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
The Eastern-Siberian Inland Navigation Company 1903. In 1905 the first ships on Lake Baikal were built — ferry «Baikal» and ice-breaker «Angara» for running through of train on the Transsiberian railway. The Soviet history of the Eastern-Siberian Inland Navigation Company began since 1918, when the Decree about fleet nationalization was passed. All ships of private companies were nationalized. One of the prominent revolutionists Lukas Michailovich Vlasov led the first river transport organization in Eastern Siberia. In the 1930s the company's workers carried out the building program of fleet repairing bases. The Great Patriotic War frustrated plans for river transport development. Thousands of workers went up