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

Trans siberia railroad story