East Siberian Railway In 1887, three expeditions were organised to explore the route for the future Trans-Siberian Railway. In May 1893, the Committee for the Construction of the Siberian Railway was created. The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was launched simultaneously from its two extremities, namely Vladivostok and Chelyabinsk. By 1895, the construction of the section of railway from Chelyabinsk to the railway station of Ob near the small settlement of Novonikolaevsky (today's Novosibirsk) was complete. On December 6, 1895 the first train arrived at Krasnoyarsk, which would become a starting point for the construction of the East Siberian Railway towards Irkutsk and
Trans-Siberian Railway nature of export: mills emerged to produce bread from grain in Altai Krai, Novosibirsk and Tomsk, and many farms switched to corn (maize) production. The railway immediately filled to capacity with local traffic, mostly wheat. From 1896 until 1913 Siberia exported on average 501,932 tonnes (30,643,000 pood) of grain and flour annually. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, military traffic to the east disrupted the flow of civil freight. The Trans-Siberian Railway brought with it millions of peasant-migrants from the Western regions of Russia and Ukraine. Between 1906 and 1914, the peak migration years, about 4 million peasants arrived in