Before the Trans-Baikal section was completed, Lake
Baikal posed a particular obstacle. In the winter, rails
were laid across the ice on the lake so that the trains
could continue on their journey. When the ice melted
in spring, however, the trains had to be broken into
sections and loaded onto ice breaking train ferries.
The Trans-Siberian was completed as a single track
railway line in October 1916, a matter of months before
the Russian Revolution. The Czechslovak Legion took
control of the railway and used heavily armoured trains
to support the White Russian forces, although they
would ultimately be defeated by the Bolsheviks.
The Second World War
By the 1920s, it was already apparent that the build
quality of the Trans-Siberian was inadequate; the civil
war had also taken its toll. Improvements had to be
made to make it fit for purpose, and they enabled the
Trans-Siberian to play an essential role in WWII.
For the first two years of the war, the Soviet
Union was neutral. Raw materials for the German
war effort were shipped from Japan to Europe via the
Trans-Siberian. In the other direction, thousands
of Jewish refugees escaped first to Vladivostok, and
then across the Pacific to America. When Germany
invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, causing the Soviets
to join the war on the Allied side, the railway was used
to move Soviet troops and to relocate vital factories to
the Urals, where they could continue to operate.The TR ANS-SIBERIAN Today
At 101 years old, the Trans-Siberian Railway still
plays an essential role in connecting vast swathes
of Russian territory. Huge amounts of freight travel
the line, including one-third of all Russia’s exports;
it is also the sole means of long-distance travel for
thousands of domestic passengers living inland,
far from airports.The train passes panoramas
of the lush Taiga, rivers and
the hypnotising Lake Baikal