Trans-Siberian Railway

Trans-Siberian Railway, the greater part of the rail route from Moscow through the Siberian steppes to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. Its serious planning began in the 1880s, motivated partly by military ambitions, but chiefly by eagerness to colonize the then virgin but cultivable lands in the east, which would relieve rural overpopulation in European Russia, and to tap their mineral resources. The driving force in the decision to build was Tsar Alexander III. By 1890 the railway had reached some 2,000 km eastwards from Moscow to Chelyabinsk. In 1891-1892 Trans-Siberian construction started here and at the Vladivostok end of the track, which was finished throughout by the end of 1904. Confinement to Russian territory would have involved a detour through difficult terrain east of Lake Baikal. So initially, by an 1896 agreement with China, a much shorter and easier course was taken east of Chita through Dongbei, running over the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was built from 1897 to 1904 with private capital. Chelyabinsk to Vladivostok via this route was a journey of 4,045 km (2,514 mi). However, the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War hinted at the vulnerability of a route through Dongbei, and the all-Russian alternative was built between 1908 and 1914, at twice the cost per kilometre of any other Trans-Siberian section. This section forms part of the 9,297 km (5,578 mi) of today's Moscow-Vladivostok Trans-Siberian route (which runs from Moscow to Omsk via Yekaterinburg, not Chelyabinsk). The original single track was nearly strangled by traffic in the war with Japan. This led to a doubling of the track throughout almost its entire length by 1918. End-to-end electrification was completed between 1950 and 1970.

Trans-Siberian freight trains, the route's dominant traffic, are among the heaviest operated outside North America. Minerals and fresh produce are important items in the freight, the latter requiring a big fleet of refrigerated vans because of transit distances. The railway is now a competitive land route for container traffic between East Asia and central Europe or Scandinavia.

Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the International Wagons-Lits Company had a contract with the Tsar to run a palatial Trans-Siberian Express between Moscow and Harbin, Dongbei. The journey took nine days, and besides sleeping and restaurant cars, the train was equipped with a chapel, library, and music room, and two of its staff were respectively a qualified hairdresser and a nurse. In 1994 the daily passenger train running the whole Moscow-Vladivostok distance took six days.