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
East Siberian Railway perfected the design of alternating current locomotives, overhead catenary system, means of communication, signaling, centralised traffic control and the automatic block system, all of which would later be introduced on other railways in one way or another. 97% of the traffic along the East Siberian Railway is done by means of electric traction. The East Siberian Railway consists of several sections, one of which is the Circum-Baikal Railway – a monument to industrial architecture of federal importance. It stretches for over from the Baikal railway station to the Kultuka railway station. The uniqueness of this wonder of engineering is that