Historically, the Transsib is the eastern part of the highway, from Miass (Chelyabinsk region) to Vladivostok. Its length is about 7 thousand km. This site was built from 1891 to 1916.
On February 25 (March 9), 1891, Alexander III signed a personalized imperial decree, given to the Minister of Railways, on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to preliminary calculations, the cost of building the railway was supposed to be 350 million rubles in gold (according to the Soviet encyclopedia, as a result, it was spent several times more). The total cost of the construction of the Transsib from 1891 to 1916 amounted to 1.5 billion rubles.
The movement of trains on the Transsib 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 (CER). Regular railway communication between the capital of the empire, St. Petersburg and the Pacific ports of Vladivostok and Port Arthur, was established on July 1 (14), 1903, although 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, the Circum-Baikal Railway, as a segment of the Great Siberian Way, was adopted in constant operation, and for the first time in history, trains were able to follow only on rails, without using ferry crossings from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
The construction was carried out only at the expense of the state's own funds without attracting foreign capital. At the beginning of the construction, 9,600 people were involved, by 1896 there were already about 80,000 people. An average of 650 km of railway tracks were built annually, as of 1903, more than 12 million sleepers, 1 million tons of rails were laid, the total length of the constructed railway bridges and tunnels was more than 100 km.
Promotional video:
Scheme of the modern Transsib: red - the historical route, blue - the northern route, green - the Baikal-Amur Mainline, black - the section of the southern route in Siberia.
Map of the old Trans-Siberian Railway with the Chinese Eastern Railway (through Manchuria - modern China).
The construction was divided into "sections", stages of construction:
Ussuriyskaya road (1891-1897)
Vladivostok-Khabarovsk. 769 km.
West Siberian road (1892-1896)
(Chelyabinsk - Ob). Length - 1,418 km.
Central Siberian road (1893-1899)
(Ob - Irkutsk). Length - 1,818 km
Zabaikalskaya road (1895-1900)
(station Mysovaya - Sretensk) length 1 104 km
Sino-Eastern Road (1897-1904)
Under the terms of Article VI of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, in 1905 the section of this route between Changchun and Port Arthur was ceded to Japan.
Circum-Baikal road (1899-1905)
Amur road (1906-1916)
Source
As you can see, the Transsib was not led from west to east (which is more logical from the point of view of logistics, rail supplies from the Ural factories), but was divided into sections and the work was carried out almost in parallel. Question: how were the rails transported to the eastern sections of the track? By sea to Vladivostok? And how were the rails delivered to the middle sections of the Transsib? Or did they equip the embankments, laid the sleepers, which then waited for the rails to be laid?
But this is only a part of the questions. The main question is the speed of construction. In fact, over 14 years, 7 thousand km of track were laid. This is not only the arrangement of embankments and canvases, but also countless culverts, bridges over large and small rivers.
I propose to compare this amount of work with an almost modern construction site of this scale:
Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM).
The main route Taishet - Sovetskaya Gavan was built with long breaks from 1938 to 1984. The construction of the central part of the railway, which took place in difficult geological and climatic conditions, took more than 12 years, and one of the most difficult sections: the Severomuisky tunnel was put into permanent operation only in 2003.
BAM is almost 500 km shorter than the Transsib in the section from Taishet to the seaport of Vanino. The length of the main route Taishet - Sovetskaya Gavan is 4287 km. BAM runs north of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
In April 1974, BAM was declared an all-Union shock Komsomol construction site. In fact, this is the year of the beginning of large-scale construction.
Summing up the figures, it turns out: Transsib, 7 thousand km long, using only manual labor, carts and trolleys, was built for 14 years. And the BAM, with a length of just over 4 thousand km, after almost 100 years, with all the mechanization in the form of excavators, dump trucks, mining equipment - 11 years!
Say, the difference in economic systems, approach to construction, the difference in the number of people involved in construction? The Transsib was built by convicts, and BAM - by enthusiastic Komsomol members. And BAM passes through more inaccessible mountain areas. Perhaps, but such a difference in terms, with a difference in the length of the tracks by two times and with a technological gap, is difficult to explain.
With these lines, I do not want to question the feat of the people of those years, our ancestors. In any case, it remains the great construction site of Russia at that time. But more and more versions appear that the Transsib was not so much built as restored. Only bridges over rivers and some sections of the road were equipped. In the bulk - it was put in order, or simply dug up. And there is reason to think so.
Look at these photos of the construction of the Transsib (1910-1914. Album of views of the construction of the middle part of the Amur railway):
197 miles. Career development by teams of convicts.
197 miles. Development of seizure by teams of convicts.
The impression is that the road is being dug up. But judging from the official point of view about this photo, it is possible that a railway track was laid at the edge of a sheer wall made of soil. When the workers threw the soil with shovels, it spilled out onto the canvas and filled up the sleepers. The result is a visible effect that the road is being dug up.
Another interesting fact:
An old railway track was found in Krasnoyarsk:
The Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk archaeologists, while carrying out excavations at the construction site of the bridge across the Yenisei, discovered a section of the railway laid in the 1890s. The find came as a surprise, and for several reasons at once. Firstly, because of its scale: scientists often find small fragments of old railway tracks - rails, sleepers, crutches, but this is the first time that a 100-meter road has been discovered.
Secondly, the railway line was hidden deep underground - under a one and a half meter layer of soil.
The length of the section of the railway line, located next to the Transsib, is about 100 meters. Note that archaeologists found it under a rather thick layer of soil - more than 1.5 meters deep.
Why haven't you reused railway rails? At the time of iron deficiency, they were worth their weight in gold. I do not believe that they just took it and buried it. If we compare it with the theme of the introduced buildings, the picture is catastrophic. Or all this soil, clay, fell from above (a dusty cosmic cloud, a giant comet?) Or exits of water and mud masses from the depths. With earthquakes (I had a note on this mechanism) or with a larger cataclysm.
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Another observation:
In 1822 Krasnoyarsk received the status of a city and became the capital of the Yenisei Province.
And before Transib is not one decade. There are no prerequisites to move the capital. Or was he already? In the 1840s, a cataclysm occurred and it was restored at the end of the 19th century. in just 10 years!
The trade and transport route before the construction of the Transsib went through Yeniseisk: the Ob-Yenisei Canal. Ancient Siberia waterway
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Another fact in favor of the antiquity of the railway. The Trans-Siberian was brought to Lake Baikal, a huge ferry was launched, brought somehow from England, and carrying trains, only then the Circum-Baikal Railway was built. Was it impossible to build it right away? Most likely, the ancient railway went along the place where the fault was formed and filled with water, which became Baikal (it is not in this size on old maps).
Watch about the oddities of the railway from the 35th minute
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Be sure to watch these videos below! Non-existent railways are shown on maps of the 18th century:
Links to maps showing the railways of Eastern Europe and Russia in the 18th century:
www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/workspace…
www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/workspace…
Skeptics say these cards were issued in the late 19th century. and it shows the roads of that time, although the dates of the maps are 1772. Usually, the maps depict the state of the territories of that period, to which information about the roads, cities, countries belongs. Do not overlay modern paths on ancient maps with old boundaries. Even taking into account the fact that the map of 1883 shows railway roads that have not even been built yet.
References to "railroad" (rail - rail)) in sources can be traced back centuries to 1600.
Readers told me the version that most of the old churches are, perhaps, ancient railway stations. See for yourself, many railway stations, both earlier and now, are very similar in their architecture to churches. Dome structures of central buildings, arches, spiers, etc.
I had an article: Ozy and Zmievy Shafts. It contains videos from Shukach with the version that Serpent Shafts are the remains of ancient railway embankments.
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Most likely, there was a period when the entire technically (not technologically) advanced civilization perished in some event. That level is roughly described in some of the works of J. Verne. The level of engineering + the use of simple technology. Medieval robots, barrel organs, organs, etc. speak about the level of specialists. And without roads and logistics, it was impossible to build such a civilization.
Author: sibved