Trans-Siberian Railway because the swampy banks of the Ob River near it were considered inappropriate for a bridge. The railway was laid to the south (instead crossing the Ob at Novonikolaevsk, later renamed Novosibirsk); just a dead-end branch line connected with Tomsk, depriving the city of the prospective transit railway traffic and trade. In March 1890, the Tsarevich (later Tsar Nicholas II) personally inaugurated the construction of the Far East segment of the Trans-Siberian Railway during his stop at Vladivostok, after visiting Japan at the end of his journey around the world. Nicholas II made notes in his diary about his anticipation
Trans-Mongolian Railway line began in 1947, reaching Ulan Bator from the north in 1950 and the Chinese border in 1955. Before that the only railways in Mongolia had been a line (opened in 1938) connecting the coal mines at Nalaikh to the capital and a Soviet-built freight-only branch (completed in 1939) from Borzya on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Bayantümen, Dornod near Choibalsan in north-eastern Mongolia. Russian Irkutsk State University of Railway Engineering opened its Ulaanbaatar branch in June 2009. The Mongolian Railway company "Mongolyn Tömör Zam" carries 80% of all freight and 30% of all passenger transport within Mongolia. In the aftermath