TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY 



5861 



TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY 



4 miles an hour 

 7 miles an hour 

 12 miles an hour 



50 miles an hour 



160 miles an hour 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 



these have drawn the nations of the earth so 

 near to each other that the most distant nations 

 are neighbors. 



Consult Dunbar's History of Travel in America; 

 Talbot's Steamship Conquest of the World. 



Related Subjects. In connection with this 

 general discussion of transportation, the follow- 

 ing articles in these volumes may be consulted : 



Automobile 

 Bicycle 

 Boat 



Cape-to-Cairo Railway 

 Caravan 

 Carriage 

 Common Carrier 

 Dixie Highway 

 Ferry 



Flying Machine 

 Highway 

 Jinrikisha 

 Lincoln Highway 

 Locomotive 

 Monorail, Suspended 

 Motor Boat 

 Motorcycle 

 Ocean, subtitle Ocean 

 Routes 



Palanquin 

 Pavement 

 Pneumatic Tubes 

 Pontoon 

 Railroad 



Railroads, Transconti- 

 nental 



Roads and Streets 

 Sailboat and Sailing 

 Ship 

 Sledge 

 Submarine 

 Subway 

 Taxicab 



Trans-Siberian Railway 

 Wagon 

 Warship 



Much interesting information will also be found 

 under the subhead Transportation in the articles 

 on the various states and provinces. The illus- 

 tration on page 41)19 graphically shows the de- 

 velopment of the locomotive. 



TRANS-SIBERIAN, sibe'rian, RAILWAY, 

 THE, one of the longest railroads in the world, 

 a system connecting the cities of Petrograd and 

 Moscow and the railroads of Europe with 

 Vladivostok, the Siberian port on the Sea of 

 Japan. Bisecting the plains of Siberia and Man- 

 churia, it crosses 111 degrees of longitude and 

 extends over one-sixth of the distance around 

 the globe. The distance from Cheliabinsk, on 

 the European frontier, to Vladivostok is 4,500 

 miles, and from Petrograd to Vladivostok, 5,481 

 miles. This railway furnishes the shortest and 

 cheapest route between Europe and Eastern 



Asia. The journey from Vladivostok to Petro- 

 grad on this road can be made in a little over 

 two weeks; by way of the Suez Canal and the 

 Indian Ocean the journey from Petrograd to 

 Peking requires forty-five days, and it takes 

 thirty-five days to go by way of New York, 

 San Francisco and the Pacific. 



The building of the railroad marked the 

 dawn of a new era in the development of Si- 

 beria. Local industries and foreign trade have 

 been stimulated in the rich coal fields of the 

 eastern section, and in the great live stock and 

 agricultural regions of the central and western 

 plains. Just before the War of the Nations, the 

 railway was carrying 700,000 pioneers into Si- 

 beria each year, and in 1910 it transported 

 7,508,675 tons of freight and 1,869,183 passen- 

 gers. 



The construction of a transcontinental rail- 

 way joining the cities of European Russia and 

 the Asiatic ports was first planned in 1850, but 

 owing to the vastness of the project and its 

 great expense, the government delayed its con- 

 struction. In 1891 M. Witte, the Russian Min- 

 ister of Finance, succeeded in obtaining the 

 imperial approval of the road, and work was 

 immediately begun. The construction pro- 

 gressed with unparalleled rapidity; the strictly 

 Siberian section, covering 3,300 miles, was com- 

 pleted by 1898, the rate of construction averag- 

 ing two miles a working day. The cost of the 

 entire road was more than $500,000,000, an 

 amount far exceeding that spent on any other 

 public work except the Panama Canal. 



From Cheliabinsk the line extends across the 

 western and central plains in a general easterly 

 direction past the great city of Omsk, to Kras- 

 noyarsk, where it bends to the southeast. Be- 

 yond Irkutsk it winds east and south around 

 the southern end of Lake Baikal; bending 

 northeast, it then pierces the lofty mountains, 



