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
East Siberian Railway no other railway in the world has as many man-made objects, namely 40 tunnels, 16 avalanche galleries, 470 overpasses, bridges, and pipe culverts, some 280 protecting walls, let alone various buildings at different railway stations. The Circum-Baikal Railway is also known as the "golden buckle of the steel belt" (the Trans-Siberian Railway being the "steel belt") because the construction of the greatest Russian railway was finished on the shores of Lake Baikal. In December 2003, the Severomuysky Tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Mainline (a section of the East Siberian Railway) was commissioned, the longest tunnel in Russia and the fifth longest