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
Trans-Siberian Highway Russian President Vladimir Putin symbolically opened the Amur Highway, with great swaths of forest separating major portions from one another. Jim Oliver and Dennis O'Neil rode motorbikes across Russia, along the Trans-Siberian Highway, during the last week of May and the first three weeks of June in 2004:back then, as described in Jim Oliver's book, "Lucille and The XXX Road", the section between Chita and Khabarovsk was an extremely challenging undertaking among marsh, gravel, rock, mud (vulnerable to the rasputitsa seasons), sand, washboard, potholes, stream fording and detours of the elusive highway with a noticeable absence of pavement which leads