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
The Eastern-Siberian Inland Navigation Company 1903. In 1905 the first ships on Lake Baikal were built — ferry «Baikal» and ice-breaker «Angara» for running through of train on the Transsiberian railway. The Soviet history of the Eastern-Siberian Inland Navigation Company began since 1918, when the Decree about fleet nationalization was passed. All ships of private companies were nationalized. One of the prominent revolutionists Lukas Michailovich Vlasov led the first river transport organization in Eastern Siberia. In the 1930s the company's workers carried out the building program of fleet repairing bases. The Great Patriotic War frustrated plans for river transport development. Thousands of workers went up