Across Siberia by rail
In 1891 the Russian government decided to build a railway across Siberia to connect Moscow and the cities of the Urals with the Pacific port of Vladivostok. The route crossed forest, steppe, marsh and mountain, and the great rivers of Siberia: the Ob, the Yenisei and the Amur. The work was done largely by hand, by soldiers, convicts and hired labourers, and the winters stopped it for months at a time.
The main line was built in sections from both ends. The bridge over the river Yenisei at Krasnoyarsk, finished in 1899, won a prize at the Paris Exposition of 1900. The most difficult stretch was the section around Lake Baikal, where the railway had to be carried through many tunnels, and in the meantime trains were ferried across the lake by steamers, including an icebreaker. The line on Russian territory, avoiding the Chinese Eastern Railway shortcut across Manchuria, was completed with the bridge over the Amur at Khabarovsk in 1916.
A line that changed a country
The railway made it possible to settle Siberia in large numbers and to bring out grain, timber and later coal and oil. Today the route from Moscow to Vladivostok is about nine thousand kilometres long and crosses seven time zones, and the journey takes about a week.