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
East Siberian Railway East Siberian Railway The East Siberian Railway () is a railway in Russia (a branch of the Russian Railways and a part of the Trans-Siberian Railway), which runs across Irkutsk Oblast, Chita Oblast, Buryatia, and Yakutia. The railway administration is located in Irkutsk. The East Siberian Railway borders with the Krasnoyarsk Railway (railway station of Yurty), Trans-Baikal Railway (railway station of Petrovsky Zavod), and Baikal Amur Mainline (railway station of Lena-Vostochnaya). To the south, the East Siberian Railway runs close to the Russo-Mongolian border (railway station of Naushki). As of 2008, the total working length of the East Siberian Railway