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
West Siberian taiga Siberian taiga ecoregion, which is colder and more rugged in terrain. The southern edge of the region lies north of the belt of temperate forests and forest-steppe that runs along the Trans-Siberian railway. Because the West Siberian ecoregion is thus outside of the normal agricultural and developed strip of southern Russia, it is sparsely populated, although the city of Yekaterinburg is at the extreme southwest corner of the region. The city of Surgut is the largest city in the interior (with just over 300,000 inhabitants). To the north is the tundra of the Yamal-Gydan tundra ecoregion (covering the Ob River