Trans-Siberian Railway

For other uses, see Trans-Siberian (disambiguation).

The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. It is the longest railway in the world. There are branch lines to China through Mongolia and Manchuria. Today, the railway is part of the Eurasian Land Bridge.

History

Route development

In March 1891, the future Czar Nicholas II personally opened and blessed the construction of the Far East segment of the Trans-Siberian Railway during his stop at Vladivostok, after visiting Japan at the end of his journey around the world. Nicholas II made notes in his diary about his anticipation of travelling in the comfort of "The Czar's Train" across the unspoiled wilderness of Siberia. The Czar's Train was designed and built in St. Petersburg to serve as the main mobile office of the Czar and his staff for travelling across Russia.

The main route of the Trans-Siberian originates in St. Petersburg at Moskovsky Vokzal, runs through Moscow, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Chita and Khabarovsk to Vladivostok via southern Siberia and was built from 1891 to 1916 under the supervision of government ministers of Russia who were personally appointed by the Tsar Alexander III and by his son, Tsar Nicholas II. The additional Chinese Eastern Railway was constructed as the Russo-Chinese part of the Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting Russia with China and providing a shorter route to Vladivostok and it was operated by a Russian staff and administration based in Harbin.

The Trans-Siberian Railway is often associated with the main transcontinental Russian train that connects hundreds of large and small cities of the European and Asian parts of Russia. At 9,259 kilometres (5,753 miles), spanning a record 7 time zones and taking eight days to complete the journey, it is the third-longest single continuous service in the world, after the Moscow–Pyongyang (10,267 km, 6,380 mi) and the Kiev–Vladivostok (11,085 km, 6,888 mi) services, both of which also follow the Trans-Siberian for much of their routes.

A second primary route is the Trans-Manchurian, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian as far as Tarskaya (a stop 12 km east of Karymskaya, in Zabaykalsky Krai), about 1,000 km east of Lake Baikal. From Tarskaya the Trans-Manchurian heads southeast, via Harbin and Mudanjiang in China's Northeastern Provinces (from where a connection to Beijing is used by one of Moscow–Beijing trains), joining with the main route in Ussuriysk just north of Vladivostok. This is the shortest and the oldest railway route to Vladivostok. Some trains split at Shenyang, China, with a portion of the service continuing to Pyongyang, North Korea.

The third primary route is the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian as far as Ulan Ude on Lake Baikal's eastern shore. From Ulan-Ude the Trans-Mongolian heads south to Ulaan-Baatar before making its way southeast to Beijing.

In 1991, a fourth route running further to the north was finally completed, after more than five decades of sporadic work. Known as the Baikal Amur Mainline (BAM), this recent extension departs from the Trans-Siberian line at Taishet several hundred miles west of Lake Baikal and passes the lake at its northernmost extremity. It crosses the Amur River at Komsomolsk-na-Amure (north of Khabarovsk), and reaches the Pacific at Sovetskaya Gavan.

War and revolution

In the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th Century, the Trans-Siberian Railway was seen as one of the reasons why Russia lost the war. The track was a single track and as such could only allow train travel in one direction. This caused strategic and supply nightmares for the Russians, as they could not move resources to and from the front as quickly as would be necessary, as a goods train carrying supplies, men and ammunition coming from west to east would have to wait in the sidings whilst troops and injured personnel in a troop train travelling from east to west went along the line. Thus the Japanese were quickly able to advance whilst the Russians were awaiting necessary troops and supplies. After the revolution of 1917, the railway served as the vital line of communication for the Czechoslovak Legion and the Allied armies that landed troops at Vladivostok during the Siberian Intervention of the Russian Civil War. These forces supported the White Russian government of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, based in Omsk, and White Russian soldiers fighting the Bolsheviks on the Ural Front. The intervention was weakened, and ultimately defeated, by partisan fighters who blew up bridges and sections of track, particularly in the volatile region between Krasnoyarsk and Chita.

The Trans-Siberian also played a very direct role during parts of Russia's history, with the Czechoslovak Legion using heavily armed and armoured trains to control large amounts of the railway (and of Russia itself) during the Russian Civil War at the end of World War I. As one of the few organised fighting forces left in the aftermath of the Imperial collapse, and before the Red Army took control, the Czechs and Slovaks were able to use their organization and the resources of the railway to establish a temporary zone of control before eventually continuing onwards towards Vladivostok, from where they emigrated back to Czechoslovakia through Vancouver in Canada, through Canada to Europe, or the Panama Canal to Europe also through Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Port Said and Triest.

Demand and design

In the late 19th century, the development of Siberia was hampered by poor transport links within the region as well as between Siberia and the rest of the country. Aside from the Great Siberian Route, good roads suitable for wheeled transport were few and far between. For about five months of the year, rivers were the main means of transport; during the cold half of the year, cargo and passengers travelled by horse-drawn sleds over the winter roads, many of which were the same rivers, now ice-covered.

The first steamboat on the River Ob, Nikita Myasnikov's Osnova, was launched in 1844; but the early starts were difficult, and it was not until 1857 that steamboat shipping started developing on the Ob system in a serious way. Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena and Amur in the 1870s.

Snow in the end of April, Nazivaevskaya (Называевская) station, Siberia.

While the comparative flatness of Western Siberia was at least fairly well served by the gigantic Ob–Irtysh–Tobol–Chulym river system, the mighty rivers of Eastern Siberia — the Yenisei, the upper course of the Angara River (the Angara below Bratsk was not easily navigable because of the rapids), and the Lena — were mostly navigable only in the north-south direction. An attempt to partially remedy the situation by building the Ob-Yenisei Canal was not particularly successful. Only a railway could be a real solution to the region's transport problems.

The first railway projects in Siberia emerged after the completion of the Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway in 1851. One of the first was the Irkutsk–Chita project, proposed by the American entrepreneur Perry Collins and supported by Transport Minister Constantine Possiet with a view toward connecting Moscow to the Amur River, and consequently, to the Pacific Ocean. Siberia's governor, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, was anxious to advance the colonisation of the Russian Far East, but his plans could not materialise as long as the colonists had to import grain and other food from China and Korea. It was on Muravyov's initiative that surveys for a railway in the Khabarovsk region were conducted.

Before 1880, the central government had virtually ignored these projects, because of the weakness of Siberian enterprises, a clumsy bureaucracy, and fear of financial risk. Financial minister Count Egor Kankrin wrote:

"The idea of covering Russia with a railway network not just exceeds any possibility, but even building the railway from Petersburg to Kazan must be found untimely by several centuries".

By 1880, there were a large number of rejected and upcoming applications for permission to construct railways to connect Siberia with the Pacific, but not eastern Russia. This worried the government and made connecting Siberia with central Russia a pressing concern. The design process lasted 10 years. Along with the route actually constructed, alternative projects were proposed:

• Southern route: via Kazakhstan, Barnaul, Abakan and Mongolia.
• Northern route: via Tyumen, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yeniseysk and the modern Baikal Amur Mainline or even through Yakutsk.

Railwaymen fought against suggestions to save funds, for example, by installing ferryboats instead of bridges over the rivers until traffic increased. The designers insisted and secured the decision to construct an uninterrupted railway.

Unlike the rejected private projects that intended to connect the existing cities demanding transport, the Trans-Siberian did not have such a priority. Thus, to save money and avoid clashes with land owners, it was decided to lay the railway outside the existing cities. Tomsk was the largest city, and the most unfortunate, because the swampy banks of the Ob River near it were considered inappropriate for a bridge. The railway was laid 70 km to the south (instead crossing the Ob at Novonikolaevsk, later renamed Novosibirsk); just a blind branch line connected with Tomsk, depriving the city of the prospective transit railway traffic and trade.

The railway was instantly filled to its capacity with local traffic, mostly wheat. Together with low speed and low possible weights of trains, it upset the promised role as a transit route between Europe and East Asia. During the Russo-Japanese War, the military traffic to the east almost disrupted the flow of civil freight.

Construction

Train entering a Circum-Baikal tunnel west of Kultuk

Full-time construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began in 1891 and was put into execution and overseen by Sergei Witte, who was then Finance Minister.

Similar to the First Transcontinental Railroad in the USA, Russian engineers started construction at both ends and worked towards the centre. From Vladivostok the railway was laid north along the right bank of the Ussuri River to Khabarovsk at the Amur River, becoming the Ussuri Railway.

In 1890, a bridge across the River Ural was built and the new railway entered Asia. The bridge across the Ob River was built in 1898 and the small city of Novonikolaevsk, founded in 1883, metamorphosed into a large Siberian centre—Novosibirsk. In 1898, the first train reached Irkutsk and the shores of Lake Baikal. The railway ran on to the east, across the Shilka and the Amur rivers and soon reached Khabarovsk. The Vladivostok-Khabarovsk branch was built a bit earlier, in 1897.

Vladivostok terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway

Russian soldiers, as well as convict labourers from Sakhalin and other places were pressed into railway-building service. One of the largest challenges was the construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway around Lake Baikal, some 60 km (40 mi) east of Irkutsk. Lake Baikal is more than 640 km (400 mi) long and over 1,600 m (5,000 feet) deep. The line ended on each side of the lake and a special icebreaker ferryboat, the SS Baikal, as well as a smaller one, the SS Angara, were built at Newcastle upon Tyne, England, to connect the railway. In the winter, sleighs were used to move passengers and cargo from one side of the lake to the other until the completion of the Lake Baikal spur along the southern edge of the lake. With the completion of the Amur River line north of the Chinese border in 1916, there was a continuous railway from Petrograd to Vladivostok that remains to this day the world's longest railway line. Electrification of the line, begun in 1929 and completed in 2002, allowed a doubling of train weights to 6,000 tonnes.

Effects

The Trans-Siberian Railway gave a positive boost to Siberian agriculture, facilitating substantial exports to central Russia and Europe. It influenced the territories it connected directly, as well as those connected to it by river transport. For instance, Altai Krai exported wheat to the railway via the Ob River.

As Siberian agriculture began to export cheap grain towards the West, agriculture in Central Russia was still under economic pressure after the end of serfdom, which was formally abolished in 1861. Thus, to defend the central territory and to prevent possible social destabilisation, in 1896 the government introduced the Chelyabinsk tariff break (Челябинский тарифный перелом), a tariff barrier for grain passing through Chelyabinsk, and a similar barrier in Manchuria. This measure changed the nature of export: mills emerged to create bread from grain in Altai Krai, Novosibirsk and Tomsk, and many farms switched to corn production. From 1896 until 1913 Siberia exported on average 501,932 tonnes (30,643,000 pood) of bread (grain, flour) annually.

The Trans-Siberian Railway also brought with it millions of peasant-migrants from the western regions of Russia and Ukraine. The peak of the resettlement occurred during 1906 to 1914, when 4 million peasants migrated to the Siberian provinces.

The Trans-Siberian line remains the most important transportation link within Russia; around 30% of Russian exports travel on the line. While it attracts many foreign tourists, it gets most of its use from domestic passengers.

The Trans-Siberian is a vital link to the Russian Far East.

Today the Trans-Siberian Railway carries about 200,000 containers per year to Europe. Russian Railways intends to at least double the volume of container traffic on the Trans-Siberian and is developing a fleet of specialised cars and increasing terminal capacity at the ports by a factor of 3 ~ 4. By 2010, the volume of traffic between Russia and China could reach 60 million tons (54 million tonnes), most of which will go by the Trans-Siberian.

With perfect coordination of the participating countries' railway authorities, a trainload of containers can be taken from Beijing to Hamburg, via the Transmongolian and Transsiberian lines in as little as 15 days, but typical cargo travel times are usually significantly longer - e.g., typical cargo travel time from Japan to major destinations in European Russia was reported as around 25 days.

According to a 2009 report, the best travel times for cargo block trains from Russia's Pacific ports to the western border (of Russia, or perhaps of Belarus) were around 12 days, with trains making around 900 km per day, at a maximum operating speed of 80 km/h. However, in early 2009 Russian Railways announced an ambitious "Trans-Siberian in Seven Days" program; according to this plan, $11 billion will be invested over the next 5 years to make it possible for freight traffic to cover the same 9000 km distance in just 7 days. The plan will involve increasing the cargo trains' speed to 90 km/h in 2010-12, and, at least on some sections, to 100 km/h by 2015. At these speeds, freight trains will be able to cover 1,500 km per day.

Passenger fares

Return tickets from Central Europe to Vladivostok and back can be as cheap as €250 with so called CityStar or Sparpreis Europa special offers. In addition, a reservation supplement for long-distance trains is mandatory, the prices range between €30 to €60 each way for trains in four-berth sleeper on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Overall, buying tickets for Russian trains in Germany, the Czech Republic or Poland can be cheaper than in Russia.

In addition to these services, a number of privately-chartered services are operated, and one tour operator even commissioned the construction of their own train, jointly owned by themselves and Russian railways. The train, officially named Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express was launched on 26 April 2007 by Prince Michael of Kent.

Routes

View from the rear platform of the Simskaia railway station of the Samara-Zlatoust Railway, ca. 1910

In general, the lower the train number the fewer stops it makes and therefore the faster the journey. The train number makes no difference to the duration of border crossings.

Trans-Siberian line

Bashkir switchman near the town Ust' Katav on the Yuryuzan River between Ufa and Cheliabinsk in the Ural Mountains region, ca. 1910

A commonly used main line route is as follows. Distances and travel times are from the schedule of train No.002M, Moscow-Vladivostok.

• Moscow, Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal (0 km, Moscow Time).
• Vladimir (210 km, MT)
• Nizhny Novgorod (461 km, 6 hours, MT) on the Volga River. Its railroad station is still called by its old Soviet name Gorky, and is so listed in most timetables.
• Kirov (917 km, 13 hours, MT) on the Vyatka River.
• Perm (1,397 km, 20 hours, MT+2) on the Kama River
• Official boundary between Europe and Asia (1,777 km), marked by a white obelisk.
• Yekaterinburg (1,778 km, 1 day 2 h, MT+2) in the Urals, still called by its old Soviet name Sverdlovsk in most timetables.
• Tyumen (2,104 km)
• Omsk (2,676 km, 1 day 14 h, MT+3) on the Irtysh River
• Novosibirsk (3,303 km, 1 day 22 h, MT+3) on the Ob River
• Krasnoyarsk (4,065 km, 2 days 11 h, MT+4) on the Yenisei River
• Taishet (4,483 km), junction with the Baikal-Amur Mainline
• Irkutsk (5,153 km, 3 days 4 h, MT+5) near Lake Baikal's southern extremity
• Ulan Ude (5,609 km, 3 days 12 h, MT+5)
• Junction with the Trans-Mongolian line (5,622 km)
• Chita (6,166 km, 3 days 22 h, MT+6)
• Junction with the Trans-Manchurian line at Tarskaya (6,274 km)
• Birobidzhan (8,312 km, 5 days 13h), the capital of Jewish Autonomous Region
• Khabarovsk (8,493 km, 5 days 15 h, MT+7) on the Amur River
• Ussuriysk (9,147 km), junction with the Trans-Manchurian line and Korea branch
• Vladivostok (9,289 km, 6 days 4 h, MT+7), on the Pacific Ocean

Services to North Korea continue from Ussuriysk via:

• Primorsk (9,257 km, 6 days 14h, MT+7)
• Khasan (9,407 km, 6 days 19h, MT+7, border with North Korea)
• Tumangang (9,412 km, 7 days 10h, MT+6, North Korean side of the border)
• Pyongyang (10,267 km, 9 days 2h, MT+6)

There are many alternative routings between Moscow and Siberia. For example:

• Some trains would leave Moscow from Kazansky Rail Terminal instead of Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal; this would save some 20 km off the distances, because it provides a shorter exit from Moscow onto the Nizhny Novgorod main line.
• One can take a night train from Moscow's Kursky Rail Terminal to Nizhny Novgorod, make a stopover in the Nizhny and then transfer to a Siberia-bound train
• From 1956 to 2001 many trains went between Moscow and Kirov via Yaroslavl instead of Nizhny Novgorod. This would add some 29 km to the distances from Moscow, making Vladivostok Kilometer 9,288.
• Other trains get from Moscow (Kazansky Terminal) to Yekaterinburg via Kazan.
• Between Yekaterinburg and Omsk it is possible to travel via Kurgan Petropavlovsk (in Kazakhstan) instead of Tyumen.
• One can bypass Yekaterinburg altogether by travelling via Samara, Ufa, Chelyabinsk, and Petropavlovsk; this was historically the earliest configuration.

Depending on the route taken, the distances from Moscow to the same station in Siberia may differ by several tens of kilometers.

Trans-Manchurian line

Main article: China Far East Railway

Trains being marshalled at Zabaykalsk, near the Chinese border

The Trans-Manchurian line, as e.g. used by train No.020, Moscow-Beijing follows the same route as the Trans-Siberian between Moscow and Chita and then follows this route to China:

• Branch off from the Trans-Siberian-line at Tarskaya (6,274 km from Moscow)
• Zabaikalsk (6,626 km), Russian border town
• Manzhouli (6,638 km from Moscow, 2,323 km from Beijing), Chinese border town
• Harbin (7,573 km, 1,388 km)
• Changchun (7,820 km from Moscow)
• Beijing (8,961 km from Moscow)

The express train (No.020) travel time from Moscow to Beijing is just over six days.

There is no direct passenger service along the entire original Trans-Manchurian route (i.e., from Moscow or anywhere in Russia, west of Manchuria, to Vladivostok via Harbin), due to the obvious administrative and technical (gauge break) inconveniences of crossing the border twice. However, assuming sufficient patience and possession of appropriate visas, it is still possible to travel all the way along the original route, with a few stopovers (e.g. in Harbin, Grodekovo, and Ussuriysk). Such an itinerary would pass through the following points from Harbin east:

• Harbin (7,573 km from Moscow)
• Mudanjiang (7,928 km)
• Suifenhe (8,121 km), the Chinese border station
• Grodekovo (8,147 km), Russia
• Ussuriysk (8,244 km)
• Vladivostok (8,356 km)

Trans-Mongolian line

Main article: Trans-Mongolian Railway

The Trans-Mongolian line follows the same route as the Trans-Siberian between Moscow and Ulan Ude, and then follows this route to Mongolia and China:

• Branch off from the Trans-Siberian line (5,655 km from Moscow)
• Naushki (5,895 km, MT+5), Russian border town
• Russian–Mongolian border (5,900 km, MT+5)
• Sükhbaatar (5,921 km, MT+5), Mongolian border town
• Ulan Bator (6,304 km, MT+5), the Mongolian capital
• Zamyn-Üüd (7,013 km, MT+5), Mongolian border town
• Erenhot (842 km from Beijing, MT+5), Chinese border town
• Datong (371 km, MT+5)
• Beijing (MT+5)

Cultural importance

• The Trans-Siberian Railway is the theme for the Trans-Siberian Railway Panorama and 1900 Trans-Siberian Railway Fabergé egg.
• The Corto Maltese comic Corto Maltese en Sibérie has the Trans-Siberian Railway as part of the story that takes place in the Russian Revolutionary period of the 20th century.
• The cult film Horror Express starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Telly Savalas is set aboard the railway.
• In the play Fiddler on the Roof and the film version, Tevye's daughter, Hodel, takes the Trans-Siberian Railway to Siberia after her fiancé is exiled there.
• The 2008 thriller Transsiberian takes place on the railway.

Developments in shipping

Russia and Japan are working together to set up a system to ship goods safely to Europe through the Trans-Siberian. With the intensification of Somalian piracy, Russia hopes to look increasingly attractive as an alternate route for some goods as compared to sailing around the Horn of Africa and especially around the Cape of Good Hope.. On January 11, 2008, China, Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany agreed to collaborate on a cargo train service between Beijing and Hamburg.

One of the complicating factors related to such ventures is the fact that the CIS states' broad railway gauge is incompatible with China and Western and Central Europe's standard gauge. Therefore, a train travelling from China to Western Europe would encounter gauge breaks twice: at the Chinese-Mongolian or the Chinese-Russian frontier and at the Ukrainian or the Belorussian border with Central European countries.

See also

• Famous trains
• History of Siberia
• Russian gauge
  • Russian broad gauge
  • Russian rail gauge
• Russian Railways
• Sibirjak
• Starlight Express, a train musical in which a character is modeled on the Trans-Siberian Express.
• Trans-Siberian Railway Panorama

References

• Marks, S.G. (1991). Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917. New York. ISBN 0801425336.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Faulstich, Edith. M. "The Siberian Sojourn" Yonkers, N.Y. (1972–1977)
• Thomas, Bryn (2003). The Trans-Siberian Handbook (6th ed. ed.). Trailblazer. ISBN 1-873756-70-4. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Калиничев, В. П. (1991). Великий Сиберский путь (историко-экономический очерк) (in Russian). Москва (Moscow, Russia): Транспорт. ISBN 5-277-00758-Х. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)

External links

• Traveler Exposure
• The Trans-Siberian Railway: Web Encyclopedia
• Moscow-Vladivostok: virtual journey on Google Maps
• View through train window - movie
• Siberian Expedition website
• Journals, photos, videos and a breakdown of costs from a British traveller's website
• For timetables, see Travel planner of German Railways (covers Europe, as well as at least each branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway) and time-table with distances (pdf); note that Moscow time applies for railways throughout Russia.
• A 1903 map of Trans-Siberian railway
• Google Earth Trans-Siberian Railway placemarks and path
• The Man in Seat 61 - detailed guide for travel from London to China and Japan.
• Grounded Travel - Detailed Trans-Siberian Railway booking information.
• Guide to the Great Siberian Railway (1900)
• The Great Siberian Railway, in The North American Review (Volume 170, Issue 522, May 1900).
• Authors of 'The Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian' talk about their 11,000 mile journey across Russia in a £300 Ford Sierra on BBC Radio 4's travel programme Excess Baggage.
• The Trans-Siberian Railway: A Traveller's Anthology
• Der Reisebericht detailed travel guide and photo gallery Template:De icon