Trans-Siberian Railway Similar to the First Transcontinental Railroad in the US, Russian engineers started construction at both ends and worked towards the centre. From Vladivostok the railway was laid north along the right bank of the Ussuri River to Khabarovsk at the Amur River, becoming the Ussuri Railway. In 1890, a bridge across the Ural River was built and the new railway entered Asia. The bridge across the Ob River was built in 1898 and the small city of Novonikolaevsk, founded in 1883, grew into the large Siberian city of Novosibirsk. In 1898 the first train reached Irkutsk and the shores of
Chinese Eastern Railway in Harbin. The railway and the concession, known as the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, were administered from the city, which grew into a major rail hub. The southern branch of the CER, which became the South Manchuria Railway in 1906, became the locus and partial casus belli for the Russo-Japanese War, the 1929 Sino-Soviet Conflict, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Soviet Union returned the Chinese Eastern Railway to the People's Republic of China in 1952. The Chinese Eastern Railway, a single-track line, provided a shortcut for the world's longest railroad, the Trans-Siberian Railway, from near the Siberian city of