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
Far Eastern Railway employed at the Far Eastern Railway in 1900. During the Russian Civil War and the foreign military intervention the employees of the Far Eastern Railway had to rebuild destroyed bridges and damaged tracks and ensure stable traffic of urgent loads. Rail line restoration began in the winter of 1924-1925 from the reconstruction of the Khabarovsk Bridge due to the importance of resuming a through traffic over the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1929, they built the Nadezhdinskaya-Tavrichanka line for the needs of the Primorsky Krai (for the servicing of agricultural regions near the Khanka Lake, in particular). In 1931, they finished the