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 licensing of special kinds of activity» was passed on 16 September 1998. The main legislative acts are the statute «About inland water transport service in Department of Transport of Russian Federation» of 11 March 1998 and the Water Code of Russian Federation. The Eastern-Siberian Inland Navigation Company The Eastern-Siberian Inland Navigation Company (ESINC) is a company, which carries out goods and passengers by inland waterways of Irkutsk Oblast and the Buryatia Republic. ESINC is the largest shipping company in Eastern Siberia, the main transportation carrier on Lake Baikal, the Selenga, the Angara River and its tributaries. Irkutsk Oblast is rich