Trans-Siberian Railway

“ Siberia will act in its own defence as did Australia, and refuse to be forever the dumping ground for criminals. The prosperous development of that vast and richly endowed territory has been too long delayed and already a change is imminent. Enterprise has been stimulated by 270the construction of the great Trans-Siberian railway. As Siberia grows in wealth and importance it will surely resent and repudiate the exile system, whether enforced by the improved methods of railway travelling or facilitated by sea communications. ”

“ The air in Chita was very rare, as that city has an elevation of nearly five thousand feet above sea level, and is just below the High Plain of Vitim. The climate is invigorating.
Transportation is the great problem of Siberia. I have heard it said by Colonel Emerson, general manager of the Great Northern Railway, that the Trans-Siberian Railway loses money on freight charges of five cents per ton mile. Our American railways operated before the war at good profits with freight charges computed in mills per ton mile. ”

“ Therefore the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway, combined with the passage of navigation through the Arctic Sea, will necessarily benefit Asiatic Russia very considerably, and help that country to obtain freer communication with the rest of the world, and thereby enable it eventually to become completely modernized. ”

“ From the purely commercial side of the question, however, there can be no doubt that a very long time may elapse before the Trans-Siberian Railway can compete with the sea route in transporting heavy merchandise to and from the Far East, and the great commercial centres of Europe and Asia. ”

“ Irkutsk, which in former times was the capital, is now only a large provincial city. The grand old Siberian hospitality is disappearing rapidly, and there are not wanting, even in Siberia, old-fashioned people who curse the Trans-Siberian Railway, which is destined sooner or later to revolutionize the manners and customs of Northern Asia. ”

“ It would be shortsighted to minimize the importance of the present drift of population to Eastern Siberia, which is likely to assume immense proportions on the opening of the railway, or the commercial value of that colossal undertaking, which is greatly enhanced by the treaty under which Russia has taken powers to run the Trans-Siberian line through Chinese Manchuria. The creation of a new route which will bring the Far East within 6,000 miles and 16 days of London, and cheapen the cost of the transit of passengers very considerably, cannot be overlooked either. ”

“ Such overland route, also, passing through foreign countries, would be especially liable to attack and interruption. Where, however, the overland route goes entirely through national territory (as in the case of the Trans-Siberian Railway) , and when the questions of time and safety, in regard to an alternative sea route, suggest possible disadvantages, railways will be preferred to ships in spite of the said inferiority.
Railways are inferior to roads in so far as, like rivers and canals, they are on fixed spots. ”

“ General Kurapatkine, while governor of Transcaspia, had detailed surveys made for a line between Merv and Orenburg. A strong faction advocates one which would commence at Tashkent and run by way of Chimkent, Turkestān, Turgai, Nicholaievsk, and Troitzk to Chelyabinsk, the starting-point of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Another party urges the superior advantages of a route viâ Turkestān, Albasar, Kokchetav, and Petropavlovsk to Ishim. ”

“ When the Trans-Siberian was first built, the desire to avoid undue expenditure on a line which must necessarily involve a huge expenditure, with little or no prospect of yielding a return sufficient for the payment of interest thereon, led to the adoption of an economy which was to hamper very materially the transport capacity of the railway. ”

“ The building of this railroad was a gigantic undertaking and its construction cost the Russian Government four hundred million dollars. With all our boasted American hustle it took twenty years to build the Canadian Pacific railway from coast to coast. The Trans-Siberian is more than [Pg 44] twice as long and was completed in half that length of time. Before the war there was hardly ever an accident on this railway. Every verst (about two-thirds of a mile) there is a little guardhouse and there was always a man or woman, generally a woman, standing with a flag as the train passed. ”

“ The Trans-Siberian system linked Moscow and Petrograd with Vladivostok and Pekin; the Trans-Caspian and Trans-Persian railways stretched almost to the mountain barrier of northern India; the Trans-Caucasian lines provided the link between the Caspian and Black Seas.
The heart of the central route of Eastern trade in the fifteenth century was the Mesopotamian Valley. ”

“ Some account of the great Siberian railroad, the prisons and the exile system.
William Blackwood and sons, Edinburgh and London, 1898. xvi, 383 pp. Plates. Folded map. 8o.
Stahl, A. F. Entlang der sibirischen Bahn.
(In Geographische Zeitschrift, vol. 8, pp. 81-92. Leipzig, 1902. 8o.)
United States. Bureau of statistics. The Russian empire and the Trans-Siberian railway.
(In its Monthly summary of commerce and finance, n. s., vol. 6, April, 1899, pp. 2501-2599. Folded map. Washington, 1899. 4o.)
[Pg 19]
Vladimir, [pseud] . Russia on the Pacific, and the Siberian railway. ”

“ This great advantage possessed by the Siberian Railway will cause an important revolution in the communications between Europe and the Far East. Firstly, the mails, for which speed is so essential, will be sent by this railway, and secondly, the greater part of the passenger traffic will come to it. It is true, that some apprehension is felt about the fatiguing effect of a long railway journey on the passengers, but in the special Siberian trains everything is done that can conduce to comfort and amusement. There are a library, bath rooms, and even cars fitted up for gymnastics. ”

“ Therefore, from the moment when the railway is completed, Russia’s principal task in the Far East will be, not the encouragement of political and territorial aggrandizement, but a ceaseless effort to promote peace and tranquillity, those main factors which will enable the Siberian Railway to play its economical part as the vital artery of Siberia and all the Old World. ”

“ They are designed to colonize this newly-acquired country, and settle Slavs [55] among the native Mongolian and Tartar tribes. And besides—and I think before and above all—there are the strategical interests to be considered. Undoubtedly the Siberian Railway is a military one, and with all its junctions and crossings seems to have been planned with the view to forwarding troops and ammunition speedily. And even the often-discussed puzzle—why does the Siberian Railway so very frequently avoid entering the most important townships?—might be partly explained from a military standpoint. ”

“ By the middle of June, 1918, they (p. 446) were in control of the southern section of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, from Samara to Chelyabinsk, the northern branch from Chelyabinsk to Ekaterinburg, and the main line on the east of Novonikolaiefsk. ”

“ It will open up the forests, the arable country land, the cattle-breeding districts, and, above all, the mineral deposits. Here is a fine coming opportunity for the capitalists of the world.
The Siberian railway starts at Cheliabinsk, just across the Ural Mountains, which it reaches through Samara on the Volga from the European side, coming over the boundary hills through Ufa, Miass and Zlatoust. Shortly after leaving the latter town, which is the centre of the Uralian iron industry, the train passes that pathetic "Monument of Tears," which marks the boundary between Europe and Asia. ”

“ In the same way, immigrants from Russia have been lured to Russian boarding houses in this country, stripped of their little cash and few belongings, and turned adrift. They blame the United States, when it was their own countrymen who robbed them. Their ignorance was being exploited.
We at home hear that the Trans-Siberian Railroad [274] is running. So are our transcontinental lines. A railroad is a railroad, to us. In Siberia, however, it took me ten days to go by rail a distance that would take ten hours at home. There I traveled in what we would consider a fairly good cattle-car ”

“ The length of railway necessary to connect the traffic of the various distant parts would be enormous, and as these matters are managed in Russia, would probably cost three times the amount that would be required in any other country. There is no capital in Russia available for such a purpose, and foreign capital will find many more attractive investments than Siberian railways. ”

“ It is like a primitive travelling hotel, and our men go to the car to have their meals dealt out by the cooks. And on the trans-Siberian line, the road-bed was so rough, and the cars so light and the wheels so flattened by bad usage, it was frequently impossible to boil water over our stoves while under way. This necessitated stops en route to prepare meals and serve them, and once a train has lost its right of way by stopping in a siding, it may mean hours before the line ahead is clear of regular traffic, so that the troop-train may go on. ”

“ The Caucasus section is just opposite. In a large separate building a panorama represents the new Siberian railway-line. The Sleeping-car Company has exposed the model of a Transcaspian train, composed of an engine and three cars belonging to the International Company, in which one experiences the illusion of a journey through Siberia. The guard whistles, the train seems to move, but in reality it is only the panorama on the walls which is put into motion by a special mechanism. The travellers perceive through the windows the whole way leading from Moscow right to the terminus station—Pekin. ”

“ The Manchurian railway will have at its own disposal steamers running between the termini of the Siberian Railway and the chief ports in the Far East, which will also tend to attract passengers and goods to the Siberian line. ”

“ When the railway comes, more people will come with it, more colonists, more traders, and they will take away the products which the farmers would gladly sell. We are accustomed to think of railways spoiling districts, but Russian Central Asia, with its empty leagues of sand and barrenness, will only profit by the railway. The railway must go east from Tashkent all the way to Verney, and probably as far as Kuldja, in China, then northward, through Iliisk and Sergiopol, to Semipalatinsk, through Siberian farms and settlements, forests and marshes, to the Siberian main line at Omsk. ”

“ About nine o'clock he saw in the gloaming a little settlement ahead, and beyond it the hexagonal water-tower and timbered store-house of the typical Siberian railway-station, but on a small scale. The path he was following led direct to the hamlet, and the sight of several small knots of people at that hour of the evening showed that a train would shortly be passing; the peasants have not yet lost their curiosity about the iron horse. He thought it well to avoid observation by leaving the track—road it could not be called—and striking across a bean-field. ”

“ While the wretched troops amid all the rigors of the Manchurian winter were in need of such ordinary necessities as proper clothing, fuel, and even food, vast accumulations of stores, more than sufficient to supply all their needs, were lying rotting on the sidings of the Siberian Railway, immovable because of the congestion of traffic on the already overburdened line. ”

“ The events which finally brought Russia and Japan into collision arose out of the obvious need for the construction of a railway from St. Petersburg to the Pacific having its terminus on an ice-free port. Only so could Russia develop the resources of Siberia and the Amur Province. In the sixties and seventies trans-continental railways were being planned and successfully laid in North America. But there is this difference: in the New World the iron horse has been the friend of peace; in the Far East of Asia it has hurried on the advent of war ”

“ Our service to Russia, as will doubtless be realised in the future was enormous, not only by our enabling the inhabitants of Siberia to continue their peaceful pursuits whilst the war still waged with fury and to go on producing and cultivating their vast fields, but also by preserving intact the great Siberian railway line and much of its material. ”

“ But though Russian accommodation is inferior in this respect, it has one great excellence: the trains run smoothly over the lines. One can make the whole trans-Siberian journey from Warsaw to Shanghai and be as fit at the end as when one started. The movement of the train is so pleasantly soothing that one slips easily into slumber. Indeed, if one wakes in the night and finds the train stopping in a station, one waits and longs for the train to move again ”