1903, but trains from Chita to Vladivostok did not follow the unfinished Trans-Siberian Railway, but along the Chinese Eastern Railway through Manchuria.
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An agreement on the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway was reached during the arrival of Chinese Premier Li Hong Zhang to Moscow for the coronation of Nicholas II in May 1896. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1935 stated without reference to the source that Li Hong Zhang allegedly received a million-dollar bribe from the tsarist government.
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The Chinese Eastern Railway shortened the route by several hundred kilometers and was considered an outpost of Russian influence in Manchuria, however, according to some researchers, it did more harm than good, because, passing through Chinese territory, it was a constant source of problems and conflicts. After the communists came to power in 1949, the road was donated to the PRC.

In addition, at first there was a gap in the Trans-Siberian: trains crossed Baikal on ferries, and in winter the rails were laid on ice. October 20, 1905 was put into operation the Circum-Baikal road with a length of 260 km with 39 tunnels.
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At the same time, a monument to Alexander III in the form of a railway conductor was opened in Irkutsk, and at the Slyudyanka station - the only station in the world built entirely of marble.
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Up to 20,000 workers were employed in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. For political reasons, Chinese and Korean guest workers were not involved. The opinion, widespread in the Soviet era, that the road was built by convicts is a myth.
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The highest paid workers, bridge riveters, received a ruble for each rivet and hammered seven rivets per shift. Overfulfillment of the plan was not allowed so that the quality would not suffer.
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Part of the cargo was delivered by the Northern Sea Route. Hydrologist Nikolai Morozov took 22 steamships from Murmansk to the mouth of the Yenisei.
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The Amur Bridge was under construction for three years. A ship carrying steel spans from Odessa was sunk by a German submarine in the Indian Ocean, and the work dragged on for 11 months.
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The world's first tunnel in permafrost was laid on the Amur site.
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Steam locomotives, wagons and a 27-arshin model of a bridge across the Yenisei became the highlight of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and received the Grand Prix there. French journalists called the Trans-Siberian "the backbone of the Russian giant" and "a grandiose continuation of the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries."
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Vladimir Lenin argued that "the road was great not only in its length, but also in the boundless robbery of state money, in the boundless exploitation of the workers who built it."

The passenger express went from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok for 12 days (now, thanks to electric traction and the elimination of single-track sections, the travel time has been reduced to seven days).
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A 1st class ticket cost 148 rubles 15 kopecks (the average salary of an industrial worker for half a year); 2nd class - 88 rubles 90 kopecks; 3rd class - 59 rubles 25 kopecks.
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At the service of passengers of the 1st class there was a saloon car with a library and a piano, bathrooms and a sports hall. Carriages trimmed with mahogany, bronze and velvet are exhibited at the Railway Museum in St. Petersburg.
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In the 1930s, Japanese diplomats traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Europe and back took turns counting the oncoming military trains for days on end, so a lot of dummies moved along the road.
The electrification of the Trans-Siberian Railway was fully completed in 2002.
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The capacity of the road, according to experts, can reach 100 million tons of cargo per year.
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The time of delivery of containers from the Far East to Europe by rail is an average of 10 days, about three times faster than by sea, however, the Trans-Siberian Railway serves less than two percent of the international trade turnover in this direction, primarily due to the lack of powerful transshipment seaports.
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In 1999, then-Minister of Railways Nikolai Aksenenko lobbied for the construction of an 8-kilometer tunnel from the port of Vanino to Sakhalin to later link Russian railways to Hokkaido. The project is currently on hold.

(historical name) is a railroad connecting the European part of Russia with its median (Siberia) and eastern (Far East) regions.
The actual length of the Trans-Siberian Railway along the main passenger route (from Moscow to Vladivostok) is 9288.2 kilometers, and according to this indicator, it is the longest on the planet. The fare length (according to which ticket prices are calculated) is somewhat larger - 9298 km and does not coincide with the real one.
The Trans-Siberian Railway passes through the territory of two parts of the world. Europe accounts for about 19% of the length of the Trans-Siberian, Asia - about 81%. The conditional border between Europe and Asia is the 1778th kilometer of the highway.

The issue of building the Trans-Siberian Railway has been brewing in the country for a long time. At the beginning of the 20th century, vast areas of Western and Eastern Siberia and the Far East remained cut off from the European part of the Russian Empire, so there was a need to organize a route that could get there with minimal time and money.

In 1857, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky, officially voiced the need to build a railway on the Siberian outskirts of Russia.
However, it was not until the 1880s that the government began to address the issue of the Siberian railway. They refused the help of Western industrialists, they decided to build at their own expense and on their own.
In 1887, under the leadership of engineers Nikolai Mezheninov, Orest Vyazemsky and Alexander Ursati, three expeditions were organized to find the route of the Central Siberian, Transbaikal and South Ussuri railways, which by the 90s of the XIX century had basically completed their work.
In February 1891, the Committee of Ministers recognized that it was possible to start work on the construction of the Great Siberian Route simultaneously from two sides - from Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok.

The beginning of work on the construction of the Ussuri section of the Siberian railway, Emperor Alexander III gave the meaning of an extraordinary event in the life of the empire.
The official start date for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway is May 31 (May 19, old style) 1891, when the heir to the Russian throne and future Emperor Nicholas II laid the first stone of the Ussuri railway to Khabarovsk on the Amur near Vladivostok. The actual start of construction took place somewhat earlier, in early March 1891, when the construction of the Miass-Chelyabinsk section began.
The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was carried out in harsh natural and climatic conditions. For almost the entire length, the route was laid through sparsely populated or deserted areas, in impenetrable taiga. She crossed the mighty Siberian rivers, numerous lakes, areas of increased swampiness and permafrost.

During the First World War and the Civil War, the technical condition of the road deteriorated sharply, after which restoration work began.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Trans-Siberian Railway carried out the tasks of evacuating the population and enterprises from the occupied regions, uninterrupted delivery of goods and military contingents to the front, without stopping intra-Siberian transportation.
In the postwar years, the Great Siberian Railway was actively built and modernized. In 1956, the government approved a master plan for the electrification of railways, according to which one of the first electrified lines was to be the Trans-Siberian along the section from Moscow to Irkutsk. This was done by 1961.

In the 1990s - 2000s, a number of measures were taken to modernize the Trans-Siberian Railway, designed to increase the throughput of the line. In particular, the railway bridge across the Amur near Khabarovsk was reconstructed, as a result of which the last single-track section was eliminated
In 2002, full electrification of the main line was completed.

At present, the Trans-Siberian Railway is a powerful double-track electrified railway line equipped with modern information and communication facilities.
In the east, through the border stations Khasan, Grodekovo, Zabaikalsk, Naushki, the Trans-Siberian Railway provides access to the railway network of North Korea, China and Mongolia, and in the west, through Russian ports and border crossings with the former republics of the Soviet Union - to European countries.
The highway passes through the territory of 20 constituent entities of the Russian Federation and five federal districts. More than 80% of the country's industrial potential and main natural resources, including oil, gas, coal, timber, ferrous and non-ferrous ores, are concentrated in the regions served by the highway. There are 87 cities on the Trans-Siberian, of which 14 are centers of subjects of the Russian Federation.
More than 50% of foreign trade and transit cargo is transported via the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The Trans-Siberian Railway is included as a priority route in communication between Europe and Asia in the projects of international organizations UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe), UNESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), OSJD (Organization for Cooperation between Railways).

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

From publishers

Transsib. A word familiar to millions of people not only in Russia, but all over the world. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Transsib is one of the most recognizable domestic brands. And this is not surprising: the longest railway in the world, connecting two continents, was built in record time and amazed contemporaries with innovative engineering solutions. Another thing is surprising: there is still only one domestic guidebook on this famous highway, published in 1900 in St. Petersburg on the initiative of the Ministry of Railways. More than a hundred years have passed since the publication of the Guide to the Great Siberian Road. The road was reconstructed, tunnels were laid, bridges were erected, new railway lines were built. Some of its sections, such as the Circum-Baikal Road, have already become exclusively tourist routes. Probably, it's time to look at the Trans-Siberian through the eyes of a modern traveler. The Trans-Siberian is the largest railway artery in the country. In the 21st century, the journey by road will take only six days, but they will be unusually eventful. In less than a week, you will change your clock seven times and see more than 20 Russian regions. Central Russian landscapes will be replaced by the Ural Mountains, beyond which the boundless expanses of Siberia lie. You will drive along the shores of Lake Baikal, cross 16 major rivers, rise more than a thousand meters above sea level, and finally arrive in Vladivostok, Russia's outpost on the Pacific Ocean.
With this book, you can travel the Trans-Siberian Railway without even leaving your home. Departing from the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow, you will cover more than nine thousand kilometers and end up on the platform of Vladivostok, at the milestone on which the number 9288 is inscribed. Kilometer after kilometer you will “pass” through 20 regions, territories and republics, the chapters of this guide. Each chapter is accompanied by a diagram showing the stations of the Trans-Siberian road that lie within the given territory. The Trans-Siberian is more than two thousand "points": large cities, small stations, sidings, posts and dismantled stations that no longer exist today. Not all of them are reflected in the guide's scheme, it only shows a part of the settlements, platforms within the boundaries of large cities, rivers and tunnels. We have tried to choose for the reader the most interesting places of the Trans-Siberian Railway, primarily paying attention to large cities - the historical centers of the region. These settlements are provided with separate maps and detailed descriptions of attractions. However, the names of little-known stations sometimes hide the amazing history of the settlement, the fate of a famous person, or rare monuments. Thus, the Transsib guide is not only detailed information about the famous railway, but also an opportunity to get to know our vast country, learn more about its inexhaustible cultural and natural wealth and take a fresh look at already familiar places.

Transsib: history, modernity, how to organize a trip

History of the Transsib

Without driving from the capital to the Far East, it will be impossible to be called a true Russian ...

S.Yu. Witte, Minister of Railways

Construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. End of the 19th century

What is Transsib?

Today, if you follow the formula of S. Witte, you can get the right to "be called a genuine Russian" for 9,670 rubles. - this is the price of a compartment ticket from Moscow to the Pacific Ocean. A 6-day trip along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok is perhaps one of the best ways to get to know the country, to realize the true scale of Russia. Of course, there will be nothing sensational in going to Vladivostok along the Trans-Siberian Railway - there will be nothing for anyone, except for those who make this trip. For them, this will be a discovery - a discovery of the country, its history, its significance. This book is not for those who simply go from point "A" to point "B" on the longest railway in the world. It is for those who want to realize their involvement in one of the grandiose human creations - the Great Siberian Road. The Trans-Siberian Railway, or Trans-Siberian, is a railroad that connected European Russia with Siberia and the Far East. The Trans-Siberian Railway has turned into a single economic organism, into a single military-strategic space, a huge country spread over 7 time zones. If the highway had not been built, it is likely that Russia would not be able to keep the Far East behind it, just as it was not able to keep Alaska, which was not connected with the empire by stable means of communication. During the design, the line was called the Siberian Railway. Later, both in Russia and abroad, it was called the "Great Siberian Way". The term "Trans-Siberian" literally means "passing through Siberia" (Trans-Siberian). This name - "Trans-Siberian Railway" - was given to the road by the British, it took root and took root. In the narrow sense of the word, the Trans-Siberian Railway is the main route of the highway with the main strongholds Moscow - Yaroslavl - Yekaterinburg - Omsk - Irkutsk - Chita - Vladivostok.

Emperor Alexander III

The birth of the project

The problem of how to shorten the route from the capitals to the Pacific Ocean has long been relevant for Russia. But only with the beginning of the construction of railways appeared at least a theoretical opportunity to solve it. In 1858, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia N.N. Muravyov-Amursky presented to the tsar a project for the construction of a railway from the Volga to Baikal. But then it was a truly fantastic plan, the reality of which few believed. However, N.N. Muravyov-Amursky was not the founder of the project to create the Siberian Railway. Even earlier, such an idea was promoted by an official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs E.V. Bogdanovich, a man of versatile talent and indomitable energy. He proposed to build a highway across the Urals to Tyumen, and then to lead it along the watersheds of the rivers to Eastern Siberia. Bogdanovich calculated that the construction of a railway of 700 versts would cost the treasury about 48 million rubles, that is, 1/20 of the revenue part of the empire's budget. This figure plunged many dignitaries and ministers into horror. However, Bogdanovich did not back down, he began to prove, with the help of the press, that the plight of the mining industry in the Urals after the abolition of serfdom could only be corrected by the construction of a railway. Thanks to his efforts, a flurry of letters fell upon the capital demanding the construction of a railway line in Siberia.

Start of work on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway

In 1872–1874 the first exploration work began. The reaction to them puzzled the government. Local authorities, a number of governors-general claimed that the road would lead to an increase in prices, an influx of swindlers, buyers, and the peace of the empire would be disturbed. However, by that time in government circles, few doubted that the railway for Siberia was not only important, but vital. For its construction, in particular, the military advocated. They proposed to build a highway to Vladivostok, they argued that it was the port of Vladivostok that, in the event of war, would become “the target of the actions of our European enemies” and that it should be made a “second Sevastopol”. In addition, they pointed out the need for a rapid transfer of troops to the Pacific Ocean in the event of an invasion from outside or rebellions of the local population. The need for the construction of the road was justified by another circumstance: Russia sought to increase its influence in China, hoping to become the mistress of Asia.
In March 1881, Emperor Alexander II died at the hands of terrorists, and his son and successor Alexander III took up the problems of building the highway. It was he who was destined to become "the main builder of railway lines on locomotive traction" in Russia. In 1883–1885 The Yekaterinburg-Tyumen branch line was built. The railroad reached the Siberian land for the first time. This event was not accompanied by special celebrations, since the main gate to Siberia was not planned here, although this road meant a lot: it connected the basins of two large rivers - the European Kama and the Siberian Ob - and greatly facilitated the movement of migration flows beyond the Urals. Meanwhile, debates continued in government circles about exactly which route the great highway should take, at the same time survey work was carried out, and various construction projects were created.
In 1886, on the report of the governor-general of Eastern Siberia, Alexander III drew a resolution: “I have read so many reports of the governors-general of Siberia and I must confess with sadness and shame that the government has so far done almost nothing to meet the needs of this rich man, but launched edge. And it's time, it's time!"
And in the same year, having familiarized himself with the opinion of the Governor-General of the Amur Territory A.N. Korf about the importance of the railway for the Far Eastern regions, Alexander III ordered to "submit considerations" regarding the preparation for the construction of the steel line. On June 6, 1887, the government decided to build the Siberian Railway, the construction of which was declared a "great people's cause."
In 1887–1890 surveys were carried out on the future route, and all these years the Yekaterinburg-Tyumen branch was considered as the head section of the Trans-Siberian Railway. But in 1891, it was decided to make the Chelyabinsk station the starting point of the road through Siberia, since by that time the Samara-Zlatoust railway had approached it from the central provinces. "With dizzying speed" in 1896, a branch line Yekaterinburg - Chelyabinsk was built, and it connected the Ural Railway with the Trans-Siberian Railway under construction.

Railway bridge over the Ob. 1890s

However, the cost of building the highway to Vladivostok and its length still seemed colossal. Then the idea came up to “straighten” it beyond Baikal. Rear Admiral N.V. was the first to speak out for the implementation of such a project. Kopytov. He proposed to bring the Siberian railway beyond Irkutsk to the border Kyakhta, and then lay it through the territory of Northern China to the village of Nikolskoye, now Ussuriysk.

Beginning of work

Wanting to give the beginning of the construction of the Ussuri section of the Siberian railway the significance of an extraordinary event in the life of the empire, Alexander III signed a special rescript addressed to the heir to the throne. “I order now to start building a continuous railway through the whole of Siberia,” it said, “with the goal of connecting the abundant gifts of nature in the Siberian regions with a network of internal rail communications. I instruct you to declare such my will upon entering the Russian land again after reviewing the foreign countries of the East. At the same time, I entrust you with laying foundations in Vladivostok for construction of the Ussuri section of the Great Siberian Railroad, which is allowed for construction, at the expense of the treasury and by direct order of the government. The official ceremony that marked the beginning of the "great people's cause" took place at the easternmost point of the road - in Vladivostok. Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (the future Emperor Nicholas II), who was there on his way from a trip to the countries of the East, on May 19 (31 according to a new style) on May 19 (31 according to a new style) at 10 am 2.5 km from Vladivostok, in the area of ​​​​Koperovskaya padi, after performing a prayer service, loaded a wheelbarrow of earth with his own hands and took her to the embankment. This event is considered the official start of the construction of the Great Siberian Route. Then, on the same day, the Tsarevich, to the sounds of an orchestra, laid the first stone in the foundation of the station and fixed a commemorative silver plate made in St. Petersburg according to a model approved by the emperor. It should be noted that by this time the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway had already begun on the Miass-Chelyabinsk section. On April 19, 1891, the Petersburg steamer brought rails, a group of railway engineers and 600 convicts to Vladivostok - they became the first builders of the highway. In Vladivostok, a railway station was already being erected and a 2.5 km railway was laid, along which Tsarevich Nikolai reached the place of the solemn laying. And the Tsarevich delivered the wheelbarrow with earth to the embankment, which had a length of more than 2 versts. Back in February 1891, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to simultaneously start work from opposite ends - from Vladivostok and from Chelyabinsk.
From Vladivostok, paths were led towards Khabarovsk immediately after the official start of construction, laid down by the Tsarevich. A year later, the construction of the route from Chelyabinsk began.

Ridge of Russia

In August 1892, an important event for the Siberian road took place: S.Yu. was appointed Minister of Finance. Witte, an extremely active person, an ardent supporter of the construction of the highway.

Emperor Nicholas II

As Minister of Railways for some time, Witte thoroughly studied the construction project, and becoming the all-powerful head of the finance department, he took matters into his own hands. Unlike his predecessor P.A. Vyshnegradsky, Sergei Yulievich was a staunch supporter of the fastest construction of the road: he seemed to foresee the Japanese war on the historical horizon Without delay, Witte proposed the order of construction. The first stage is the design and construction of the West Siberian section from Chelyabinsk to the Ob (1,418 km), the Middle Siberian section from the Ob to Irkutsk (1,871 km) and from Irkutsk to the station. Baikal (80 km), as well as South Ussuri - from Vladivostok to the station. Grafskaya (408 km).
The second stage included the construction of a branch from the station. Cape on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal to Sretensk on the river. Shilka (1,104 km) and the North Ussuri section from Grafskaya to Khabarovsk (361 km).
The third stage of the Trans-Siberian Railway was the Amur Railway from Sretensk to Khabarovsk (2,130 km) and the most difficult part of the route - the Circum-Baikal Way from the station. Port Baikal (at the source of the Angara) to the station. Mysovaya (261 km).
On all sections (except for the Amur and Circum-Baikal Railways, the construction dates for which have not yet been established), work was to be launched at full strength from the summer of 1893. The main was intended to be opened for full operation in 10 years - in 1903.
At the beginning of 1893, the Committee for the Construction of the Siberian Railway was established, which, like a locomotive, pulled the entire huge construction industry at full speed. It included the chairman of the cabinet of ministers, the ministers of finance, communications, internal affairs, state property, military, naval ministers and the state comptroller. The sovereign appointed the heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich, as the Chairman of the Committee, who, as time showed, was a little more than a year before the coronation.

Temporary station on the Trans-Siberian. 1890s

The Great Siberian Route set off to the east from Chelyabinsk rather quickly. After 2 years, the first train was already in Omsk, a year later - at the station. Krivoshchekovo in front of the Ob. Due to the fact that the construction of the road from the Ob to Krasnoyarsk was carried out at once in 4 sections, almost at the same time the first train arrived in Krasnoyarsk. And in 1898, 2 years ahead of schedule, - to Irkutsk. At the same time, the rails reached Baikal. And on the opposite side, from Vladivostok, the South Ussuri railway to the station. Grafskoy (now the station Muravyov-Amursky) was put into operation in 1896, and the North Ussuri road to Khabarovsk - in 1899.
Many foreign companies and entrepreneurs expressed their desire to participate in the construction of the road. But the Russian government, fearful of increasing foreign influence in Siberia and the Far East, rejected their proposals. The highway was built on its own, from Russian materials and at the expense of the treasury. It was not only a matter of prestige, but also of security.
Almost all work was done by hand, the tools were the most primitive - a shovel, a pick, a wheelbarrow, an ax, a saw. The workers lived in plank barracks knocked together by themselves, which were heated by stoves-potbelly stoves. Despite this, about 500–600 km of railway track was laid annually. History has never known such a pace of construction. The road was rented out in separate sections, along which the movement of trains immediately began. Stations (stone - in large cities, wooden - in small ones) and station buildings, as a rule, were erected in advance, before the arrival of the first train.
Bridges, train stations, locomotive depots and water towers not only corresponded to their practical purpose, but also met high aesthetic requirements. Many of them were subsequently recognized as monuments of architecture. The spiritual needs of the population were not forgotten either. By 1901, 167 churches and 107 schools were built along the Trans-Siberian Railway using funds from the Emperor Alexander III Foundation for Settlers, some of which are still in operation today.
Geological exploration was carried out along the route - the search for minerals in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe future road. As a result, Anzhero-Sudzhensky, Cheremkhovo, Suchansky coals were discovered.
Thanks to the construction of the road, riverbeds were cleared and deepened, steamboats began to move, fields were plowed up and sown. In villages and cities, new working professions appeared - switchmen, stokers, and travel watchmen. Many commercial enterprises sprang up, sending bread, meat, pine nuts, furs, and wool to the West.

Impregnable Transbaikalia

In Western Siberia, the builders did not experience any special difficulties: the flat terrain with slight slopes did not create significant obstacles. Only giant rivers, such as the Irtysh, Ob, Yenisei, and even then not for long, stopped the advance inland. But beyond Baikal, a completely different Siberia began - deserted, impassable, wild. The route crossed the impassable taiga, endless swamps, unpredictable rivers, numerous mountains and rocks, areas of permafrost. In conditions of almost complete impassibility, a lot of time and money was spent on the delivery of the necessary building materials (and in fact everything had to be imported except timber). The deadlines for putting the sites into operation were disrupted, and in the end the construction of the Amur railway was suspended. For the time being, they also decided not to build the Circum-Baikal Road, but to transport trains and goods across the lake by ferry. A 73-kilometer ferry crossing was established along Baikal From England, with great difficulty, the ferries-icebreakers "Baikal" and "Angara" were brought in parts, which fell within 5 years to transport trains. The Baikal, with a displacement of 3,470 tons, was launched in 1897, and in the spring of the following year it began cruising on the lake. For the flight, he carried 25 loaded wagons and 200 passengers. Angara helped him. During the day, icebreaker ferries made 2 voyages.

Railway station in Omsk. Early 20th century

Construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway

In the winter of 1903–1904 On the ice of Lake Baikal between Tankhoy and the port of Baikal, a 45 km long rail track was laid on the ice, along which wagons and steam locomotives were “rolled” by horse traction. But the ferry across Lake Baikal proved to be inefficient for transporting a huge mass of cargo, this was especially acute during the Russo-Japanese War.

Ferry-icebreaker "Angara"

Ferry across Lake Baikal

Ferry-icebreaker "Baikal"

Minister of Railways S.Yu. Witte

Chinese Eastern Railway

In the spring of 1901, the Trans-Baikal section of the Trans-Siberian Railway reached Sretensk. To connect European Russia with the Pacific coast by rail, it was necessary to build a road 2,000 km to Khabarovsk. Due to the extreme complexity of construction on the Amur site, as well as for political reasons, the government decided to build a railway from Transbaikalia to Vladivostok - a route through Manchuria. This is how the Kaidanovskaya branch to the border with China and the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) arose. The linkage of rails along the entire length of the Great Siberian Route was carried out on October 21 (November 3, according to a new style), 1901. But the policy immediately made its own tough adjustments: as a result of the bloody Ihetuan (or Boxer) uprising, 2/3 of the already built CER railway was destroyed, as well as most of the outbuildings. The uprising was crushed, but on the road much had to be rebuilt.

Manual punching of tunnels of the Circum-Baikal road

Regular rail communication between St. Petersburg and the Pacific ports of Russia - Vladivostok, Port Arthur and Dalniy - was established on July 1 (14 according to a new style) July 1903. This date also marked the beginning of the operation of the Great Siberian Route throughout its entire length. However, there was still a gap on the highway; trains across Lake Baikal, as before, were transported on an icebreaker ferry.
As it turned out later, the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, in which colossal money was invested (more than 400 million rubles, not counting private investments), did not justify itself. 40% of the funds were irretrievably lost when the constructed South Manchurian line had to be given to Japan under the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905. And after another 2 decades, the road began to work for the economy of China and Japan. Ultimately, the Amur road, which nevertheless had to be built, cost the country less than the CER (157.1 thousand rubles per 1 km against 172.6 thousand rubles).

Trans-Siberian Express

In August 1903, reports appeared in the world press about the opening of through passenger traffic to Vladivostok, which made a great impression on the then European society. Express trains that ran from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean consisted exclusively of class I and II cars and were distinguished by increased comfort, as they would say today. In particular, they provided restaurants and a variety of amenities for passengers. Despite the fact that a ticket for such an express was not cheap, traveling along the new route provided significant savings in time and money. For example, getting from London to Shanghai by the Trans-Siberian Railway turned out to be 1.5 times faster and almost 2 times cheaper than by steamboat through the Suez Canal or Canada.

Trans-Siberian Express car

Unprecedented pace: the flip side

The highway grew at an astounding pace. Due to what such unprecedented rates of construction were achieved? The fact is that many works were carried out using simplified technology. The Committee for the Construction of the Siberian Railway developed special recommendations, following which the builders saved time and money. According to these recommendations, for example, the width of the subgrade in embankments, cuts and mountain areas, as well as the thickness of the ballast layer, were reduced, workers used lightweight rails and shortened sleepers, small bridges were built of wood, etc. Transsib designers even went for such step: they increased the distance between railway stations to 50 km.
All this really accelerated and reduced the cost of construction, but as a result, the throughput of the road turned out to be insufficient. The mainline could pass 3 pairs of trains (i.e., 3 trains in different directions) per day. 1 of the 3 trains was supposed to be passenger, and the other 2 - commodity. The passenger train developed a speed of only 20 km per hour, the freight train and even less - 12 km per hour. In peacetime, this could be put up with, but with the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, it became obvious that the road needed to be reconstructed: the highway could not cope with the influx of troops and military cargo. The matter was further complicated by the fact that it was necessary to transport equipment, cargo and troops across Lake Baikal on ferries.

The train of the head of the construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway B.U. Savrimovich. 1898

Baikal question

In 1898, by decree of Nicholas II, survey work was carried out on the shores of Lake Baikal, which made it possible to begin construction of the eastern section of the Circum-Baikal Railway from Mysovaya towards Kultuk.
In 1900, the Engineering Council of the Ministry of Railways approved the final version of the route.
This construction site turned out to be the most difficult along the entire route from Chelyabinsk to Vladivostok. The shore of the lake between St. Port Baikal and st. Kultuk for 81 km was a rocky ridge of the Sayan Mountains with an elevation of up to 400 m above the lake level. The coast of Baikal was interrupted by numerous bays and capes with steep slopes and cliffs. The Trans-Siberian Railway approached the Circum-Baikal road from the west in 1898, from the east - in 1900, and the Circum-Baikal road itself, left for the 3rd stage because of its frightening impregnability, began to be built in 1902. Its laying was led by the railway engineer B.U . Savrimovich. The railway track along the shore of Lake Baikal was built in a little over 2 years - a year ahead of schedule. Contrary to the name "Circum-Baikal Railway", the path did not run around the lake, but only closed its western end in a semicircle. In September 1904, the first train with the Minister of Railways, Prince M.I., passed along the lake from Slyudyanka to Port Baikal. Khilkov on board, which marked the establishment of a continuous rail track across the entire continent, without the use of ferries. A year later, the commission for the inspection of the section Port Baikal - Slyudyanka found it "finished and fit for transfer to proper operation", and regular trains were able to follow the rails from Western Europe to Vladivostok itself. S.Yu. Witte, a great specialist in the field of railway construction, believed that Russia could be proud of the engineering solution of the Circum-Baikal Railway.

The Trans-Siberian Railway was called by her contemporaries as one of the great and significant achievements of the human mind, putting this constructed structure on a par with the laid Suez Canal or the discovery of the American continent by Christopher Columbus.

Our contemporary historian Alexander Goryanin claims that the Russians are just as proud of the built Trans-Siberian Railway as they are of the first launched artificial satellite of our planet Earth.

The length of the entire Trans-Siberian Railway is 9288.2 kilometers, which connected, at the same time, the capital of our Russia with the major cities of Siberia and the Far East region. It is considered one of the longest roads in the world. The highest point of the paths is located on the Yablonov Pass with an altitude of one thousand forty meters above sea level. It should also be noted that the full completion of the electrification of the entire route was completed only in the twenty-first century, in 2002.

Construction history

The history of the Trans-Siberian Railway begins at the end of the eighteenth century, on March 29, 1891, the Russian Emperor Alexander the Third signed a decree on the start of construction work to create the Great Siberian Way. This is the name in the documents originally bore the Trans-Siberian Railway.

There were no lavish celebrations for the centenary of the road. The reasons may be different, if you remember, then in 1991, a hundred years after the start of the operational period of the Trans-Siberian Railway, such a country as the USSR ceased to exist. The years that followed were not the best. The country was now trying to build capitalism, however, for the bulk of the people, such an economic system, basically, showed its bestial grin.

In society, the existence of this railway was treated with a philosophical outlook: it exists, it works, which means that everything is already fine, while people did not show any emotions.

The official birth of the Trans-Siberian Railway is the date of July 1, 1903 according to the Julian calendar. Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1918. As for the movement of trains along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the first of them went back in the mid-nineties of the nineteenth century.

Tomsk on the Transsib map

Throughout the history of the Trans-Siberian Railway there are many different anecdotal and not very funny cases. Somewhere, in the distance, on a July day in 1896, the citizens of Tomsk heard the sound of locomotive whistles. But they did not sound at the Tomsk railway station, which did not exist yet, but were heard on the highway passing south of Tomsk. All this could mean that from a city of provincial significance, Tomsk could turn into a provincial town, and the young ladies would become ordinary provincials. In fact, the reason that the main route of the Trans-Siberian was laid south of the provincial city was economic problems.

If the tracks were laid through Tomsk, then the railway would become longer by as much as eighty-six miles, and this is 91.744 kilometers. Given the complexity of the local terrain, and the fact that it is possible to deliver any cargo directly to the railway, then, on that, the rulers decided that the laying of tracks would be carried out south of Tomsk, although the public of the city and the merchants actively opposed such a decision. In 1910, the townspeople addressed a petition to the then Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. There were several projects to solve this problem, starting with a connection with the Altai railway, then another proposal appeared, to lead tracks from the Ural region, from Krasnoufimsk through the city of Tobolsk. At a time when a civil war was raging throughout Russia, this issue was not removed from the agenda of the government of the young socialist republic.

Despite the fact that the citizens of Tomsk had a grudge against the Russian authorities, there were those who did not lose money, according to a common myth - they were local cab drivers. The legend said that the designers of the road were bribed by representatives of horse transport, and the railway began to be laid south of Tomsk. In those days, the stables of cabbies numbered 5,000 horses. In fact, at the end of the nineteenth century, every fifth inhabitant of the Tomsk province was engaged in transport. People then claimed that they were fed not by arable land, but by the hard work of cab drivers on the transport route. If the railways would have been initially laid through Tomsk, then horse-drawn transport in this province would simply cease to be considered the main type of transportation carried out, and the Tomsk city treasury would lose a significant part of its profits. True, pundits of historical science testify to the absence of such real events related to bribing road designers, just like the myth of the Tomsk elder Fyodor Kuzmich, who allegedly was actually Alexander the First, remains only an invented myth. After all, the main mission of all existing legends is nothing more than an attempt to present reality in a different color or angle, thereby embellishing reality.

The start of the work of the Trans-Siberian Railway allowed the economy of the Siberian region to rush forward. The people of the Tomsk province began to actively engage in butter-making. It became profitable for peasants to donate milk received at their farmsteads, delivering it to collection points, in return receiving live cash. There were also small butter factories. The value of Siberian oil was not lower than the Vologda products of this type, but now it became possible to transport their best products over longer distances to other Russian regions, where they were in great demand. Oil products were also exported to Western European countries. All this became possible, thanks, after all, to the appearance of that very dead-end railway line that connected with the main highway. And the bulk of the people were satisfied that their city of Tomsk had not lost its provincial status.

But there are no disadvantages in such situations. First of all, the economy of the provincial city was influenced by its remoteness from the main main line of roads. Tomsk has ceased to be a significant transit point in the Siberian region. The palm passed to the newly formed city of Novosibirsk, built on the site of the godforsaken settlement of Krivoshchekovo. The modern city grew rapidly, becoming a huge metropolis, thanks to the Trans-Siberian railway.

Something happened that should have happened, during the period of the second decade, the twentieth century, the city of Tomsk ceases to be considered a provincial center. The Tomsk province also disappeared from the map, and only with the onset of 1944 did the formation of the Tomsk region take place.

After a whole century, the Trans-Siberian transit still has a negative impact on the Tomsk regional economy. The presence of remoteness from the main route leads to an increase in the cost of incoming various products. There is practically no profit for large wholesale companies to deal with the transshipment of small cargo shipments following in two or three wagons. This does not affect the total volume of cargo, and the delivery time is significantly increased. Sometimes, even to predict the date of the end of such a transaction, no one undertook.

The station point of Bely Yar is a working type settlement, but the rail track laid to it only exacerbates similar economic problems in Tomsk.

One of the main disadvantages of the Tomsk railway line is the presence of only one track. In the summer months, for the most part, repair work on the road is activated. The daily size of the time period for the repair of tracks makes trains stand idle for exactly the same amount of time, which leads to significant direct losses.

The restriction on transport accessibility to the city of Tomsk has a social impact on student outflows. For various reasons, their number in regional universities continues to decline.

historical direction

The historical part of the Trans-Siberian is considered only its eastern branch of the route, which begins in Miass, in the southern Urals, in the Chelyabinsk region, and ends in Vladivostok. The length of this route is seven thousand kilometers, its construction was carried out from 1891 to 1916.

Nine thousand six hundred people have worked on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway since the beginning of construction. During the peak period of construction from 1895 to 1896, eighty-nine thousand people were already involved in the work. At the completion of the creation of this type of structure, on a large scale, only five thousand three hundred people remained. Almost all the ongoing construction work was carried out "hand-to-hand", where the main tools were: primitive wooden wheelbarrows, picks, shovels, saws and axes. Despite such technical equipment of the builders, the annual laying of railway tracks has reached a six hundred-kilometer mark.

The Trans-Siberian Railway made it possible to carry out the movement of trains from European cities located on the oceanic coast of the Atlantic, along railroads, excluding ferry crossings, to the Russian city of Vladivostok, standing on the Pacific coast of Russia.

In total, the Trans-Siberian railway lines connected the Far East region with Siberia, the Urals and the European part of the earth. The unified transport system included Russian ports in the west: St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, in the north: Arkhangelsk and Murmansk and in the south: Novorossiysk, in the Far East region ports: Nakhodka and Vladivostok, the border urban-type settlement of Zabaikalsk.

The history of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway testifies to the main milestones of the laying of railway tracks, which began in Kuperovskaya Pad, near Vladivostok, on May 31, 1891. On this solemn occasion, the future Russian Emperor Nicholas II, who was then still in the statue of the Tsarevich, took part in the ceremony of starting the construction of the route. A young man of imperial blood filled an entire wheelbarrow with earthen soil with his own hands and drove it to the embankment of the future railroad track. The actual date of construction is counted from March 1891, when the construction of the road began in the city of Miass, Chelyabinsk province.

The amount of the preliminary estimate for such a grandiose construction was three hundred and fifty million gold rubles. The actual expenditure of funds was multiplied many times over.

The name of one of the leaders of the engineer Nikolai Sergeevich Sviyagin is the station station Sviyagino. Some of the cargo intended for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was delivered along the Northern Sea Route, calling at the mouth of the Yenisei River. N.V. Morozov, being a hydrologist, took part in ensuring the wiring of twenty-two steamships.

It is also noteworthy that Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich was appointed to the post of chairman of the state committee, whose duties included mandatory supervision of the progress of construction work on the Trans-Siberian Railway. When the Russian autocrat of that time, Alexander the Third, noticed this appointment, he expressed his surprise at such an early age of the chairman of the state committee, calling his son a boy. By that time, the Tsarevich had only exchanged his third decade of his age.

To which the Minister of Communications of the Russian Empire, Mr. Sergei Witte, allowed the emperor to object: "If today the heir is not given such responsible assignments, then he will never learn to carry them out." With such an answer from a subject, the autocrat Alexander III had nothing to object to.

In the third decade of the twentieth century, diplomats from Japan spent days and nights at the train openings, counting the oncoming military echelons. In this connection, camouflaged trains, which were ordinary dummies, followed the road.

The current indicator of the capacity of this road, according to expert estimates, will be able to reach a level equal to one hundred million tons of annual cargo turnover.

The indicator of the time factor of container transportation is equal to a ten-day period, which is three times faster compared to sea routes. Despite such convincing figures, the Trans-Siberian Railway serves only two percent of the total amount of international trade in this direction. The reason lies in the absence of large and powerful sea harbors in the Far East region.

The Trans-Siberian Railway in the region of the Far East has a number of railway branches connecting with the station points of the Vostochny and Nakhodka ports and Cape Astafyev.

The most distant routes of the Trans-Siberian Railway began in Kharkov and Kyiv. The length of the first route was nine thousand seven hundred and fourteen kilometers. The time factor indicator reached a value equal to seven days, six hours and ten minutes. On May 15, 2010, this route is reduced, and the named trains go only to Ufa. The direct carriage train continued to follow to the final destination of the former route. A year later, this train set was finally cancelled. The length of the second route from the Ukrainian capital was ten thousand two hundred and fifty nine kilometers, the travel time was seven days, nineteen hours and fifty minutes. Canceled at the same time as the route from Kharkov.

According to the results of October 2014, one of the longest routes was the route from Beijing to Moscow and from Vladivostok to Moscow.

The train set "Russia" is recognized as the most comfortable and fastest, overcomes its journey from Moscow to Vladivostok in six days, one hour and fifty-nine minutes. The average speed is sixty-four kilometers per hour. The Yaroslavl railway station of the Russian capital city can boast of mounted historical pillars, on which the mileage of the entire route is indicated. Similar poles have been installed in Vladivostok and Novosibirsk.

For a century, the Trans-Siberian Railway has been the main “window” to the Far East, linking together vast Russia, from its western to eastern borders. Its construction, despite the fact that almost a hundred years have passed since its completion (next year, 2016, the anniversary will be celebrated) is the largest (in terms of effort and time expended) and the most expensive project in the history of Imperial Russia.

Building background

Russia's access to the shores of the Pacific Ocean occurred as early as the 17th century, but the remoteness of these places with the then means of transportation was simply incredible - it is enough to recall the tragicomic story of a long-term journey to the capital, to the coronation of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, "pretty Kamchatka girls". Only by the time of their arrival, Elizabeth had long been crowned, and the “slightly late” girls categorically refused to go back.

In the practical plane, this problem moved only in the 19th century. The “epoch of steam” has greatly reduced the time required to move people and goods over long distances. There was, however, one snag - to lay rails and run trains along them.

Railway construction was caused by the needs of the industrial era and itself became its locomotive: after all, for the construction of hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers of rail tracks, powerful metallurgy, advanced engineering, and a lot of related things were needed - the production of construction equipment and the industry of building materials, communication systems, staff training and so on.

At the same time, railway construction became the largest source of superprofits and swindles phenomenal in impudence in the era of primitive accumulation. When the United States decided to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with a railroad, paying contractors for every kilometer of track laid, it turned out that the railroad "on the ground" turned out to be twice as long as it should have been under normal construction. The Trans-Siberian, alas, did not escape this fate either: with an initial estimated cost of half a billion rubles, it eventually "pulled" a full-weight one and a half. For clarity, we point out that a million rubles of that time is more than a ton of gold.

Construction and modernization

Having acquired a network of railways in the European part of the country in the second half of the 19th century, the Russian Empire was ready for larger projects. After preliminary survey work, in the spring of 1891, Alexander II the Peacemaker signed a decree on the start of construction of the Great Siberian Route (as the Trans-Siberian was originally called). Moreover, construction began both from European Russia and from Vladivostok.

Incredible difficulties in the construction of the highway - despite the fact that the main "mechanism" was a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and the road passed through sparsely populated, and even uninhabited areas, through all sorts of obstacles created by nature. We had to build bridges and punch tunnels, tear down hills and erect embankments, break through the dense taiga. However, the construction - site by site - was completed, basically, within the project time frame. And this record - both the duration and the speed of construction in the most difficult conditions, has not been beaten so far!

The Trans-Siberian Railway includes the following sections:

• Ussuri road;
• West Siberian road;
• Central Siberian road;
• Transbaikal road;
• Manchurian road;
• Circum-Baikal road;
• Amur road.

Its significance for Russia is most clearly evidenced by the fact that work to increase the capacity did not stop even in the "dashing nineties", and in 2002 the full electrification of the highway was completed. And "Russia's turn to the East" will be carried out, as it was a hundred years ago, precisely along the rails of the Great Siberian Route.