At that time it was thought the opening of this trunk line would be detrimental to the scheme of a complete Trans-Siberian railway, for once the junction of the navigable tributaries of the Obi with those of the Volga was accomplished, it was deemed desirable to connect Russia with its possessions in the Far East by uniting in the same manner the basin of the Obi with that of the Yenissei, and finally the latter with the affluents of the Amur, and so with the Pacific. A railway from the Obi to the Yenissei was not thought necessary, a canal being all that was required. In 1882, therefore, the construction of a canal was undertaken between the Ket, a tributary of the Obi, and the Kass, an affluent of the Yenissei, the distance not being more than 126 miles. The canal in question, which traverses a series of virgin forests, when completed, unfortunately, however, did not realize expectation. To the east of the Yenissei its promoters encountered formidable obstacles from the ice and from the numerous rapids that disturb the current of the Angara, and all attempts to ascend that river have hitherto failed.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, the enterprising engineers hoped to the last to be able to modify some of them, but have not succeeded in so doing. Thus, it soon became evident that if any practical means of communication was to exist between Russia and the Pacific, it could only be by some method independent of climatic irregularity. The late Tsar, Alexander III., very readily understood that the mixed rail and river system, with its many inconveniences of loading and unloading, and its ice blockades, was, comparatively speaking, useless. Hence the great encouragement and assistance which his Imperial Majesty gave to the creation of the Trans-Siberian Railway, in which he took the deepest interest, being quite of opinion that its completion was of vital importance to the improvement and well-being of an immense section of his Empire. In less than eight years from the day he signed the Imperial decree authorizing its immediate execution trains began to run over 3,300 miles, uniting the upper region of the Amur with Europe and the lower section of that river with the Pacific. Without entering into further particulars of the various routes proposed and subsequently given up, suffice it to say that at present the excellent idea of creating a line running along the shores of Lake Baikal from Irkutsk to Misofsk has been temporarily abandoned, and that a short line of forty-four miles between Irkutsk and Listvenitchnaya now runs to the western shores of that lake, where the trains will ere long be shunted directly on board ferry-boats built on the well-known American system, and thus travellers will be able to continue their journey to the Far East without leaving the train.
The Trans-Siberian Railway between Cheliabinsk and Vladivostok now includes a main line some 4,125 miles in length, plus two branch lines, one 104 miles and the other 410 miles in length, which unite with the Upper and Lower Amur.
The Western Siberian Railway was finished in 1895; the Central Siberian and the section between Irkutsk and Baikal in 1898. Trains can now run over 2,152 miles of rail. The 478 miles of the Ussuri line, of which 67 miles belong to the trunk line, were not opened until 1897. The many difficulties of the Trans-Baikalian line, which somewhat retarded its completion, having been overcome, it was inaugurated quite recently, whereby 2,814 miles out of the total 4,125 miles were rendered free for traffic. The line to Ussuri was finished three years ago, and the rail having been laid between Onon and Stretensk, the Russians have now (1900) a complete land and river system of intercommunication to the Pacific.
For some years past a number of Russian officers and engineers have been quietly exploring Manchuria, with very interesting results. In 1895 the Chinese Government, after the Chino-Japanese War, accorded, as a token of gratitude to Russia for her share in the combined intervention with France and Germany in her favour, the privilege to build a railway through this important province, and, moreover, to occupy the country during its construction, the better to protect both works and workmen. This circumstance brought about a great modification in the original route of the Trans-Siberian line. The section in the Amur from Stretensk to Khabarofsk was abandoned and replaced by a Trans-Manchurian Railway which leaves the station at Onon, 104 miles east of Stretensk, to rejoin the original line at Nikolsk, about 67 miles from Vladivostok, and thus has a mixed route of rail and river been created which brings Europe and the Pacific into direct communication during the summer months. The train now conveys travellers from the Ural to Stretensk; thence by boat to Khabarofsk, whence the line continues uninterruptedly to Vladivostok. As to the great Manchurian line, it cannot be completed, even according to the letter of the concession, before 1904, so numerous and so very great are the natural and other obstacles which have to be overcome. A notable modification has, however, already been made in the original plan. Vladivostok is now no longer to be the main terminus, which will be transferred to Port Arthur, 530 miles further south. The advantages to commerce to be derived from this project will doubtless soon and amply compensate for the extra labour and expense.
The great difficulties of constructing the Trans-Siberian Railway were mainly due to its abnormal length. Whereas the Americans had only 2,000 miles to cut in creating their line between the Mississippi and the Pacific, the Russians thirty years later had to lay down more than 4,000 miles of rail in order to reach the same ocean from the Ural. Otherwise their difficulties were very much less formidable than those which at times nearly baffled even the ingenuity of the Americans. Happily there are no Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevada in Siberia to traverse at a great height, but only comparatively low ranges like the Yablonovoi, or ‘Apple-Tree Mountains,’ so-called from their rather dumpy shapes. Then, again, although Siberia is at present not more densely inhabited than was the Far West from 1860 to 1870, it contains no such desolate regions as the plateaus of Utah and Nevada. It may, therefore, be safely affirmed that from the engineering point of view the task was a comparatively easy one, although the line has to pass over an exceedingly varied country after leaving the Ural, and through interminable plains, to reach the undulating regions between the Obi and the Yenissei, where it ascends a chain of hills at an altitude of not less than 2,000 feet on the road from the Yenissei to Irkutsk. On the eastern shore of the Baikal the railway gradually ascends to an altitude of not less than 3,500 feet above the level of the water, whence it descends in rapid zigzag into the valleys of the Ingoda and the Chilka, cuts the abrupt spurs of some very high mountains, and passes into marshlands where, by the way, the engineers have had to overcome their greatest obstruction, mainly due to the unstable condition of the soil. When, therefore, we take into consideration that between the Amur and the Ural there is not a single tunnel, we may safely conclude that, if it were not for its enormous length, this now famous line has not been from the engineering point of view as arduous an undertaking even as have been, for instance, some of the much shorter lines nearer home, across the Alps and the Cevennes.
The bridges, on the other hand, are very remarkable and numerous, and some of them required great skill in their construction, since they span the more important rivers of Siberia, which, with the exception of those in the basin of the Amur, invariably flow due north. There are four principal bridges, of which two cross the Irtysh and the Obi respectively, each 2,750 feet in length; the other two span the Yenissei and the Selenga, and are about 3,000 feet in length. These four bridges were exceedingly costly, necessitating the erection of stone piles of prodigious strength, capable of resisting the shock of the enormous masses of floating ice. The minor bridges, some of them 700 to 900 feet in length, are very numerous, but, beyond the difficulty of fixing them firmly a great distance on either side of the rivers, owing to the marshy nature of the soil on the immediate banks, it needed no superlative skill on the part of the engineers who superintended their erection.
Altogether the most remarkable feature of the line will be the manner in which the trains are eventually to be transported across the Baikal, the largest lake in Asia. In America and in Denmark the system of running a train on to a monster ferry-boat, crossing considerable expanses of water, has now been in practical use for many years; but the distances hitherto have never exceeded seventy miles. The Toledo, Ann Harbour, and Northern Michigan Railroad possesses a service of ferry-boats that convey the trains across Lake Michigan, a distance of about seventy miles. The Père Marquette, the biggest ferry-boat in the world, so-called in honour of the celebrated Jesuit missionary and explorer, is 344 feet in length by 54 feet in width, and possesses four lines, whereby it can carry thirty freight cars and sixteen very up-to-date passenger corridor carriages. The difficulties to be surmounted with respect to Lake Baikal are happily less than those to be encountered on Lake Michigan. The distance from shore to shore, to begin with, is considerably less. Between Listvenitchnaya, otherwise the ‘Larches,’ to Misofsk is only forty miles. Notwithstanding the excessive cold, the Baikal does not freeze until quite late in January, on account of its great depth, 4,200 feet, of which 2,900 feet are below the level of the sea, forming a prodigious volume of water which takes a very long time to freeze, and an almost equally long time to thaw, for its temperature rarely rises, even in summer, above 5° C. During eight months of the year Lake Baikal is free and navigable, and it is believed that two crossings a day, always in the same channel, may eventually reduce the thickness of the ice in winter.
The building of these enormous ferry-boats has been entrusted to a well-known American firm.[[12]] They are to be larger than the Père Marquette, and provided with special contrivances for cutting the ice as they force their passage through it, and they are, moreover, intended to go at the rate of thirteen and a half knots an hour in free water, and four knots when cutting through the ice. The passage will take nine hours in winter and about two and a half hours in summer. Unfortunately, storms are very sudden and frequent on Lake Baikal, and, moreover, in summer travelling is often impeded by dense fogs, and it occasionally happens that boats are detained for hours and even days at a time before they dare venture across. It will certainly be very unpleasant for the passengers to be kept for many hours at Listvenitchnaya or Misofsk waiting for the weather to clear. However, they can take heart of grace; for not so very long ago they might have been detained for days at some out-of-the-way post-house, in company with a regiment of most unpleasant and unnameable bedfellows!
The difficulties of obtaining workmen for building this railway were not so great as might have been expected, thanks to the nomadic habits of the Russians, who think very little of leaving their wives and belongings at home, and going hundreds, even thousands, of miles away in search of employment. Then, again, there were already a considerable number of workpeople to be obtained on the line itself; for, as already stated, the population of Siberia is concentrated on the old postal-road, which runs in many points parallel to the railway. Convict labour was not greatly used, and when it was it proved unsatisfactory, and was soon more or less abandoned. The line, however, has taken an unusually long time to finish, because the only season during which work can be carried on in Siberia lasts but six months; but this probably proved attractive to the Russian and Asiatic workmen, as it gave them ample time, when the ground was thickly covered with snow, to return to their cabins and indulge in those day-dreams so dear to them and to all Orientals.