To the Edge of the World

by Christian Wolmar

  Mikhailovsky’s achievement was all the more impressive because simultaneously he was driving the other section of the railway, the 385 miles from Omsk towards the Ob. Here the problems were different, because the railway was driven through the inhospitable Barabinskaya steppe, described by Tupper as ‘a vast expanse of greenish plains dotted with shallow lakes and ponds, where coarse reeds and sedge grass concealed swamps, peat bogs and, here and there, patches of firm ground’.16

  It was much rougher work than on the plains between Chelyabinsk and Omsk: ‘The men hacked through jungles of nettles eight feet tall; chopped down groves of birch, willow and aspen; dug canals to drain marshes and divert underground springs; built dikes and sank trestle pilings into beds of slime; and brought from the rear untold tons of fill for a solid track foundation.’17 On the last day of August 1895, just three years and three months after the start of work, the line to the Ob was completed. That left only the half-mile-long bridge over the Irtysh, which was completed in March 1896, effectively extending Russia’s rail system deep into Siberia for the first time.

  Mikhailovsky had built almost 900 miles of railway through terrain for which the term ‘inhospitable’ could have been coined, using primitive methods and suffering acute labour shortages. Moreover, he managed the task below budget, an achievement for which he was thanked by the Committee for the Siberian Railway. Not surprisingly, Tupper found that Soviet railway experts he met in Leningrad ‘declared without a moment’s hesitation that the greatest civil engineer in tsarist Russia was Constantine Yakovlevich Mikhailovsky’.18

  This might be slightly unfair to the engineers in charge of other sectors of the Trans-Siberian, whose task was made more difficult because of the longer distance supplies needed to be transported. Progress was also being made on the Mid-Siberian section, though the harsher conditions meant it was slower. The difficulties posed by the taiga through which this 1,130-mile section passed were different. It was hillier territory, heavily forested, and what an early Swedish explorer described as ‘dark and impenetrable’. The shade from the trees meant that the thaw which started in late May in western Siberia was later, with the surface remaining hard until mid-July, giving precious little time for carrying out the groundwork necessary to lay the base for the tracks. Even then, in the brief summer interlude, conditions were not easy since even a little rain turned the whole forest into a muddy swamp.

  Mezheninov, the chief engineer, undoubtedly faced even greater difficulties than his counterpart further west in all aspects of railway construction. Not only was the terrain harder, but supplying this middle section posed greater problems than for any other part of the line. Until the completion of the West Siberian, all supplies had to be shipped from European Russia through the Urals and then by a circuitous river route to the construction sites. As Witte had envisaged, the Trans-Siberian project was not just a matter of building a railway, but encompassed a host of other improvement schemes for Siberia, from clearing rivers and draining land to creating new towns and erecting schools and churches. Initially, therefore, millions of roubles were spent on improving the waterways along which the materials for the line were transported, as rivers were widened, dredged and cleared of obstructions to allow the barges to pass through unimpeded. On the route of the railway, however, the vast number of streams and rivulets created further difficulties as every one had to be forded. One particular part of the steppe prone to flooding required the construction of eighty-two bridges in just forty-four miles. In total, from Chelyabinsk to Irkutsk, 635 single-span and twenty-three multi-span bridges were built. The overall length of the metal bridges was more than six miles, and while the single-span bridges were originally in wood, they were later replaced by metal ones in a clever technique devised by an engineer, Nikolai Belebubsky, to avoid having to close the railway. The longest bridge, over the Yenisei river at Krasnoyarsk, was 850 metres (2,790 feet) and won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900, while the Ob bridge at Novonikolayevsk was 640 metres (2,100 feet).

  To compound the difficulties faced by the construction gangs, everything from horses and carts to ballast and the right kind of wood was in short supply. The sad irony was that the timber that was available in such abundance from the endless taiga was largely useless as it was not strong or durable enough. Sleepers laid with local unseasoned wood lasted barely a year or two, and consequently suitable timber had to be brought in from forests as much as 300 miles away.

  Mezheninov was under added pressure, too. Witte and his committee were so impressed by Mikhailovsky’s progress that they decided to bring forward the date at which they wanted the whole line completed to 1899, albeit still with the need for water transport connections over the major rivers and Lake Baikal. Mezheninov had originally hoped to work eastwards, finishing the first section from the Ob to Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei and then to start work on the rest of the route through to Irkutsk (or, as usual, on the other side of the major river, the Angara). However, Witte’s insistence on speed meant that the Mid-Siberian needed to be completed within five years rather than seven and this forced Mezheninov to begin construction of this second section earlier than planned. Worse, he had hoped to work from both ends at the same time, but a belated inspection of the Angara, the river that flows out of Lake Baikal near Irkutsk on which he had depended for transport, ascertained that it was unnavigable, because of shallows and rapids for the barges that would be needed to carry rails and other material. His difficulties were compounded by the bankruptcy of a foundry in Irkutsk, which he had hoped would supply rails, and consequently he decided to have only one crew working eastwards from Krasnoyarsk.

  Not surprisingly, as a result of these combined difficulties, this was the section of line on the whole Trans-Siberian project on which most corners were cut. The twin pressures of lack of supply and the imperative for speed meant that everything was skimped. Mezheninov deliberately designed the railway to save money, increasing the tightness of the curves and the steepness of the gradients. Embankments were not built as wide as specified, nor as high above the ground as necessary; ballast was used far too sparingly and the weight of rails, at just under fifty lb per yard, was roughly a third less than the standard used on railways in Europe and America. All this stored up trouble for later and the early years of the Trans-Siberian were characterized by an almost constant need for repairs and a continuous programme of investment to make good the inadequacies of the initial line.

  Nevertheless, Mezheninov achieved what many disparaging railway engineers in the West would have thought impossible. He completed the Mid-Siberian Railway – from the shores of the Ob, where the town of Novonikolayevsk was beginning its rapid growth, to the Angara embankment facing Irkutsk – in just five years, amounting to more than 200 miles per year, which was particularly impressive given that the extreme conditions left so little time for track-laying. Mezheninov also, incidentally, built the branch line into Tomsk, despite the difficulties of the terrain, which resulted in the fifty-four-mile-long route taking eighteen months to complete. The cost was more than covered, to the satisfaction of the Committee for the Siberian Railway, by the savings that Mikhailovsky had made on the West Siberian.

  This first section of the Mid-Siberian – from Novonikolayevsk to Krasnoyarsk – opened in January 1898 and a year later regular services ran all the way through to Irkutsk, well ahead of the original schedule of mid-1900. Unlike Mikhailovsky who had managed to complete his section under budget, the Mid-Siberian cost far more than expected, despite all the skimping – but that was hardly surprising. Even food for the workers and forage for the horses had tripled or more in price during construction, as a result not just of increased demand but an acute local crop failure, while all other supplies were expensive due to shortages and the distance they needed to be transported. The very presence of so many labourers would inevitably push up food prices, as local suppliers cashed in. Consequently, wages had to be increased to allow the men to have enough to feed them
selves and, in reality, it was miraculous that the project was not even more over budget given all these difficulties.

  In the east, work on the Ussuri section, barely 500 miles long and running through territory that was flat and seemed to be relatively easy, progressed the slowest. It was not only the usual difficulties in finding the right type of labour, but materials too were hard to obtain given the remoteness of the region. Everything had to be shipped from Odessa on the Black Sea, a journey through the Suez Canal that took at best forty days, and often more. Moreover, Vyazemsky’s men were hampered by the variable climate. While it was to be expected that work would grind to a halt in the sub-zero temperatures of midwinter – although this area’s proximity to the sea means it is far warmer in winter than in deepest Siberia – it was the summer rains that caused the unexpected delays. The terrain may have been flat, but it was awfully wet. Constant deluges turned the worksites into huge mudfields, and pictures reveal a scene not unlike a First World War battlefield, with men and beasts covered in black muck. The Ussuri river, along which the railway ran for long periods, rose thirty-two feet at the height of the thaw, submerging and at times washing away track that had been laid, and another river, the Iman, also broke its banks with all too frequent regularity. Just to make life even more difficult, the damp conditions fostered a Siberian strain of anthrax that spread rapidly among the horses and then in an equally deadly way to the men in contact with them, while the mosquitoes which attack humans in this region are legendary for their prevalence. Vyazemsky was also hampered by the failure of many of his labour contractors to do anything other than pocket the money they were given to provide workers for the line. Vladivostok was the equivalent of an American frontier town, full of dodgy entrepreneurs and criminals, and it was difficult at times to tell them apart. In his desperation to sign up sufficient numbers of workers, Vyazemsky agreed contracts with a wide variety of these contractors, who were mostly merchants, and retired officers or civil servants, but many simply never fulfilled their side of the bargain and policing these arrangements was simply beyond the ability of a committee a continent away in St Petersburg. So in the face of these problems Vyazemsky can be forgiven to some extent for his tardiness.

  Most of this section was built by the team working northwards from Vladivostok, but again a couple of bridges – over the Iman and the Khor – were left until last, while the main construction gang progressed towards Khabarovsk. A second camp was eventually established, and its crew built the first forty miles heading south from Khabarovsk. It was not until November 1897, when the bridges were finally completed, that the line could open to regular traffic. The difficulties encountered in construction were reflected in the cost of the Ussuri, which, at 85,000 roubles per mile (£8,500) was about a quarter more than the average combined for the Western and Mid-Siberian sections. This was still very cheap. As a point of reference, early railways built in Britain cost around £30,000 per mile and in the United States on average around £15,000 (though with considerable variation).19

  The Transbaikal was the last major section of the Trans-Siberian to be started. It was envisaged that the line would run 700 miles from the eastern side of Lake Baikal at Mysovsk to Sretensk on the Shika river, via Verkhneudinsk (now called Ulan-Ude) and Chita, the capital of the Transbaikal territory. Work on the Transbaikal started in 1895 under the direction of Alexander Pushechnikov, the chief engineer, using materials delivered from the east, via rail and river from Vladivostok to Sretensk.

  This was more mountainous and rocky territory than encountered further west, and consequently the line had to follow the meandering and steep-banked Ingoda and Shika rivers. At times the cliffs hewn out over eons by the river had to be blasted with explosives, a perilous but effective process. Despite the freezing temperatures in winter, where around Chita, for example, the average daily high for the three coldest months is about -15°C, work continued throughout the winter thanks to the dry and mostly clear days. The cold meant that work was hampered by the lack of water and labourers had to melt vast quantities of ice for their own use and to keep the horses – and indeed the locomotive boilers – watered.

  Ironically, though, it was excess of water which delayed the whole project and caused untold damage. In July 1897 a series of huge downpours overstretched the whole river system and caused widespread flooding. The damage to the railway was extensive. More than 230 miles of newly laid track were affected, and in the worst incident, near Sretensk, a huge landslide swept away more than a dozen bridges and several miles of track. Again, the lack of a proper survey contributed to the extent of the damage as it would have provided an assessment of the likelihood of flooding on particular sections.

  Other mishaps included an extreme drought in the summer after the flood and an outbreak of Siberian anthrax, which killed many horses and a few men, but, worse, led many workers to flee the work camps. Two of the main contractors pulled out, claiming to have incurred huge losses. Nevertheless, Pushechnikov reached Sretensk and opened the line provisionally in January 1900 and to regular traffic that summer.

  Pushechnikov was also in charge of building the short section of line from Irkutsk down to Lake Baikal, a distance of about forty miles. Here plans were changed at a late stage. Originally, the idea had been to build a pontoon bridge across the wide Angara river, enabling trains to reach the town proper, and then run alongside the river down to Listvyanka on its western shore. However, the Angara, which is the only river that flows out of the huge lake and is half a mile wide at its source, proved fiercer and more unmanageable than expected. A pontoon bridge seemed a perilous option and therefore alternative ideas were considered. Prince Mikhail Khilkov – the minister of transport who took an active role in overseeing the project, though he mostly followed Witte’s bidding – decided that the southern bank was easier and shorter, and consequently the railway never reached the Irkutsk side of the river, a situation that pertains to this day.20 Easier it may have been, but easy it was not, as a comprehensive survey would have revealed. This short stretch of line down to Port Baikal on the lake did not in fact open for regular traffic until the summer of 1900 because of the difficulties of construction. As Tupper describes it, ‘where they had expected to build on easy slopes, they were forced to blast out precipitous rock to create a shelf for the roadbed [trackbed], and where there was earth instead of rock, retaining walls had to be piled up against the seven-feet-a-second sweep of the Angara along its banks’.21

  While originally the idea had been to build a Circum-Baikal Railway along the southern shore, this had long been rejected by the Committee. Instead, for once responding to a relatively detailed survey, the engineers realized it would be very hard to build a line in this mountainous coast and decided on a steamer service across the lake, which would be a much cheaper option. However, the lake may be the deepest in the world, but it nevertheless freezes over; consequently, in winter they envisaged laying temporary tracks on the ice for the trains, as was done to link Kronstadt, on the island of Kotlin in the Baltic, with St Petersburg twenty miles away. Khilkov managed to persuade his colleagues on the committee that a vessel with a steel hull was necessary, rather than the cheaper wooden boat they initially suggested, as it would act as an icebreaker to keep the shipping lane open as long as possible.

  Enter, therefore, the main British contribution to the construction of the Trans-Siberian, albeit still a minor one. Of the dozen shipbuilders who submitted bids, W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell & Company of Newcastle22 were successful and quickly sent over an icebreaker in kit form in no fewer than 7,000 carefully marked packages, which arrived in Listvyanka, a small resort town on the lake, in late 1896. However, due to difficulties finding sufficient local skilled labour and the discovery of numerous missing parts, it took more than three years for the team – led by a marine engineer and four foremen from the Tyne – to assemble the 4,200-ton Baikal, which began operating across the lake in the spring of 1900. Although an ungainly ship, described by Tupper as a �
��slab-sided hybrid that combined the physical features of a tubby polar icebreaker and a top-heavy excursion boat’,23 it was nevertheless an impressive sight, the biggest train ferry in the world outside the United States, and delighted locals were eager to take their marriage vows in its chapel. The Baikal could carry 800 people – separated into three classes – and she could accommodate the coaches of a whole passenger train and up to twenty-eight fully loaded freight cars.

  At Khilkov’s request, a second smaller ship, the Angara, was commissioned to operate in tandem across the lake with the Baikal, with accommodation for a mere 150 passengers and no space for rail coaches in her bowels. The ships each operated two round trips a day in fair weather, but, despite their relative comfort, crossing Lake Baikal was an unwanted delay for most passengers. The ships struggled in the storms that whip up quickly on the lake and the Angara proved to be too light to break up the ice as effectively as its sister ship. It could only proceed if the Baikal, only half-loaded and with no carriages in its hold, broke up the ice in front to create a path.