The initiator of the construction of the Siberian railway. What is Transsib? Modernization of the Trans-Siberian Railway

(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 Russian Empire, therefore, there was a need to organize a route by which one could get there with minimal time and money.

In 1857, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky, officially voiced the question of the need to build 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, according to the old style), 1891, when the heir Russian throne and the future Emperor Nicholas II laid the first stone of the Ussuri railroad to Khabarovsk on the Amur not far from 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 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 post-war 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.

At present, the Trans-Siberian Railway is a powerful double-track electrified railway line equipped with modern means informatization and communication.
In the east, through the border stations of 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 Soviet Union- 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 the communication between Europe and Asia in the projects international organizations UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe), UNESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific Ocean), OSJD (Organization of Cooperation between Railways).

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

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 proud of the built Trans-Siberian Railway to the same extent 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. She is considered one of long roads on a global scale. 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. Not best years was the time after. 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 civil war was raging throughout Russia, this question 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 railroads were originally 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 historical sciences testify to the absence of such real events related to the bribery of road designers, as well as 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. 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 Railway is considered only its eastern branch of the route, which begins in Miass, in the southern Urals, in 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, then still in the statue of the Tsarevich. 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 early age 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. Indicator average speed equals 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.

The Trans-Siberian Railway (Great Siberian Way) surpasses any railway line on our planet, it was built for almost a quarter of a century - from 1891 to 1916, and its total length is more than 10,000 kilometers. The Trans-Siberian Railway reliably connects Russian western and southern ports, as well as railway outlets to Europe (St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Novorossiysk), on the one hand, with Pacific ports and railway outlets to Asia (Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Vanino, Zabaikalsk). The history of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway will be discussed below ...

So, we continue the series of stories about the construction of the century on LifeGlobe. This highway is one of the longest in the world, and the most difficult in the world in terms of construction. The Trans-Siberian is one of the most important achievements, along with DneproGes, BAM and other construction projects of the century, which we have already talked about. Let's turn to the history of the highway: They started talking about construction in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1857, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia N. N. Muravyov-Amursky raised the question of building a railway on the Siberian outskirts of Russia. He instructed the military engineer D. Romanov to conduct surveys and draw up a project for the construction of a railway from the Amur to the De-Kastri Bay. The first practical impetus for the start of the construction of the grandiose highway was given by the Emperor of the Russian Empire Alexander III. In 1886, the sovereign imposed a resolution on the report of the Irkutsk governor-general:

"I have read so many reports of the Governor-Generals 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, but neglected region. And it's time, it's time."

Alexander III

The merchants of Russia were especially active in supporting the idea of construction. So, in the most loyal address of the Siberian merchants in 1868, it was emphasized

“We alone, Sovereign, Your Siberian children, are far from You, if not in heart, then in space. We suffer great need from that.
The riches of the arable land lie useless for Your throne and for us. Grant us a railroad, draw us closer to You, estranged from You. They ordered that Siberia be introduced together in a single state.

At the same time, there were also principled opponents of the construction of the railway in Siberia. They frightened us with rotten swamps and dense taiga, terrible cold and the inability to develop agriculture. They even urgently demanded an urgent medical examination to determine the mental abilities of the defenders of the idea of building railways in Siberia. Acting Governor of Tobolsk A. Sologub, in response to a government inquiry about the possibility and necessity of building a highway in Siberia, replied that all sorts of swindlers, buyers and the like would come to the province with railways, that a struggle would flare up between foreigners in Russian merchants, that the people would be ruined, and all the benefits will go to foreigners and crooks. And the most important thing: "Observation of the maintenance of order in the region will become impossible, and, in conclusion, the supervision of political exiles will become more difficult due to the facilitation of escapes."

The Committee of Ministers considered on 18 December 1884 and 2 January 1885 the submission of the Ministry of Railways. As before, the voices were divided. Therefore, the Committee of Ministers came to the conclusion that the indication of a specific direction of the road within Siberia due to the lack of information about the economy of many areas Western Siberia, especially the movement of goods on them, prematurely. At the same time, he recognized that it was possible to allow, without starting the construction of a road from Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan, the construction of a road from Samara to Ufa. This decision was influenced by the statement of the chairman of the State Council, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, about the importance for the country of state-owned artillery factories in the Zlatoust district. The decision of the Committee of Ministers was approved by the emperor on January 6, and on January 25 he also allowed the construction of the road to begin at the expense of the treasury. Construction work began in the spring of 1886, and in September 1886 the road to Ufa was opened. The well-known engineer K. Mikhailovsky supervised the work. In the same year, under his leadership, the construction of the road to Zlatoust began. Construction work had to be carried out in a mountainous area. Many artificial structures were erected. In August 1890, trains went along the entire Samara-Zlatoust road

According to estimates by the committee for the construction of the Siberian Railway, the cost of the project reached 350 million rubles in gold. Almost all work was done by hand, using an ax, saw, shovel, pick and wheelbarrow. Despite this, about 500–600 km of railway track were laid annually. History has never known such a pace. The most acute and intractable was the problem of providing the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway with labor. The need for skilled workers was met by the recruitment and transfer to Siberia of builders from the center of the country. At the height of construction work on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, 84-89 thousand people were employed. 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. It crossed the mighty Siberian rivers, numerous lakes, areas of increased swampiness and permafrost (from Kuenga to Bochkarevo, now Belogorsk). Exceptional difficulties for the builders were presented by the area around Lake Baikal (Baikal station - Mysovaya station). Here it was necessary to blow up rocks, lay tunnels, erect artificial structures in the gorges of mountain rivers flowing into Lake Baikal.

The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway required huge funds. According to preliminary calculations by the Committee for the Construction of the Siberian Railway, its cost was determined at 350 million rubles. gold, therefore, in order to speed up and reduce the cost of construction, in 1891-1892. for the Ussuriyskaya line and the West Siberian line (from Chelyabinsk to the Ob River), simplified specifications were taken as a basis. Thus, according to the recommendations of the Committee, they reduced the width of the subgrade in embankments, excavations and in mountainous areas, as well as the thickness of the ballast layer, laid lightweight rails and short sleepers, reduced the number of sleepers per 1 km of track, etc. It was envisaged to build only large railway lines. bridges, and medium and small bridges were supposed to be built of wood. The distance between stations was allowed up to 50 miles, track buildings were built on wooden poles. Here builders first encountered permafrost. Traffic along the Trans-Baikal Mainline was opened in 1900. And in 1907, the world's first building on permafrost was built at the Mozgon station, which still stands today. The new method of building buildings on permafrost has been adopted in Canada, Greenland and Alaska.

In terms of the speed of construction (within 12 years), the length (7.5 thousand km), the difficulties of construction and the volume of work performed, the Great Siberian Railway was unmatched in the whole world. In conditions of almost complete impassability, a lot of time and money was spent on delivering the necessary building materials - in fact, everything except timber had to be imported. For example, for the bridge over the Irtysh and for the station in Omsk, stone was transported 740 versts by rail from Chelyabinsk and 580 versts from the banks of the Ob, as well as by water on barges from quarries located on the banks of the Irtysh 900 versts above the bridge. Metal structures for the bridge over the Amur were manufactured in Warsaw and delivered by rail to Odessa, and then transported by sea to Vladivostok, and from there by rail to Khabarovsk. In the autumn of 1914, a German cruiser sank a Belgian steamer in the Indian Ocean, which was carrying steel parts for the last two trusses of the bridge, which delayed the completion of work by a year.

Trans-Siberian Railway already in the first period of operation revealed its great importance for the development of the economy, contributed to the acceleration and growth of the turnover of goods. However, the capacity of the road was insufficient. The movement along the Siberian and Trans-Baikal railways became extremely tense during the Russian- Japanese war when troops poured in from the west. The highway could not cope with the movement of troops and the delivery of military cargo. During the war, the Siberian railway passed only 13 trains a day, so it was decided to reduce the transportation of civilian goods and, a few decades later, to build the Baikal-Amur Mainline (for more information about the construction of BAM, follow the link)

The train leaves Moscow, crosses the Volga, and then turns southeast towards the Urals, where it - about 1800 kilometers from Moscow - passes the border between Europe and Asia. From Yekaterinburg, a large industrial center in the Urals, the path lies to Omsk and Novosibirsk, across the Ob - one of the mighty Siberian rivers with intensive navigation, and further to Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei. Then the train goes to Irkutsk, overcomes the mountain range along the southern coast of Lake Baikal, cuts off the corner of the Gobi Desert and, passing Khabarovsk, heads for the final point of the route - Vladivostok. There are 87 cities on the Trans-Siberian with a population of 300,000 to 15 million people. 14 cities through which the Trans-Siberian Railway passes are the centers of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In the regions served by the highway, more than 65% of the coal produced in Russia is mined, almost 20% of oil refining and 25% of commercial timber production is carried out. More than 80% of deposits of the main natural resources are concentrated here, including oil, gas, coal, timber, ores of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. In the east, through the border stations of 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 Trans-Siberian Railway is marked with a red line on the map, the BAM is marked with a green line

The entire Trans-Siberian Railway is divided into several sections:

1. The Ussuri railway, with a total length of 769 kilometers with thirty-nine separate points, entered into permanent operation in November 1897. It became the first railway line in the Far East.

2. West Siberian road. With the exception of the watershed between the Ishim and the Irtysh, it runs through flat terrain. The road rises only at the approaches to bridges over large rivers. Only for bypassing reservoirs, ravines and when crossing rivers, the route deviates from a straight line

3. The construction of the Central Siberian Road began in January 1898. Along its length there are bridges over the rivers Tom, Iya, Uda, Kiya. unique bridge an outstanding bridge built across the Yenisei - Professor L. D. Proskuryakov.

4. The Trans-Baikal Railway is part of the Great Siberian Railway, which starts from the Mysovaya station on Baikal and ends at the Sretensk pier on the Amur. The route runs along the shore of Lake Baikal, crosses numerous mountain rivers. The construction of the road began in 1895 under the guidance of engineer A. N. Pushechnikov.

5. After the signing of the agreement between Russia and China, the construction of the Manzhurskaya road began, connecting the Siberian Railway with Vladivostok. The new road with a length of 6503 kilometers made it possible to open through railway traffic from Chelyabinsk to Vladivostok.

6. The construction of the Circum-Baikal section was the last to begin (in 1900), since this is the most difficult and expensive area. The construction of the most difficult section of the road between capes Aslomov and Sharazhangai was headed by engineer A.V. Liverovsky. The length of this highway is an eighteenth of the total length of the road, and its construction required a fourth of the total cost of the road. Throughout the journey, the train passes twelve tunnels and four galleries. The Circum-Baikal Railway is a unique monument of engineering architecture. On May 17, 1891, Tsar Alexander III issued a decree on the start of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, "ordering now to begin the construction of a continuous railway through the whole of Siberia, which has to connect the Siberian regions abundant with gifts with a network of internal rail communications." At the beginning of 1902, the construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway began, headed by engineer B.U.Savrimovich. The railway track along the shore of Lake Baikal was built mainly in 2 years 3 months and put into operation almost a year ahead of schedule (which was largely facilitated by the outbreak of hostilities in the Far East). On September 30, 1904, the working movement along the Circum-Baikal Railway began (the Minister of Railways, Prince M.I. Khilkov, traveled from the port of Baikal to Kultuk on the first train), and on October 15, 1905, permanent traffic was opened. In the photo: tunnel No. 8 punched through the rock of Cape Tolstoy.

7. In 1906, work began on the route of the Amur road, which is divided into the North Amur (from the Kerak station to the Bureya river with a length of 675 kilometers with a branch to Blagoveshchensk) and the East Amur line.

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 of the Trans-Siberian was eliminated. Further modernization of the road is expected due to obsolescence of infrastructure and rolling stock. Preliminary negotiations are underway with Japan, aimed at the possibility of building Shinkansen-type tracks, which will reduce full time on the way from Vladivostok to Moscow from 6 days to 2-3. January 11, 2008 China, Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany entered into an agreement on the Beijing-Hamburg freight traffic optimization project

The creation of the Transsib is greatest achievement Russian people. With difficulties and joys, the builders finished the road. They paved it on their bones, blood and humiliation, but still coped with this incredibly hard work. This road allowed Russia to transport great amount passengers and cargo. Every year, up to 100 million tons of cargo are transported along the Trans-Siberian railway. Thanks to the construction of the highway, the deserted territories of Siberia were settled. If the Trans-Siberian Railway had not been built, then Russia would certainly have lost most of its northern territories.

“Having risen above Russia and looking over it, you can see the blue and steel hoops that pull the earth into a single and great power. Rivers and vital roads hold together and bring its spaces closer. And if the rivers are the essence of the creation of God, then the railways were created, although by the will of the Almighty, by the human mind, will and hands of people. And in this miracle of human creation, the Trans-Siberian Railway is the greatest Man-made.”

V. Ganichev, writer and public figure

In 2016, we celebrated 125 years since the start of the official construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was originally called the Great Siberian Way. In terms of complexity and unprecedentedness, the project is comparable only to a human flight into space. However, this is exactly how - as a strategic, epoch-making and grandiose event - it was perceived by contemporaries at the time of construction. This transport core, in fact, for the first time gathered into a single entity our entire vast State, the crossing of which from end to end used to take up to several months. Hundreds of Siberian settlements, remote from any roads, gained access to an uninterrupted route, not to mention the fact that a land transport corridor was finally created from the eastern seaports to the central cities of the European part of Russia, which runs entirely through the territory of our country.

Surprisingly, even today, like 125 years ago, the Trans-Siberian Railway remains an unsurpassed monument of technical thought, hard work and dedication - it is the longest (9298.2 km) double-track railway in the world, moreover, fully electrified, and in some sections of the route, trains run along it at the same time intervals as in the city metro. For these and many other indicators, it is rightfully included in the Guinness Book of Records.

Which Russian cities does the Trans-Siberian Railway pass through?

What is the Trans-Siberian Railway? This is the largest railway in Eurasia, which reduced the travel time from Vladivostok to Moscow to 6 days. It passes (historical route) through Ryazan, Samara, Ufa, Zlatoust, Miass, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Petropavlovsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Vladivostok and thus connects the western, northern and southern ports of Russia, as well as railway outlets to Europe (St. Petersburg, Murmansk, Novorossiysk) with Pacific ports and railway outlets to Asia (Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Zabaikalsk).

Today, the Trans-Siberian Railway is conditionally four branches:

Directly historical route (red line on the map) - with the above cities.
Baikal-Amur Mainline (green line): Taishet - Bratsk - Ust-Kut - Severobaikalsk - Tynda - Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan.
Northern route (blue line): Moscow - Yaroslavl - Kirov - Perm - Tyumen - Krasnoyarsk - Taishet- and then the transition to the Baikal-Amur Mainline.
Southern route (black line shows the section of the Southern route where it differs from other routes): Tyumen - Omsk - Barnaul - Novokuznetsk - Abakan - Taishet.

The history of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway

Historically, the Trans-Siberian was only the eastern part of the highway from the Southern Urals to Vladivostok. It was this segment, about 7,000 km long, that was built from 1891 to 1916. The great building project was conceived under Alexander III, who ordered his heir to bring it to life "... to start building a continuous railway through the whole of Siberia, with the aim of connecting the abundant natural gifts of the Siberian regions with a network of internal rail communications."

In 1891, the future heir to the throne, Nicholas II personally drove the first wheelbarrow of ballast to the bed of the future road and took part in the laying of the first stone of the railway station in Vladivostok.

In just 10 years (just think about it!) all rail tracks, except for sections at river crossings, were already ready and the transportation of goods and passengers began. I.e on average, workers laid 700 km per year, or 1.9 km a day! But the working conditions were the most difficult - the road was laid in the wilderness, through forests, beams, rocks, full-flowing Siberian rivers, swamps and soft soils, and there was essentially no infrastructure for the transport of materials. At the same time, the builders were limited in funds, and one of the primary tasks assigned to the engineers was the task of saving.

In this regard, it is impossible not to say a little more about the talented engineers themselves, thanks to whom this project became possible, despite any climatic and financial restrictions. The profession of a railway engineer was one of the most prestigious in pre-revolutionary Russia, because it was in this area that at that time all the most advanced developments of scientific and technological progress were embodied. Today, perhaps, we could draw an analogy with IT, robotics and nano-materials...

But let's go back to the past. The Institute of the Corps of Railway Engineers, founded in 1809, provided education of such a class that, according to course projects his students could be built immediately without making any corrections and additions - they were so verified, worked out in detail and technically competent. Emperor Nicholas I himself said: “We are engineers”, implying that it is in this specialty that all the creative and analytical qualities of the Russian people are most fully manifested. And it must be admitted that these people really fulfilled their professional duty with honor (and, perhaps, even surpassed it) and embodied the most daring aspirations of their contemporaries - the Trans-Siberian Railway will remain an eternal monument to their talents.

“The bridge across the Yenisei River was laid by me with a safety margin of 52 times, so that God and descendants would never say offense to me.”

Eugene Knorre, civil engineer

From 1901 to 1916, only auxiliary work was already carried out - on the construction of bridges and various engineering structures. However, their volume is no less impressive than the length of the rail track. Only at the initial stage, 87 large stations and locomotive depots, more than 1,800 small stations and substations, and about 11,000 engineering structures were built on the Trans-Siberian: bridges, tunnels, culverts, and fender walls.

Exactly 100 years ago - in 1916(that is, during the First World War and the total lack of financial and human resources), the most difficult bridge crossing over the Amur was nevertheless put into operation. From this moment begins counting of uninterrupted railway communication along the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway, therefore, it is considered the date of final completion of construction.

The emperor understood that the finished section of the Trans-Siberian Railway was only the beginning of a large-scale development of the country's transport infrastructure. After all, it is simply impossible to cover all the key points with one branch. The gold mines in the Bodaibo region, as well as the main water artery of Siberia, the Lena River, were left aside ... Plans to build a new branch in tsarist Russia was not destined to come true because of the war and the revolution. One way or another, the project was still implemented under the name BAM (Baikal-Amur Mainline) already under Soviet power. This construction site of the 20th century deserves a separate study - now let's just pay attention to the fact that it logically continues the Trans-Siberian Railway and today is a single whole with it.

Now the Trans-Siberian route ends in Vladivostok, but in the near future there are plans to build a bridge or a tunnel to Sakhalin. A large-scale plan for the modernization of the Trans-Siberian Railway and BAM for the coming years has also been approved. Thus, the total investment in the project until 2018 will amount to 560 billion rubles. This includes the construction of a railway to Magadan and to the Bering Strait. Work began on the reconstruction of the Trans-Korean Railway with its access to the Trans-Siberian Railway and the transformation of the latter into the Main Transport Corridor.

So - the Empire was replaced by the Soviets, there have been wars, revolutions, crises, it has already inherited past achievements the Russian Federation. Three different ways, and Great Way continues to live and develop regardless of what ideology sets the vector at this particular moment - and this is another confirmation of its enduring civilizational significance.

Interesting facts about the Trans-Siberian Railway 1

The first steam locomotives in Russia were called steamships

The total length of railways by 1865 - at that time the establishment of the Ministry of Communications did not exceed 3 thousand km.
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 routes now at the disposal of RJSC "Russian Railways" are the royal heritage.
The idea of building the Trans-Siberian Railway 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 migration of peasants to Siberia, and there would be a shortage of workers in the inner provinces.
“The first thing to be expected from the road is an influx of various swindlers, artisans and merchants, then buyers will come, prices will rise, the province will be flooded with foreigners, it will become impossible to maintain order,” the Tobolsk governor was worried.
Anton Chekhov traveled three months from Moscow to Sakhalin in 1890.
The initiators of the creation of the Trans-Siberian Railway were inspired by the example of the Union Pacific, the longest railway at that time from Omaha to San Francisco, commissioned in 1870 and also breathed life into 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.

The cost of the Trans-Siberian Railway is 1 billion 455 million rubles (about 25 billion modern dollars).
Regular traffic began already 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.
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.
At the same time, a monument was opened in Irkutsk Alexander III in. in the form of a railway conductor, and at the Slyudyanka station - the only station in the world built entirely of marble.

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.
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.

Part of the cargo for construction was delivered by the Northern Sea Route. Hydrologist Nikolai Morozov took 22 steamships from Murmansk to the mouth of the Yenisei.
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, in connection with which the work dragged on for 11 months.
The world's first tunnel in permafrost was laid on the Amur site.
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."

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. The carriages trimmed with mahogany, bronze and velvet are now exhibited in the Railway Museum in St. Petersburg.
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 were specially sent along the way.
The electrification of the Trans-Siberian Railway was fully completed in 2002.
The capacity of the road, according to experts, can reach 100 million tons of cargo per year.
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.

Results: Transsib is the pride of the country

The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway is considered an outstanding event in the history of not only engineering, but also civilization as a whole. In 1904, Scientific American magazine named this highway the most outstanding technical achievement of the turn of the century. The Great Siberian Way to this day holds the palm in terms of length, number of stations and pace of construction among all railways in the world.

During construction, hundreds of solutions were put into practice "for the first time": more than 1,000 of them were officially patented. So, it was there that improved gravel roads were built for the first time, it was there that tunnels were first built in permafrost soils ...

Uninterrupted communication, all-weather capability, high speed, and features geographical location of our country, with its immense latitude and thousand-kilometer transitions between large cities and resource bases, led to the fact that immediately after the completion of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the railways became the main transport of the country.

And the Trans-Siberian Railway itself, as the largest Eurasian transport artery, made an invaluable contribution to strengthening the geopolitical power of the Russian Empire and its heirs on the world stage as a whole.

Construction of the Trans-Siberian

Trans-Siberian Railway- a railway across Eurasia connecting Moscow ( southern passage) and St. Petersburg (northern passage) with the largest East Siberian and Far Eastern industrial cities of Russia. With a length of 9298.2 km, this is the longest railway in the world. Highest point way - Yablonovy pass (1019 m above sea level). In 2002, its full electrification was completed.

Historically, the Trans-Siberian is only the eastern part of the highway, from Miass (South Ural, Chelyabinsk region) to Vladivostok. Its length is about 7 thousand km. This section was built from 1891 to 1916.

Currently, the Trans-Siberian Railway connects the European part, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East of Russia, and more broadly - the Russian western, northern and southern ports, as well as railway outlets to Europe (St. Petersburg, Murmansk, Novorossiysk), on the one hand, with the Pacific ports and railway outlets to Asia (Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Zabaikalsk). The technical capabilities of the Trans-Siberian Railway allow transporting up to 100 million tons of cargo per year.

Construction

Officially, construction began on May 19 (31), 1891 in the area near Vladivostok (Kuperovskaya Pad), Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Nicholas II, was present at the laying. In fact, construction began earlier, in early March 1891, when the construction of the Miass-Chelyabinsk section began.

One of the prominent leaders in the construction of one of the sections was engineer Nikolai Sergeyevich Sviyagin, after whom the Sviyagino station was named.

Part of the necessary cargo for the construction of the highway was delivered by the Northern Sea Route, the hydrologist N.V. Morozov led 22 steamers from Murmansk to the mouth of the Yenisei.

The working movement of trains along the Trans-Siberian Railway began on October 21 (November 3), 1901, after the "golden link" was laid on the last section of the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway. Regular communication between the capital of the empire - St. Petersburg and the Pacific ports of Russia - Vladivostok and Port Arthur by rail was established in July 1903, when the Chinese Eastern Railway, passing through Manchuria, was put into permanent ("correct") operation. . The date of July 1 (14), 1903 also marked the commissioning of the Great Siberian Way along its entire length, although there was a break in the rail track: trains had to be transported across Lake Baikal on a special ferry.

A continuous rail track between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok appeared after the start of the working movement along the Circum-Baikal Railway on September 18 (October 1), 1904; and a year later, on October 16 (29), 1905, the Circum-Baikal Road, as a segment of the Great Siberian Way, was put into permanent operation; and regular passenger trains for the first time in history were able to travel only on rails, without the use of ferries, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean (from Western Europe) to the shores of the Pacific Ocean (to Vladivostok). After Russia's defeat in Russo-Japanese War In 1904-1905, there was a threat that Russia would be forced to leave Manchuria and thus lose control of the Chinese Eastern Railway, thereby losing the eastern part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was necessary to continue the construction so that the highway passed only through the territory of the Russian Empire. End of construction on the territory of the Russian Empire: October 5 (18), 1916, with the launch of the bridge over the Amur near Khabarovsk and the start of train traffic on this bridge. The cost of building the Trans-Siberian from 1891 to 1913 amounted to 1,455,413,000 rubles (in 1913 prices).

Tomsk and Transsib

On November 12, 1689, a royal decree was issued ordering to unite Central Russia and Siberia. The road began to be laid only in 1730. By that time, Tomsk had already become a major center of handicraft production, so the route passed through Tomsk.

It was the first land route in the region. Every year, about a hundred thousand occasions passed along the Moscow Trakt (a street in Tomsk), tens of thousands of coachmen passed by. The city flourished. Settlers from the South of Russia began to come here. The export industry has become a “city-forming” one. In the 19th century, the number of horses in Tomsk exceeded the population. It is no coincidence that for more than a hundred years the emblem of the Tomsk province was a rearing horse on a green field.

According to the original project, the Siberian Railway was supposed to start in Tomsk and end in Irkutsk. From the Urals to Tomsk, cargo was supposed to arrive in the summer along the rivers. To act in the summer on the rivers. On the outskirts of Tomsk, on the Irkutsk tract, not far from the prison, a place had already been allotted for the Tomsk station. However, this project was replaced by another, which provided for the construction of a road from Chelyabinsk to Vladivostok, and the road was supposed to pass through Tomsk. The crossing over the Ob River was supposed to be built near the ancient Siberian town of Kolyvan, near the Chaus lodge. But a detailed study of the area showed that the floodplain of the Ob in this place is very wide, the banks are low and marshy, during spring floods the river floods vast areas. In order to build a bridge in this place, it was necessary to fill and strengthen high dams over seven miles long on both sides. The cost of this passage through the Ob was very high. Continuing the research, the designers found on the Ob, the Krivoshchekovo lodge, the most suitable place. The narrow range of the river and rocky banks made it possible to build a bridge here quickly and at much lower cost. Then the original project was changed and a decision was made to build a bridge in the Krivoshchekovo area, and then the road went straight to the east, bypassing Tomsk. Vowels of the city of Tomsk and merchants twice turned to the king with a request to change the project of the road and let it through Tomsk. They motivated their request by the fact that Tomsk is an ancient Siberian city, one of the centers of Siberian culture and trade, and that it really needs a direct and strong connection with the capital. The petition was accompanied by detailed information about the trade turnover of the Tomsk merchants in recent years. The document was sent to the Minister of Finance S.Yu. Witte, who then practically solved all issues related to the expenditure of funds from the treasury. He replied to the Tomsk residents that it was not economically profitable to run a railway through Tomsk and that in the near future a branch line would be laid from the Taiga station to Tomsk, which would give Tomsk access to the central highway. After a repeated complaint from the Tomsk residents, which was again sent to Witte, he answered in more detail. He wrote that if the road went through Tomsk, then its length would increase by 90 versts. In addition, the cost of building a bridge across the Ob in the Kolyvan region increases several times. In addition, the geological structure of the area, if the road is directed through Tomsk, will be much more difficult and will require an increase in the cost of building the roadbed by 4 million rubles. The cost of building a branch line from Taiga to Tomsk, together with locomotives and rolling stock, will not exceed two million. As for the significance of Tomsk as a trading center, Witte wrote that the Moscow tract made it such a center, the significance of which was significantly reduced with the construction of the railway. There is no need to create artificial shopping centers in Russia.

In 1898 The branch "Taiga-Tomsk" with a length of 88 versts was built. The branch was built mainly by the inmates of Tomsk prisons, for whom each day of work on the construction of the branch was counted as two days of imprisonment. In addition, the prisoners who worked on the construction of the road were much better fed, they worked for clean air, had relatively more freedom. This contributed to the fact that many tried to get into the construction teams and worked well.

The Tomsk railway station was opened on July 17, 1896, and the first train arrived in Tomsk on July 22 and was timed to coincide with the name day of Maria Feodorovna. The parade train, decorated with greenery and flags, consisted of seven cars.

TTI

Since the end of the 19th century, attention to Siberia has increased on the part of scientists and the Russian government. Enterprises for the extraction of minerals appeared, and lands suitable for crops and livestock began to be developed more actively. From year to year, the pace of development of the Siberian economy began to increase. This development was greatly influenced by the built railway linking the European part of Russia with Siberia and the Far East. It contributed to the rapid construction of mines for the extraction of coal, gold mining and mining enterprises, as well as a more active replenishment of the population of Siberia at the expense of peasants from the European part of Russia.

In 1896 It was decided to establish a Technological Institute in Tomsk with two departments: mechanical and chemical. The main task of this institute was to train engineers for the Siberian Railway. In 1899 the first director of TTI E.Z. Zubashev undertook a trip to Siberia in order to get acquainted with the prospects for the development of the region's economy and to find out the need for engineers. After this trip, it became clear that the institute, consisting of the mechanical and chemical departments, would not satisfy the demands of Siberia in engineering personnel. Especially after the commissioning of the railway, which required a large amount of coal for steam locomotives, most of which was still brought from the Donbass, which was expensive and overloaded the road.

There were no specialists in Siberia who could explore coal deposits and organize its extraction. A large number of specialists were required by the gold mining industry, in which there was a transition from manual to mechanical labor.

The Siberian railway was built with great errors, it had to be completed, new bridges and stations were needed. Therefore, Siberia needed its own civil engineers and architects. This prompted the director of the Tomsk Technological Institute to apply to St. Petersburg with a detailed note on the need to open at TTI, in addition to the previously provided mechanical and chemical departments, also mining and engineering and construction. The note was put into motion, and Zubashev's proposals were considered timely, and in June 1900. It was decided by the State Council to open a mining and construction department at the Tomsk Technological Institute.

Transsib directions

Northern

Moscow - Yaroslavl - Kirov - Perm - Yekaterinburg - Tyumen - Omsk - Novosibirsk - Krasnoyarsk - Vladivostok.

New

Moscow - Nizhny Novgorod- Kirov - Perm - Yekaterinburg - Tyumen - Omsk - Novosibirsk - Krasnoyarsk - Vladivostok.

Southern

Moscow - Murom - Arzamas - Kanash - Kazan - Yekaterinburg - Tyumen (or Petropavlovsk) - Omsk - Barnaul - Novokuznetsk - Abakan - Taishet - Vladivostok.

Historical

Moscow - Ryazan - Ruzaevka - Samara - Ufa - Miass - Chelyabinsk - Kurgan - Petropavlovsk - Omsk - Novosibirsk - Krasnoyarsk - Vladivostok.

Settlements

The main route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, operating since 1958 (through a fraction, the name of the railway station is given if it does not match the name of the corresponding settlement):

Moscow-Yaroslavl - Yaroslavl-Glavny - Danilov - Bui - Sharya - Kirov - Balezino - Vereshchagino - Perm-2 - Yekaterinburg-Passenger - Tyumen - Nazyvaevsk/Nazyvaevskaya - Omsk-Passenger - Barabinsk - Novosibirsk-Glavny - Yurga-I - Taiga - Anzhero-Sudzhensk/Anzherskaya - Mariinsk - Bogotol - Achinsk-1 - Krasnoyarsk-Passenger - Ilanskiy/Ilanskaya - Taishet - Nizhneudinsk - Winter - Irkutsk-Passenger - Slyudyanka-1 - Ulan-Ude - Petrovsk-Zabaykalsky/Petrovsky Zavod - Chita-2 - Karymskoye/Karymskaya - Chernyshevsk/Chernyshevsk-Zabaykalsky - Mogocha - Skovorodino - Belogorsk - Arkhara - Birobidzhan-1 - Khabarovsk-1 - Vyazemsky/Vyazemskaya - Lesozavodsk/Ruzhino - Ussuriysk - Vladivostok/Vladivostok.