Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY. 89 Krasnoiarsk is destined to play a great part in the future development of Siberia, for it is connected by an excellent river service during the navigation season with Yeniseisk, to which point on the Yenisei River sea-going steamers ascend from the Arctic Ocean. A mile and a quarter beyond Krasnoiarsk the Yenisei is A WAYSIDE STATION. {From “ The Real Siberia,” by John Foster Fraser ) crossed by a six-span bridge of 3,054 feet in length. From Kansk to Taichet, a distance of 105 miles, the line runs through immense coalfields, all waiting to be worked. After Taichet come another 100 miles of the Taiga, where the scanty population clings closely to the railway. The Central Siberian section of the railway ends on the bank of the Angara River, facing Irkutsk, 2,035 miles from Tchelyabinsk. Ir- kutsk, though not yet absolutely the largest, is certainly the richest town of Siberia. A short section of 43 miles, containing a prodigious number of small wooden bridges, connects Irkutsk with the shores of Lake Baikal. , „ . , This famous sheet of water, Lake Baikal. . , was long recognized as the “ crux ” of tho engineers planning the Siberian Railway, and might have been designed ex- pressly by nature to test their ingenuity to the utmost. The largest body of fresh water in the Old World, it is only exceeded in area by the Victoria Nyanza in Africa and one or two of the great North American lakes. With its southern head deeply embayed in imprac- ticable mountains, it stretches its mighty length for 400 miles towards the Arctic circle. To turn its northern extremity was out of the question ; while to build a railway round the southern end, where the mountains in many places drop sheer into 3,000 feet of water, was a task quite beyond existing resources. That this must be the ultimate solution was, of course, obvious, but meanwhile temporary methods of overcoming the difficulty had to be devised. The line of travel from the earliest times had lain across the lake—in summer by means of the boats of the period, in winter by sledges over the ice. The lake is ice- bound as a rule from December Travelling over thC l to April, and during that part of the year the bulk of the traffic used to pass. Transit by sledge only lasts three months, as, owing to unexplained reasons, for some weeks A “ MIXED ” TRAIN ON THE MANCHURIAN RAILWAY. (From “The Real Siberia," by John Foster Fraser.) after the ice is thick enough to bear the weight there constantly appear fissures several feet wide and from half a mile to a mile or more long. When these fissures are frozen over others appear and cause considerable delay.