Chinese Eastern Railway Liaodong from China in 1898. Officially, traffic on the line started in November 1901, but regular passenger traffic from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok across the Trans-Siberian railway did not commence until July 1903. In 1898, construction of a 550-mile (880 km) spur line, most of which later formed the South Manchuria Railway, began at Harbin, leading southwards through Eastern Manchuria, along the Liaodong Peninsula, to the ice-free deep-water port at Lüshun, which Russia was fortifying and developing into a first-class strategic naval base and marine coaling station for its Far East Fleet and Merchant Marine. This town was known in
Trans-Aral Railway the Tashkent Soviet a degree of autonomy from Moscow during the period immediately following the Bolshevik takeover, which resulted in atrocities like the Kokand Massacre, in which between 5,000 and 14,000 people were killed. The line passes through several notable cities in Kazakhstan, including Aral, Qyzylorda, Turkistan, and Shymkent. It connects at Arys with the Turkestan-Siberia rail line toward Almaty, eastern Kazakhstan, and south Siberia. Trans-Aral Railway The broad gauge Trans-Aral Railway (also known as the Tashkent Railway) was built in 1906 connecting Orenburg and Tashkent, then both in the Russian Empire. For the first part of the 20th century