- Amur Railway
The Amur Railway ( _ru. Амурская железная дорога, or Amurskaya zheleznaya doroga) is the last section of the
Trans-Siberian Railway inRussia , built in 1906-1916. The construction of this railway favored the development ofgold mining industry,logging ,fishery , andfur trade inSiberia andRussian Far East . It is over 2115km in length, stretching across theTransbaikal Region andAmur Oblast . The railway's main sections are: Kuenga-Uryum (204 km, 1907-1911); Uryum-Kerak (632 km, 1909-1913); Kerak-Deya with an offshoot toBlagoveshchensk (679 km, 1911-1915); Deya-Khabarovsk (481 km, 1915-1916). Ye.Yu.Podrutsky,Alexander Liverovsky , and V.V.Tregubov were the chief engineers, who oversaw the construction of the Amur Railway by approx. 54,000 workers (as of 1913), brought fromCentral Russia and Siberia (tsarist government specifically forbade the use of foreign workforce).Construction
In 1905, the
city duma of Blagoveshchensk, urged by local merchants and industrialists, turned to theCouncil of Ministers with a request to build the Amur section of the Transsib. The Council of Ministers approved the decision to construct the Amur Railway with the support fromPyotr Stolypin . OnApril 3 of 1908, they issued a decree "On Commencement of the Construction of the Amur Railway by the Order of and at the Expense of the State". The construction itself took place in scarcely populatedpermafrost areas under harsh climatic conditions. Construction sites were divided into western, middle, and eastern sections. In 1907-1913, they built the western section of the railway from Kuenga to Uryum. First, the engineers had to connect the Shilka and the Amur with therailroad under construction in order to be able to deliver material and workforce. They had to build a temporary road in the swampy middle section of the future Amur Railway for the purpose of delivering the foundation. Often, the whole finished parts of the road would disappear in the swamps. In 1912, a talented engineer Alexander Liverovsky was put in charge of the construction of the eastern section of the Amur Railway. For the first time in railroad construction, earth-moving works were mechanized. The workers used tenexcavator s and several machines for mortar mixing and rock grinding. Also, they built a number of repair shops and sawmills, therefore, there was no need to transportrailroad tie s and squared timber to construction sites. In 1914, the western and eastern sections of the Amur Railway came together at the Obluchyerailway station , making it possible for trains to go through.Interesting facts about the Amur Railway
The Amur Railway is known for its unique man-made structures, such as the
Khabarovsk Bridge over the Amur River (considered the longest inImperial Russia ,Soviet Union , andEurasia for decades; designed byLavr Proskuryakov ) and the first permafrosttunnel in the world with the use ofinsulation between its outer surface and the rock. At the suggestion of Alexander Liverovsky, the engineers devised a method of building piers with the use of heatedconcrete in below-zero weather conditions. They also built railway stations, railroad workshops, elementary schools, and hospitals along the Amur Railway. Before the bridge was operational, they had arranged atrain ferry in summertime and horse-drawn train platforms to cross the icebound Amur River in wintertime. In 1912, the government began issuing up to 400 rubles in allowance and necessary household articles to those workers, who had decided to settle down in this region.The Amur Railway was put under the authority of the
Ministry of Communications with its administration in Khabarovsk. In 1922, the railway was transferred under the authority of the People's Commissariat for Communications (Народный Комиссариат Путей Сообщения). In 1959, the Amur Railway and the Transbaikal section of theTranssib were merged to form theTransbaikal Railway .The construction of the Amur Railway finished before the outbreak of the
World War I and cost over 250,000 millionruble s. The eastern section of the railroad alone cost 73 million rubles. A famous Norwegian explorer and geographerFridtjof Nansen referred to the Trans-Siberian Railway as the "technical wonder". Its construction favored rapid development of formerly backward regions of Siberia and Far East.References
* [http://www.eng.rzd.ru/ Russian Railways Official Site]
* [http://rrh.agava.ru/index.htm/ History of railway construction in Russia]
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