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
East Siberian Railway in the world (). The station building at Slyudyanka railway station of the East Siberian Railway is the only railway station in the world made completely of marble. East Siberian Railway The East Siberian Railway () is a railway in Russia (a branch of the Russian Railways and a part of the Trans-Siberian Railway), which runs across Irkutsk Oblast, Chita Oblast, Buryatia, and Yakutia. The railway administration is located in Irkutsk. The East Siberian Railway borders with the Krasnoyarsk Railway (railway station of Yurty), Trans-Baikal Railway (railway station of Petrovsky Zavod), and Baikal Amur Mainline (railway station of Lena-Vostochnaya). To