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
Trans-Mongolian Railway line began in 1947, reaching Ulan Bator from the north in 1950 and the Chinese border in 1955. Before that the only railways in Mongolia had been a line (opened in 1938) connecting the coal mines at Nalaikh to the capital and a Soviet-built freight-only branch (completed in 1939) from Borzya on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Bayantümen, Dornod near Choibalsan in north-eastern Mongolia. Russian Irkutsk State University of Railway Engineering opened its Ulaanbaatar branch in June 2009. The Mongolian Railway company "Mongolyn Tömör Zam" carries 80% of all freight and 30% of all passenger transport within Mongolia. In the aftermath