Trans Siberian Express travel guide

Following an announcement from Tsar Alexander III, Nicholas' father, work began in 1891 with the 23 year old tsar’s son symbolically dumping a wheelbarrow of earth at the beginning of the track in Vladivostok before wiping his brow and heading for a celebratory Champagne breakfast. The work would be financially overseen by ambitious transport minister, and soon to be finance minister, Sergei Witte, who raised funds through foreign loans, tax rises and good old fashioned rouble printing. Previously suggested – and ignored – rail road proposals had been aimed at increasing commerce for Siberian cities such as Tomsk and Yakutsk; however, the Trans Siberian Railway was under no such obligation and the route actually went out of its way to avoid potentially expensive clashes with land owners.

Thanks to the backing of the tsars, red tape and general rail regulations were bypassed and it was full steam ahead for an industrialist, empire building feat that would take the world by storm. Witte had the ear of the emperors and wasted no time attracting foreign investment alongside managing a rail network that would grow from 1,600km of track in 1860 to over 70,000km half a decade later. Thousands of Russian soldiers, labourers and convicts slaved away in appalling and extreme conditions, and would regularly come under attack by gangs of robbers and the occasional Siberian tiger. Due to the speed of construction and the lack of regulation, several sections of the single track weren't properly checked and used poor-quality materials as they were laid over vast steppe landscapes, rivers, marshlands and forests.

Work began simultaneously at Vladivostok in the east and Moscow's Yaroslavsky station but would come to a halt at the enormous Lake Baikal where a ferry boat was used to take passengers over the water. Chinese permission was secured to build across Manchuria from Vladivostok to the east of Lake Baikal, and the Trans-Manchurian stretch of track was completed in 1901. The construction of the Circum-Baikal line in 1904 meant that both ends of track now met up although ferry boats, the Baikal (now a museum in Irkutsk) and Angara, were still kept in readiness for a further decade, just in case of potential rock falls or derailments. The war with Japan from 1904 – 1905 increased fears for the security of the Trans-Manchurian section and brought about the building of the Amur Railway from 1907-1916 that skirted around China via the Amur region in the far east of Russia. This stretch of track, combined with the line from Moscow, completed the Trans Siberian Railway and in so doing brought millions of migrant peasants from Russia and Ukraine to live and work in Siberia.

Civil War broke out at the end of 1917 and the Trans Siberian Railway was utilised to carry troops, supplies and weapons across Russia, including tonnes of natural rubber that was transported by the Germans from Japan during WWII. After WW2 the Trans-Manchurian stretch of track came under Chinese control and to this day different gauges require passengers to alight and wait for hours on end at the Russian/Chinese border station whilst the train is lifted off the tracks for the 'changing of the bogies'.