Mixed bonanza

The world’s longest train ride

How would you like to travel on the same train for several days and nights on end? This is what happens when you buy a railway ticket from Moscow to Vladivostok. It is the longest train journey in the world. Let’s see how it came about... Vladivostok is a Russian port on the Pacific Ocean, nearly 6,000 miles east of Moscow. It used to take months and months to travel those 5,772 miles, for there were no roads across the vast desolate steppes (plains) of Siberia.

One day the Russian Tsar began to worry about this. How would he be able to rush an army across Siberia if the powerful emperor of Japan suddenly attacked Russia from the east?

Then he had an idea. He would build a railway right across Russia as the Americans had built a railway across their great continent. When the engineers asked the Tsar what route the railway was to follow, he simply ran his finger across the map of Russia and said: “Build it here!” In 1891 the great Trans-Siberian Railway was begun. At first there was only a single track. Slowly it advanced across the wastelands of Siberia. In winter the steppes lay deep in snow.

Icy winds blew and huge fires had to be lit along the track to prevent the concrete from freezing. But not much care was taken of the workmen, for they were nearly all criminals and exiles, and they were guarded by soldiers night and day.At last, hundreds of miles from Moscow, the shores of Lake Baikal were reached.

And here the engineers had a problem. Lake Baikal is huge - it is 400 miles long and nowhere less than 20 miles broad. But it also has on its southern shores a wall of mountains rising straight out of the water. So the engineers decided to carry the trains across the lake by ferry and then start the track again on the other side.

Rails were laid on the ice

In winter, icebreakers were used to keep a passage open for as long as possible. Then when the water froze solid, rails were laid on the ice itself, and the trains steamed straight across! (Years later other engineers linked the two railheads by driving a railway through the lake-shore mountains. But to do so they had to build 38 tunnels).

It took 12 years to build the Trans-Siberian Railway, and it was finished just in time for the Russo-Japanese War. The Russians lost that war badly. But the building of this great railway was not a waste of effort, for it helped to turn Siberia into a rich and fertile land. And great towns have sprung up along the line.