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
Small West Siberian Railway to buffer of and a width of . The trains have the names „Skaska“ (Сказка, "Fairy tale"), „Junost“ (Юность, "Youth"), „Sibirjak“ (Сибиряк, "Sibirian") and „Metschta“ (Мечта, "Dream"). The trains run daily with the exception of Mondays during the season from 1 June to 30 September. Small West Siberian Railway The Small West Siberian Railway or Novosibirsk Children's Railway (Russian: Малая Западно-Сибирская железная дорога, "Malaya Zapadno-Sibirskaya zheleznaya doroga") is a narrow gauge miniature railway in the Russian city Novosibirsk. The first section of the railway line was opened on 4 June 2005 as one of the many children's railways in Russia.