The main reason for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Transsib - history, interesting facts, records

On March 17, 1891, a rescript of Tsar-Emperor Alexander III was issued in the name of Crown Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich: “I command now to begin the construction of a continuous railroad across the whole of Siberia, which has (the goal) to connect the abundant gifts of nature of the Siberian regions with the network of internal rail communications. I instruct you to declare such my will, upon entering the Russian land again, after observing the foreign countries of the East. At the same time, I entrust you with the commissioning in Vladivostok of the laying of the permitted for construction, at the expense of the treasury and by the direct order of the government, the Ussuriysk section of the Great Siberian Railroad. "

In fact, the countdowns for the anniversaries of the great Siberian track are a wagon and a small cart. There is a clear date for the decision. There is a rescript, laying the first stone, etc. But all this is not so important. The main thing is the feat of the Empire and its people who built the longest railway line in the world... This record has not been broken so far. Great labor and intellectual feat worthy of a great country.

And the history of the path began in the middle of the 19th century - after the campaigns and discoveries of Captain Nevelskoy and the signing in 1858 by Count N.N. Muravyov of the Aigun Treaty with China, when the eastern borders were finally formed Russian Empire... In 1860 the Vladivostok military post was founded. The Khabarovsk post in 1893 became the city of Khabarovsk. But until 1883 the population of the region did not exceed 2000 people.

In 1857, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia N.N.Muravyov-Amursky raised the issue 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.

In the 50-70s of the XIX century. Russian specialists developed a number of new projects for the construction of railways in Siberia, but all of them did not find support from the government, which only in the mid-80s of the XIX century. began to resolve the issue of the Siberian railway.

From 1883 to 1885, the Yekaterinburg-Tyumen road was laid, and in 1886 from the Governor-General of Irkutsk A.P. Ignatiev and the Amur Governor-General Baron A.N. Korf arrived in Petersburg to justify the urgency of work on the Siberian iron pot. Emperor Alexander III responded with a resolution “I have already read so many reports of the governors-general of Siberia, and I must admit 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 high time. "

June 6, 1887 by order of the emperor, a meeting of ministers and managers of the highest state departments was held, at which it was finally decided: to build. Within three months, began exploration work on the highway from the Ob to the Amur region.

February 1891 Years, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to simultaneously start work from opposite ends of Vladivostok and Chelyabinsk. They were separated by a distance of more than 8 thousand Siberian kilometers.

19 march Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich took the first wheelbarrow of earth to the bed of the future road and laid the first stone in the building of the Vladivostok railway station.

The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was carried out in harsh natural and climatic conditions. Almost the entire length of the route was laid through sparsely populated or uninhabited areas, in impassable taiga. It crossed the mighty Siberian rivers, numerous lakes, areas of increased swampiness and permafrost on the Transbaikal line (from Kuenga to Bochkarevo, now Belogorsk). The area around Baikal (Baikal station - Mysovaya station) presented exceptional difficulties for the builders. Here they had to blow up rocks, lay tunnels, erect artificial structures in the gorges of mountain rivers flowing into Lake Baikal.

In 1893, the Committee of the Siberian Road was established, the chairman of which was appointed by the emperor, the heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich. The committee was given the broadest powers.
At one of the very first meetings of the Siberian Road Committee, construction principles were announced: "... To bring to the end the construction of the Siberian railroad, which has begun, cheaply, and most importantly, quickly and firmly"; "To build well and firmly, so as to subsequently complement, not rebuild"; “... that the Siberian Railway, this great national cause, was carried out by the Russian people and from Russian materials. "

And the main thing is to build at the expense of the treasury. After much hesitation, it was allowed “Attraction of convicts, exiled settlers and prisoners of various categories to the construction of the road, with the provision of them for their participation in the work of reducing the terms of punishment”.

The high cost of construction forced to go to the lighter technical standards for laying the track. The width of the subgrade decreased, the thickness of the ballast layer was almost halved, and on straight sections of the road between the sleepers, they often did without ballast at all, the rails were lighter (18-pound instead of 21 pounds per meter), steeper climbs were allowed in comparison with the normative ones. and slopes, wooden bridges were hung across small rivers, station buildings were also erected of a lightweight type, most often without foundations.

All this was calculated for the small capacity of the road. However, as soon as the loads increased, and many times during the war years, it was necessary to urgently pave the second paths and inevitably eliminate all "reliefs" that did not guarantee traffic safety.

On July 7, 1892, a solemn ceremony was held to start the oncoming traffic from Chelyabinsk. The first crutch on the western end of the Siberian Way was entrusted to be hammered by a student-trainee of the Petersburg Institute of Railways Alexander Liverovsky.

He, AV Liverovsky, twenty-three years later, as the head of the East Amur road, hammered the last, "silver" crutch of the Great Siberian Way. He was also the head of work on one of the most difficult sections - the Circum-Baikal road.

Here, for the first time in the practice of railway construction, he used electricity for drilling operations, for the first time, at his own peril and risk, he introduced differentiated norms for directed explosives, for individual purposes - for ejection, loosening, etc. He also led the laying of second tracks from Chelyabinsk to Irkutsk. And he also completed the construction of the unique, 2600 meters long, Amur Bridge, the very last structure on the Siberian road, commissioned only in 1916.

The Great Siberian Route moved eastward from Chelyabinsk. Two years later, the first train arrived in Omsk, and a year later - at the Krivoshchekovo station in front of Ob (future Novosibirsk). Almost simultaneously, due to the fact that from Ob to Krasnoyarsk, work was carried out on four sections at once, the first train was met in Krasnoyarsk, and in 1898, two years earlier than the originally designated deadline, in Irkutsk. The Central Siberian railway from Ob to Irkutsk with a length of 1839 km was built under the leadership of N.P. Mezheninova.

In 1896, the West Siberian railway from Chelyabinsk to Novonikolaevsk (now Novosibirsk) with a length of 1422 km was put into operation. The head of the expedition and construction on the approaches to the Ob River and the bridge crossing over it was an engineer and a writer N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky... The railway bridge across the Ob was designed by an outstanding Russian engineer-designer and bridge builder, later a prominent scientist in the field of structural mechanics and bridge building N. A. Belelyubsky.

At the end of 1898, the rails reached Lake Baikal. However, before the Circum-Baikal road, there was a stop for six years.

The volume of work performed and the enormous expenditure of human labor is evidenced by the data for 1903: more than 100 million cubic meters were produced. m of earthworks, more than 12 million sleepers were procured and laid, about 1 million tons of rails and fastenings, bridges and tunnels with a total length of up to 100 km were built. Only during the construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway with a length of slightly more than 230 km, 50 galleries were built to protect the track from rock falls, 39 tunnels and about 14 km of retaining walls, mainly on cement and hydraulic mortar. The cost of all tunnels with pillars and galleries exceeded 10 million rubles, and the cost of building the entire highway exceeded 1 billion rubles. gold rubles.

Further to the east from the Mysovoy Way station, they were led back in 1895 with the firm intention in 1898 (this year, after a successful start, was taken as the finishing year for all roads of the first stage) to finish laying on the Trans-Baikal highway and connect the railway line leading to the Amur. But the construction of the next - Amur - road was stopped for a long time.

The first blow came from the permafrost. The flood of 1896 washed away the almost everywhere erected embankments. In 1897, the waters of the Selenga, Khilka, Ingody and Shilki demolished villages, the district town of Doroninsk was completely washed off the face of the earth, there was no trace left at four hundred versts from the railway embankment, building materials were smashed and buried under silt and debris. A year later, an unprecedented drought fell, an epidemic of plague and anthrax broke out. Only two years after these events, in 1900, it was possible to open traffic on the Trans-Baikal road, but it was half laid "on the zhivulka".

On the opposite side - from Vladivostok - the Yuzhno-Ussuriyskaya road to the Grafskaya station (Muravyov-Amursky station) was commissioned back in 1896, and the North Ussuriyskaya road to Khabarovsk was completed in 1899.

The Amurskaya road, moved to the last stage, remained untouched, and the Circum-Baikal road remained inaccessible. On Amurskaya, having bumped into impassable places and being afraid of getting stuck there for a long time, in 1896 they preferred the southern option through Manchuria (CER), and across Baikal they hurriedly made a ferry crossing and transported from England prefabricated parts of two icebreaking ferries, which for five years were supposed to take trains.

But an easy road did not happen even in Western Siberia... Of course, the Ishim and Barabinsk steppes were lined with a flat carpet on the western side, so the rail track from Chelyabinsk to the Ob, like a ruler, went exactly along the 55th parallel of northern latitude, exceeding the shortest mathematical distance of 1290 versts by only 37 versts. Here excavation were carried out with the help of American earth-moving graders.

However, there was no forest in the steppe area; it was transported from the Tobolsk province or from the eastern regions. Gravel, stones for the bridge over the Irtysh and for the station in Omsk were transported by rail 740 versts from Chelyabinsk and 900 versts on barges along the Irtysh from the quarries. The bridge across the Ob took 4 years to build.

Professor Lavr Proskuryakov... According to his drawings, the most grandiose on the European-Asian continent, a bridge over the Amur in Khabarovsk, more than two and a half kilometers long, was hung later.

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 fall of 1914, a German cruiser sank a Belgian steamer in the Indian Ocean carrying steel parts for the last two trusses of the bridge, delaying completion of work by a year.

The Krasnoyarsk bridge demanded, based on the nature of the Yenisei during the ice drift, a significant increase in the length of spans, exceeding the accepted norms. The distance between the supports reached 140 meters, the height of the metal trusses rose to the upper parabolas by 20 meters. At the 1900 Paris World's Fair, the 27-yard model of this bridge was awarded the Gold Medal.

On June 3, 1907, the Council of Ministers considered and approved the proposals of the Ministry of Railways on the construction of the second track of the Siberian Railway and the reconstruction of mountain sections of the track. Under the leadership of A.V. Liverovsky, work began to mitigate the slopes in the mountainous areas from Achinsk to Irkutsk and to build a second route from Chelyabinsk to Irkutsk.

In 1909, the Siberian Railway became double-tracked for 3274 km. In 1913 the second track was continued along Baikal and beyond Baikal to the Karymskaya station. The implementation of important measures to increase the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway was accompanied by the construction of new sections or branches from it.

The Transsib advanced on an extensive front, leaving behind not only its own track and repair facilities, but also schools, schools, hospitals, and churches. The stations, as a rule, were set up in advance, before the arrival of the first train, and they had beautiful and festive architecture - both stone in large cities and wooden in small ones. The station in Slyudyanka, on Lake Baikal, faced with local marble, cannot be perceived otherwise than as a wonderful monument to the builders of the Circum-Baikal section.

The road brought with it the beautiful forms of bridges, and the graceful forms of stations, station villages, booths, even workshops and depots. And this, in turn, required a decent kind of buildings around the station squares, landscaping, beautification.

By 1900, 65 churches and 64 schools were built along the Transsib, another 95 churches and 29 schools were built at the expense of the specially created Emperor's Fund Alexander III to help the resettled settlers. Moreover, the Transsib forced us to intervene in the chaotic development of old cities, to do their improvement and decoration.

The main thing is that the Transsib has settled more and more millions of immigrants on the vast Siberian territories. The Transsib was built by all of Russia. All the ministries, whose participation in the construction was caused by necessity, all the provinces gave workers. So it was called: workers of the first hand, the most experienced, skilled, workers of the second hand, third. In some years, when the sections of the first stage began work (1895-1896), up to 90 thousand people went out on the highway at the same time.

The originally set amount of expenses of 350 million rubles was exceeded three times, and the Ministry of Finance went to these allocations of the Transsib. But also the result: 500-600-700 kilometers of addition annually - such a rate of construction of railways has not happened either in America or in Canada.

The laying of the track on the Amur road, at the very last run of the Russian Transsib, was completed in 1915. Head of the construction of the easternmost, final section of the Amur road, A.V. Liverovsky scored the last, silver crutch.

This was the end of the history of the construction of the Transsib, the history of its operation began.

The Transsib, the Trans-Siberian Railway (modern names) or the Great Siberian Way (historical name) is a perfectly equipped rail track across the entire continent, connecting European Russia, its largest industrial regions and the capital of the country, Moscow, with its middle (Siberia) and eastern ( Far East) regions. This is the road that holds Russia together - a country stretching for 10 time zones, into a single economic organism, and most importantly, into a single military-strategic space. If it had not been built in due time, then with a very high probability Russia would hardly have retained the Far East and the Pacific coast - just as it could not have retained Alaska, which is in no way connected with the Russian Empire by stable communication routes. The Transsib is also a road that gave impetus to the development of the eastern regions and involved them in economic life the rest of the vast country.

Some people think that the term "Transsib" should be interpreted as a path connecting the Urals and the Far East, and literally passing "through" Siberia (Trans-Siberian). But this is contrary to the state of affairs and does not reflect the true meaning of this highway. And the name? This name was given to us by the British, who christened the path not “Great Siberian Way”, as the literal translation from Russian should have been, but “Trans-Siberian Railway” - and then it took root and took root in speech.

And now "Transsib" as a geopolitical concept makes sense as a path connecting the Center and the Pacific Ocean, Moscow and Vladivostok, and more broadly - as a path connecting the ports of the West and the capital of Russia, as well as exits to Europe (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Brest, Kaliningrad) with ports of the East and outlets to Asia (Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Vanino, Zabaikalsk); but not a local path connecting the Urals and the Far East.

A narrow interpretation of the term "Transsib" assumes that we are talking about the main passenger route Moscow - Yaroslavl - Yekaterinburg - Omsk - Irkutsk - Chita - Vladivostok, the exact route of which is given below.

Length of the Transsib.

The actual length of the Trans-Siberian Railway along the main passenger route (from Moscow to Vladivostok) is 9288.2 km, and by this indicator it is the longest on the planet, crossing almost all of Eurasia by land. The fare length (at which ticket prices are calculated) is slightly longer - 9298 km and does not coincide with the real one. There are several parallel cargo bypasses at different sections. The track gauge on the Transsib is 1520 mm.

The length of the Great Siberian Route before the First World War from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along the northern passenger route (through Vologda - Perm - Yekaterinburg - Omsk - Chita - Harbin) was 8913 versts, or 9508 km.
The Transsib passes through the territory of two parts of the world: Europe (0 - 1777 km) and Asia (1778 - 9289 km). Europe accounts for 19.1% of the length of the Transsib, Asia, respectively - 80.9%.

The beginning and end of the highway.

At present, the starting point of the Transsib is the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow, and the ending point is the Vladivostoksky railway station.
But this was not always the case: until about the middle of the 20s, the Kazan (then Ryazan) railway station was the gateway to Siberia and the Far East, and in the very initial period of the Transsib's existence - at the beginning of the 20th century - the Kursk-Nizhny Novgorod (now Kursk) railway station in Moscow ... It should also be mentioned that before the 1917 revolution, the starting point of the Great Siberian Way was considered the Moscow railway station in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire.

Vladivostok was not always considered the final destination: for a short time, starting from the very end of the 90s of the 19th century and up to the decisive land battles of the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-05, the contemporaries considered the naval fortress and the city of Port to be the end of the Great Siberian Way. -Arthur, located on the coast of the East China Sea, on the Liaodong Peninsula rented from China.
About the geographical limits of the Transsib (extreme points in the west, east, north and south) you can.

Construction: milestones.

Start of construction: May 19 (31), 1891 in an area near Vladivostok (Kuperovskaya Pad), Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Nicholas II, was present at the foundation.

The actual start of construction took place somewhat earlier, at the beginning of March 1891, when the construction of the Miass - Chelyabinsk section began.
The rails were joined along the entire length of the Great Siberian Way on October 21 (November 3), 1901, when the builders of the Sino-Eastern Railway, laying the track from the west and east, met each other. But there was no regular train movement along the entire length of the highway at that time.

Regular communication between the capital of the empire - St. Petersburg and the Pacific ports of Russia - Vladivostok and Dalny by rail was established in July 1903, when the Sino-Eastern Railway, passing through Manchuria, was taken into permanent ("correct") operation. The date of July 1 (14), 1903, also marked the commissioning of the Great Siberian Route along its entire length, although there was a break in the rail track: trains had to be ferried across Baikal on a special ferry.

The continuous rail track between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok appeared after the beginning 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 taken into permanent operation; and regular passenger trains, for the first time in history, were able to follow only on rails, without using ferry crossings, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean (from Western Europe) to the shores of the Pacific Ocean (to Vladivostok).

The end of construction on the territory of the Russian Empire: October 5 (18), 1916, with the launch of a bridge across the Amur near Khabarovsk and the start of trains on this bridge.

The cost of building the Transsib from 1891 to 1913 amounted to 1,455,413 thousand rubles, about the cost of building specific sections of the Great Siberian Route.

The modern route of the Transsib.

Since 1956, the Transsib route is as follows: Moscow-Yaroslavskaya - Yaroslavl-Gl. - Danilov - Bui - Sharya - Kirov - Balezino - Perm-2 - Yekaterinburg-Pass. - Tyumen - Nazyvaevskaya - Omsk-Pass. - Barabinsk - Novosibirsk-Glavny - Mariinsk - Achinsk-1 - Krasnoyarsk - Ilanskaya - Taishet - Nizhneudinsk - Winter - Irkutsk-Pass. - Slyudyanka-1 - Ulan-Ude - Petrovsky Zavod - Chita-2 - Karymskaya - Chernyshevsk-Zabaikalsky - Mogocha - Skovorodino - Belogorsk - Arkhara - Khabarovsk-1 - Vyazemskaya - Ruzhino - Ussuriisk - Vladivostok. This is the main passenger passage of the Transsib. It was finally formed by the beginning of the 30s, when the normal operation of the shorter Sino-Eastern Railway became impossible due to military and political reasons, and the South Ural Railway was too overloaded due to the beginning of the industrialization of the USSR.

Until 1949, in the Baikal region, the main course of the Transsib passed along the Circum-Baikal road, through Irkutsk - along the Angara bank - the Baikal station - along the Baikal coast - to the Slyudyanka station, in 1949-56. there were two routes - the old one, along the coast of Lake Baikal, and the new one, the pass one. Moreover, the crossover route was initially built in a 1-way version (1941-1948), and by 1957 it had become a 2-way and main one.

Since June 10, 2001, after the introduction of the new summer timetable of the Ministry of Railways, almost all long-distance trans-Siberian trains have been launched on a new route through Vladimir - Nizhny Novgorod, with access to the “classic course” in Kotelnich. This move allows trains with a higher route speed to pass through. But the mileage of the Transsib still passes through Yaroslavl - Sharya.

Historical route of the Transsib.

Before the revolution of 1917 and some time after it (until the end of the 20s of the XX century), the main route of the Great Siberian Way passed:
From Moscow, starting from 1904: through Ryazan - Ryazhsk - Penza - Syzran - Samara - Ufa - Chelyabinsk - Kurgan - Petropavlovsk -

The Trans-Siberian Railway (abbreviated as Transsib, the historical name of the Great Siberian Route) is a railway across Eurasia connecting Moscow and the largest East Siberian and Far Eastern industrial cities of Russia. The length of the highway is 9288.2 km. It is the longest railway in the world. The highest point of the path is Yablonovy Pass (1019 m above sea level) ... Its full electrification was completed in 2002.... Historically, the Transsib is only the eastern part of the highway, from Chelyabinsk (South Ural) to Vladivostok. Its length is about 7 thousand km. It was this section that was built from 1891 to 1916. At present, the Transsib 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 exits to Europe (St. Petersburg, Murmansk , Novorossiysk), on the one hand, with Pacific ports and railway connections to Asia (Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Zabaikalsk). Autumn 2010 Minister of Transport Russian Federation Igor Levitin said that the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway is completely exhausted .

Stages of construction of the Great Siberian Route

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

One of the prominent leaders of the construction of one of the sites was engineer Nikolai Sergeevich 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 steamboats from Murmansk to the mouth of the Yenisei.

The working movement of trains on 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 Sino-Eastern Railway.

Regular communication between the capital of the empire - St. Petersburg and the Pacific ports of Russia - Vladivostok and Dalny by rail was established in July 1903, when the Sino-Eastern Railway, passing through Manchuria, was taken into permanent ("correct") operation. The date of July 1 (14), 1903, also marked the commissioning of the Great Siberian Route along its entire length, although there was a break in the rail track: trains had to be ferried across Baikal on a special ferry.

The continuous track between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok appeared after the beginning of the working movement along the Circum-Baikal Railway on September 18 (October 1) 1904; and a year later, on October 16 (29), 1905, as a section of the Great Siberian Route, it was taken into permanent operation; and regular passenger trains, for the first time in history, were able to follow only on rails, without using ferry crossings, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean (from Western Europe) to the shores of the Pacific Ocean (to Vladivostok).

After the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, there was a threat that Russia would be forced to leave Manchuria and thus lose control over the Sino-Eastern Railway, thereby losing the eastern part of the Trans-Siberian. It was necessary to continue construction so that the highway would pass 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 a bridge across the Amur near Khabarovsk and the start of train traffic on this bridge.

The cost of building the Transsib from 1891 to 1913 amounted to 1,455,413,000 rubles (in 1913 prices).

Modernization of the Trans-Siberian Railway

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

Further modernization of the road is expected due to obsolescence of infrastructure and rolling stock.

On January 11, 2008, China, Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany signed an agreement on a project to optimize the Beijing-Hamburg freight traffic.

Transsib destinations

Neighbors of the Trans-Siberian Railway

The lines of the West Siberian railway from Omsk and Tatarsk (via Karasuk and Kulunda) connect the Transsib with Northern Kazakhstan. Turksib leads from Novosibirsk to the south, through Barnaul, to Central Asia. At the end of the 20th century, it was laid north of the Transsib in the Far East.

Settlements along the Trans-Siberian Railway

Settlements and railway stations located along the Trans-Siberian Railway (the entire list in alphabetical order):

1. Abramtsevo
2. Aksenovo-Zilovskoe / Zilovo
3. Alexandrov
4. Alzamay
5. Amazar
6. Angarsk
7. Anzhero-Sudzhensk / Anzherskaya
8. Antropovo
9. Arkhara
10. Achinsk
11. Babushkin / Mysovaya
12. Balezino
13. Barabinsk
14. Belogorsk
15. Beloyarsky / Bazhenovo
16. Bikin
17. Birobidzhan
18. Biryusinsk
19. Bogdanovich
20. Bogotol
21. Swamp / Swamp
22. Bureya
23. Vereshchagino
24. Vladivostok
25. Volochaevka
26. Volno-Nadezhdinskoe / Nadezhdinskaya
27. Vyazemsky / Vyazemskaya
28. Galich
29. Glazov
30. Golyshmanovo
31. Dalnerechensk
32. Danilov
33. Darasun
34. Ekaterinburg
35. Yekaterinoslavka
36. Erofey Pavlovich
37. Zhireken
38. Curled
39. Zavodoukovsk
40. Zaigraevo
41. Zalari
42. Zaozernaya
43. Winter
44. Zuevka
45. Izhmorskaya
46. Ilanskaya
47. Kalachinskaya
48. Kamyshlov
49. Kansk / Kansk-Yeniseisky
50. Kargat
51. Karymskoe / Karymskaya
52. Kirov
53. Roe deer
54. Kormilovka
55. Kotelnich
56. Kochenevo
57. Krasnoyarsk
58. Ksenievka / Ksenievskaya
59. Kuitun
60. Kultuk
61. Kungur
62. Kutulik
63. Leninskoe / Shabalino
64. Lesozavodsk
65. Luchegorsk
66. Love
67. Lyubinsky / Lyubinskaya
68. Magdagachi
69. Maisky / Tchaikovskaya
70. Manturovo
71. Mariinsk
72. Mikhailovka / Dubininsky
73. Mogzon
74. Mogocha
75. Moscow
76. Moshkovo
77. Mytishchi
78. Nazyvaevsk / Nazyvaevskaya
79. Nizhneudinsk
80. Nizhny Ingash / Ingash
81. Nizhny Novgorod
82. Lower Floodplain / Reshoty
83. Novopavlovka
84. Novosibirsk
85. Novochernorechensky / Chernorechenskaya
86. Obluchie
87. Omutinskiy / Omutinskaya
88. Orichi
89. Pereyaslavka / Verino
90. Pervouralsk
91. Permian
92. Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky / Petrovsky Plant
93. Ponazyrevo
94. Priiskovy / Priiskovaya
95. Pushkino
96. Pyshma / Oshchepkovo
97. Radonezh
98. Rostov-Yaroslavsky / Rostov
99. Sergiev Posad
100. Candle
101. Free
102. Seryshevo
103. Sibirtsevo
104. Skovorodino
105. Slyudyanka
106. Smidovich / In
107. Sofrino
108. Spassk-Dalny
109. Station-Oyashinsky / Oyash]]
110. Strunino
111. Taiga
112. Taishet
113. Tankhoy
114. Tatarsk / Tatarskaya
115. Takhtamygda
116. Tugulym
117. Tulun
118. Tyumen
119. Tyazhinsky / Tyazhin
120. Ubinskoe / Ubinskoe
121. Ulan-Ude
122. Usolye-Sibirskoe
123. Ussuriysk
124. Ust-Kishert / Kishert
125. Ushumun
126. Falenki
127. Khabarovsk
128. Khilok
129. Khotkovo
130. Cheremkhovo
131. Chernigovka / Flour
132. Chernyshevsk / Chernyshevsk-Zabaikalsky
133. Chulym / Chulym
134. Sharya
135. Shelekhov / Goncharovo
136. Shilka
137. Shimanovsk / Shimanovskaya
138. Yalutorovsk
139. Yaroslavl
140. Yashkino

Below is the main route of the Transsib, operating since 1958 (the name of the railway station is given through a fraction if it does not coincide with the name of the corresponding settlement):

Moscow-Yaroslavskaya - Yaroslavl-Main - 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 - - Irkutsk-Passenger- -1 - Ulan-Ude - Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky / Petrovsky Zavod - Chita-2 - Karymskoe / Karymskaya - Chernyshevsk / Chernyshevsk-Zabaykalsky - Mogocha - Skovorodino - Belogorsk - Arkhara - Birobidzhan-1 - Khabarovsk-1 - Vyazemsky (city) | Vyazemsky / Vyazemskaya - Lesozavodsk / Ruzhino - Ussuriysk - Vladivostok

Trans-Siberian Railway in literature

Mazhit Gafuri began his path in literature with a book Seber timmer yuly yәki әkhүәle millәt("Siberian Railway, or the State of the Nation") (Orenburg, 1904).

Interesting facts about the Trans-Siberian Railway

1. Although Vladivostok is the terminal station of the Transsib, on the branch to Nakhodka there are stations more distant from Moscow - Cape Astafyev and Vostochny port.
2. Until recently, the longest train in the world, number 53/54 Kharkiv - Vladivostok, traveled along the Trans-Siberian Railway, covering 9714 km of track in 174 hours and 10 minutes. Since May 15, 2010 this train has been "cut off" to the Ufa station, but the running of direct cars has been preserved. The world's longest direct train carriage on this moment is Kiev - Vladivostok, distance 10259 km, travel time 187 hours 50 minutes.
3. The "fastest" train of the Trans-Siberian is No. 1/2 "Russia", with a connection from Moscow to Vladivostok. It passes the Transsib in 6 days 2 hours.
4. At the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow, as well as in Vladivostok, special kilometer posts are installed indicating the length of the highway - "0 km" on one side and "9298 km" on the other side (moreover, in Vladivostok, the sign says "9288").

Renovation plans

The need to reconstruct the Transsib and BAM was announced at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the modernization of railways in July last year. For the reconstruction of BAM and Transsib OJSC Russian Railways and the government of the Russian Federation intend to allocate 562 billion rubles by 2018, of which 150 billion rubles. allocated from the NWF, 110 billion rubles. - in the form of straight lines budget investments, another 300 billion rubles. it is planned to attract through the investment program of the Russian Railways. In general, according to minimal estimates, the project requires RUB 900 billion. attachments. However, according to the statement of the President of JSC "Russian Railways" Vladimir Yakunin, the real volume of necessary investments reaches 1.5 trillion rubles. When implementing the project, by 2020, it is expected to ensure the passage of cargo flows up to 55 million tons per year, with the current 16 million tons. As shown by the preliminary results of the TCA, economic effect from the implementation of projects for the reconstruction of the BAM and Transsib is estimated by investors at 100 billion rubles.

The decree of the government of the Russian Federation, which allows using the funds of the National Wealth Fund for the modernization of the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railways, was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The Trans-Siberian Railway is firmly associated with the word "most". The longest railway in the world (9288.2 km), the largest and most expensive project of its time. The construction of the highway took 25 years and spent 1.5 billion rubles in gold (about 25 billion US dollars at the current exchange rate).

If you stretch the Transsib in a straight line, then its length will take 73% of the Earth's diameter. The road passes through 7 time zones and 87 cities. Today, a full route along the highway from Moscow to Vladivostok takes 6 days. Train number 1 with the self-explanatory name "Russia" runs between the two cities. This symbolic unity is also emphasized by the similarity between the Yaroslavl station in Moscow (where the train departs from) and the station in Vladivostok (where it arrives).

In the middle of the 19th century, Siberia and the Far East were sparsely populated and poorly developed territories. Before 1883 Russian population here did not exceed 2 million people. Land development was impossible without the railway. The plans for construction were hatched for a long time, but the matter got off the ground only at the end of the century.

On February 5, 1891, Emperor Alexander III issued a decree on the construction of the Great Siberian Way. On May 19 of the same year, Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (future Emperor Nicholas II) personally drove the first wheelbarrow with the ground to the railroad bed and laid the foundation stone for the Vladivostok railway station.

Historically, the eastern part of the road is about 7000 km long. She stretched from Miass to Chelyabinsk region to Vladivostok. It was this site that was built from 1891 to 1916. Construction was carried out simultaneously from Vladivostok and Chelyabinsk.

Many difficulties awaited the builders: they had to dig tunnels through the mountains, make embankments under the canvas up to 30 m high, build bridges over deep Siberian rivers, lay paths through dense taiga, vast swamps and permafrost. It was especially difficult on the site near Lake Baikal. In 1897, a powerful flood washed away the railway embankments for 400 km, the city of Doroninsk was completely destroyed by water. The next year, there was a severe drought, an epidemic of plague and anthrax broke out. As a result, train traffic on the Trans-Baikal Railway began only in 1900.

On the contrary, in the steppes of Western Siberia it was easy to make a road, but there were no suitable building materials. Therefore, timber for sleepers was transported for 400 km from Tobolsk, gravel for an embankment - for 750 km from Chelyabinsk. In 1913-1916, a railway bridge with a length of more than 2.5 km was built across the Amur River. At the time of completion of construction, it turned out to be the second longest bridge in the world.

At the same time, more than 100 thousand people were employed in the construction. It was not only hired workers who built, they also attracted local residents, soldier and convict. Much was done by hand, the tools were primitive - an ax, a saw, a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow.

But, despite all the difficulties, the railway was built at an accelerated pace. At least 500 km of railroad tracks were laid annually. Already in 1903, long before the end of construction, a regular railway connection began between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. Some sections of the highway were then laid using a simplified technology. And across Lake Baikal, trains were ferried on a special ferry.

By the end of construction, the population of Siberia had almost doubled (from 5.8 to 9.4 million people). Since 1906, the growth rates have been staggering - the region's population has grown by 500 thousand people a year. According to the Stolypin agrarian reform, immigrants were allocated land, numerous benefits were given. The Transsib was not just a road - many schools, hospitals, colleges and temples were built along the way.

The Trans-Siberian Railway still retains its strategic importance. More than 100 million tons of cargo is transported annually along it from east to west. It is also the shortest road for goods from China to Western Europe. The journey takes 11-15 days by rail, and 20 days longer by sea.

By the middle of the 19th century, the borders of the Russian Empire began to take their final shape. The colossal power, stretching across the vastness of Eurasia, seemed to many to be unviable. Remote regions of the country, Siberia and the Far East, were connected with the capital by a thin line of impassable roads, which was a huge obstacle to their successful development.

"Senate rejected this proposal"

Governor-General of Eastern Siberia Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov-Amursky, the founder of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, in the mid-1850s applied to St. Petersburg with a request to build a railway to the Pacific Ocean.

On one of the documents in 1856 Emperor Alexander II wrote: “With this request, Count N.N. Muravyov-Amursky turned to the late Father Nikolai Pavlovich. But the Senate rejected the proposal. And we are rejecting this costly project. "

Muravyov-Amursky did not give up. Time after time, he reported to the capital: without the railway, Russia will not be able to expand its influence in China, nor to preserve its territories.

In fact, in St. Petersburg they understood the importance of the project, but the length of the road and, accordingly, the cost, frankly frightened.

Price doesn't matter

But in the 1870s, the first scientific studies of the issue began. In 1887, under the leadership engineers Nikolai Mezheninov, Orest Vyazemsky and Alexander Ursati three expeditions were organized to survey the route of the Central Siberian, Trans-Baikal and South Ussuri railways.

In March 1891, the final calculations fell on the table. Emperor Alexander III... The monarch signed the highest decree on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, or, in other words, the Great Siberian Route.

According to preliminary calculations of the Committee for the Construction of the Siberian Railway, its cost was determined at 350 million rubles in gold. As usual in Russia, this amount turned out to be somewhat inaccurate. According to sources from the Soviet period, by 1916, 1.5 billion rubles were spent on the construction of the Transsib.

According to the approved project, construction was supposed to start simultaneously from Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok.

The tsarevich lays down, the man builds

May 31, 1891, then heir to the throne Tsarevich Nikolay laid the foundation stone of the Ussuriysk railway to Khabarovsk on the Amur near Vladivostok. So the grandiose construction site was officially started.

Transsib laying ceremony by Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich in Vladivostok. Photo: Public Domain

At the government level, it was decided to carry out construction on its own, without involving foreign companies... The problem was that there was not enough equipment to carry out such work in Russia. Therefore, the main stake was made per person. Exiled prisoners, soldiers recruited into Central Russia peasants - this is the force thanks to which the Transsib was born. In the most difficult climatic conditions, with axes, saws, shovels and wheelbarrows, Russian men laid kilometers of the country's main road.

By 1896, the Ussuriysk railway (769 km) and the West Siberian railway (1418 km) were completed.

The second stage of construction included the Central Siberian Railway (1,818 km), the Trans-Baikal Railway (1104 km) and the Chinese-Eastern Railway (1,520 km).

In November 1901, a track was closed along the Great Siberian Track, but there was still a regular service along the entire length of the track.

Map of the route of high-speed trains from Moscow to the port of Dalniy (1903). Photo: Public Domain

First, Baikal was crossed by icebreaker ferries

On July 14, 1903, traffic on the Transsib from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok was opened. The completion of the work, however, was out of the question.

The fact is that trains crossed Lake Baikal on icebreaker ferries "Baikal" and "Angara", built by order Russian government by the English firm "Armstrong, Whitworth and Co".

Back in 1899, the construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway began, which was supposed to ensure the movement of trains without the help of ferries along the entire route.

And the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 showed that the Sino-Eastern Railway, conceived Minister of Finance Sergei Witte as the shortest route to Vladivostok through Chinese territory, in addition to economic benefits, it also entails political problems. Control over the Chinese Eastern Railway could be lost at any moment, and then the Transsib would be paralyzed. Therefore, in 1906, the construction of the Amur railway started, which was supposed to ensure safe traffic along the Transsib through the territory of Russia.

The Circum-Baikal Railway was put into permanent operation in October 1905. The Amurskaya road was commissioned in October 1916, after the Khabarovsk bridge over the Amur River was completed.

Construction of a tunnel on the Amur railway. Photo: Public Domain

A road that always evolves

The formal end of construction at the end of the history of the period of the Russian Empire did not mean that the Transsib would not develop further.

Immediately after the Civil War, it took a lot of effort to restore the damaged areas. The construction of new sections, approaches and branches continued throughout the 20th century.

The electrification of the Transsib, which began in 1956, was divided into a large number of stages. This process was fully completed only in 2002.

Today the Transsib passes through the territory of 20 constituent entities of the Russian Federation and five federal districts that provide more than 80 percent industrial potential our country.

9288 km of legend

The Transsib can be called a kind of "circulatory system" of Russia, without which the existence of the country is unthinkable.

The Great Siberian Route fascinates foreign tourists. Its 9288.2 km is the longest railway in the world. The branded train "Russia" covers the distance from Moscow to Vladivostok in a little over six days. In the recent past, the world's farthest train Kharkiv-Vladivostok traveled here, covering 9714 km of track in 7 days 6 hours 10 minutes, as well as the farthest car of direct communication Kiev-Vladivostok, traveling one way at a distance of 10 259 km.

Perhaps someday these achievements will also be closed, and trains will go from Lisbon to Hanoi or Tokyo. Let it seem fantastic to someone today. But a century and a half ago, the Great Siberian Route itself seemed such a fantasy.