rian Route / Track) is a railway con-
necting Moscow with the Far East.
This is 9288 kilometres of track, the
longest railway in the world.
Construction began in 1891. The
first 12 years saw seven and a half
thousand kilometers of track laid, all
manually, without the use of com-
plicated equipment. In terms of the
pace of construction and the scope of
work, the Great Siberian Route was
unrivaled throughout the world. Con-
struction was undertaken by people
from all works of life; exiled prison-
ers, soldiers, local peasants and those
who came from the west in search of
a better life. Ninety thousand people
were involved and just 25 years after
commencement the project was com-
pleted.
An astonishing feat considering
the many geographical and environ-
mental challenges. The section be-
tween Mogocha and Skovorodino is
in a constant state of permafrost with
temperatures occasionally reaching
minus 60 degrees Celsius. August,
late summer, it has been known to
snow, thankfully when I was here
it was around 15 degrees, half that
when I was here in May.
The longest bridge on the Trans-Si-
berian river lays across the Amur.
Built between 1913 and 1916 the lo-
cals refer to it as “Amur Beauty”, and
at the time it was a thing of beauty,
the longest bridge in Russia, second
longest in the world.
The total length of the largest
bridges of TransSib (bridges over the
TRAVERSE
39
Amur; Zevsky bridge, Kama Bridge,
Yenisei bridge, Ob bridge, Irtysh
bridge) is over seven kilometres.
These are all the facts about the
railway, we were travelling by motor-
cycles, and so as for the highway, its
construction was completed quite re-
cently, literally just five years ago.
In 2012, President Vladimir Putin