“We will build a highway from Baikal to the Amur” - these words of a popular Soviet song in the 70s of the last century were probably familiar to everyone in the USSR. BAM (Baikal-Amur Mainline) is one of the largest railway lines in the world. The length of the main route Taishet - Sovetskaya Gavan is 4287 km.
BAM on bones
In the spring of 1972, the dumping of soil for the first kilometers of the famous Baikal-Amur Mainline began, which was announced two years later by the All-Union Komsomol shock construction site. Thousands of romantic volunteers from all over the multinational country poured into Eastern Siberia to become participants in such a grandiose, hitherto unseen project.
At that time, few people in the country knew that four decades before that, attempts had already been made to build the famous BAM, and that the outbreak of World War II prevented the implementation of the plans of the Soviet government.
Back in 1926, the subdivisions of the railway troops of the Red Army began to conduct topographic reconnaissance of the future BAM route - an important transport artery in the strategic plan. And six years later, a special decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was issued, according to which the construction of the railway was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Special Directorate of the OGPU. In the fall of 1938, Bamlag was created, which included six forced labor camps.
And now, in harsh climatic conditions, without special equipment and machinery, a large special contingent began the "construction of the century." Many of them ended their earthly journey on one of the sections of the highway.
Promotional video:
A psychic from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Yuri Vasilyevich Paramonov, who laid the first sections of the highway in 1972-1973, recalls how heavy the aura of those places was, which saw hundreds of martyrdom of construction prisoners. At times, before the gaze of the then young guy, emaciated human figures clearly appeared, and it seemed that the earth itself, soaked in sweat and blood, was groaning.
Yu. Paramonov believes that the numerous legends about ghosts and any other devilry are not in the least an invention of the Bam youth who are hungry for jokes and practical jokes.
Ghost train
Local residents-Buryats also talked about it, who supposedly more than once saw a steam locomotive, rushing along the once cut through glades and frozen desert gates, and at the same time did not make a single sound.
Old residents of small villages located near the main railway recalled the story of how in 1940 prisoners of camp 23/5, who worked on the section between Kichera and Yanchukan, raised an uprising and hijacked a steam locomotive with three cargo platforms, on which they tried to break through the narrow-gauge railway northwest, to the reserved Yakutia.
The Bamlag leadership used aviation to fight the fugitives, which bombed both the train and the railway. However, two years later, when the construction site was turned down and the camps were empty, a mysterious train began to appear from time to time in those parts. Yes, and the destroyed narrow-gauge railway turned out to be restored in a completely mystical way, as the workers of Dmitry Zarechnev's brigades who accidentally stumbled upon it in 1973 could see.
To the surprise of the tunnellers, the railway track, lost in the taiga, was in perfect condition: the wooden sleepers, as if laid yesterday, were generously saturated with fragrant creosote; neither the bolts nor the crutches had even a hint of rust, and the rails themselves were so polished as if dozens of trains were walking along them every day.
The assumption that the narrow-gauge railway in the early 70s could be used by the military and Soviet special services to deliver goods to secret facilities did not find confirmation: the railway line led literally nowhere, resting after twenty-six kilometers into a high hill overgrown with cedar. Who kept the abandoned railway line in such perfect condition remains a mystery.
Tunnels to other worlds
During the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, which took place in the most difficult climatic and landscape-geographical conditions, 142 large and small bridges were erected and eight tunnels were laid, with which the builders also have many exciting stories.
Thus, the Baikal Tunnel was famous among tunnellers for the fact that at times mysterious yellow-fire balls emerged there from deep vertical cracks in the tunnel arch. Soon the builders established a curious pattern: an hour and a half after the appearance of these balls, a strong inflow of groundwater was observed, which took a lot of work to pump out.
The attraction of the Kodar tunnel (the highest mountain on the BAM), which was being built on the Vitim-Chara section, was … a ghost, which the tunnellers soon dubbed the White Shaman. This section of the highway, known for its high seismic activity, was sometimes shaken by earthquakes of magnitude 4-5.
By his appearance, the White Shaman seemed to warn the builders about the approach of a cataclysm.
Perhaps the most mysterious, according to the stories of tunnellers, was considered the longest in Russia Severomuisky tunnel, which was under construction for more than a quarter of a century. In addition to the need to solve all new complex technological problems literally at every kilometer, the tunnel presented to the builders unusual, almost mystical surprises.
So, in 1979, a quicksand breakthrough occurred in the western section, as a result of which more than 30 workers were killed and several more people were walled up with stone fragments. When the operation to rescue the tunnellers was completed, one of the workers said that while trying to get out on his own, he came across a huge, green metal door, which was green from mold, in a granite wall, and all attempts to open it were unsuccessful.
In 1980, during tunneling works, at the eighth kilometer there was a sudden collapse of one of the sections of the base of the tunnel body, exposing a wide trough that led deep into the ridge. According to the recollections of the workers, from the black void, sounds began to be heard, similar to the sound of jackhammers.
Later, after the strange gutter was covered with rock and filled with high-strength concrete, the management of the Bamtonnelstroy enterprise explained this fact by the high concentration of radon gas in the tunnel, which could cause auditory hallucinations in workers.
Fears of the Devil's Bridge
Until 2003, until the Severomuisky tunnel was put into operation, the railway traffic through the ridge was carried out along the Severomuisky bypass, the main attraction of which was and remains the famous Devil's Bridge - a high and steep two-tier overpass, laid over the valley of the Itykit River.
It is known that even today the drivers of freight trains entering the Devil's Bridge prudently make the sign of the cross - the path through this structure seems so difficult and dangerous, where trains run at a speed of no more than 20 kilometers per hour.
Rumor has it that railroad workers perform a similar ritual in order not to meet devils on the tracks, which, according to legend, are found in abundance in those places.
Old train drivers assure that tailed and nimble creatures with pig faces from time to time appear on the railway track in front of a slowly rising train, and sometimes even jump onto a locomotive coupling, deftly climb onto the roof of an electric locomotive and arrange frantic dances there …
Immediately after the collapse of the USSR, the press began to persistently exaggerate the opinion that the construction of the BAM was not economically justified and that this highway had no future. For some time, life on the former "construction site of the century" was really just glimmering, but with the onset of the new century, interest in the Baikal-Amur Mainline arose with a vengeance.
At present, BAM is operating at its capacity. The main line is being modernized in order to double the freight traffic to 50 million tons per year.