Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

92 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. this section is 1,200 miles, 890 of which lie in Chinese territory. Construction was begun forthwith from both ends, and pressed forward with a haste that became more and more feverish as the political situation grew more critical. Thousands of Chinese, Manchus, and Koreans, the last-named wearing their white clothes and using curious little shovels and very small baskets to move the earth, were employed under Russian overseers. Taught by experience, the engineers laid down a temporary contractors’ line and a well-built permanent way alongside it. This line constituted the original conces- sion ; but meanwhile the Russian Govern- ment, assuming for the nonce the transparent alias of “ The Russo-Chinese Bank,” had ob- tained powers to run a branch southwards from Harbin to Dalny and Port Arthur, and pushed it forward with all possible speed. These lines, which, figured so largely in the Russo-Japanese War, run for the most part through very desolate regions, including a portion of the Gobi Desert, and were most jealously watched and protected by the con- structing power. Chinese and Manchus were not allowed to live within twenty miles on either side of the track. A large force of mounted Cossacks was quartered in squat, whitewashed “ posts ” all along the railway. Beside every “ post ” rose a high wooden tower, from the top of which a lookout could be kept for bands of Chun-huses, or marauding Man- chus, the pest of the country. The northern line is still in Russian hands, and remains the direct route to Vladivostok. The branch from Harbin southwards has passed into other keeping. It will be remem- bered that the heavy fighting of the Japanese war developed upon its lower stretches, and how, during the siege of Port Arthur, the Russian forces were steadily pushed back- wards from Liao-Yang and from Mukden, and at the conclusion of peace were lying entrenched in defence of Harbin, the capture of which junction would have entailed the fall of Vladivostok. The Ussuri Railway, begun in 1891, was at first hurriedly, and therefore badly, laid down. As construc- tion proceeded the importance of the line waned, and the A WATER TOWER ON THE SIBERIAN RAILWAY. (From '‘The Real Siberia," by John Foster Fraser.) first through train from Khabarovsk to Vladi- vostok—a distance of 483 miles—did not run until September 1897. The line has no outstanding features The Ussuri of interest. Laid along the ^ailwaY- narrow valley of the Ussuri River, it taxed the engineers only in the making of large iron bridges, notably those across the Kia, Khor, and Bikin. Here, as in We^t and Central Siberia, an excellent system of water-carriage was an auxiliary of inestimable value, for it allowed work to be carried on in several separate sections at the same time, and also relieved the through track of the conveyance of much railway material. Despite the expenditure of energy and money lavished in driving through the Far Eastern lines against time, the Russians never lost sight of the supreme impor- tance of proceeding with the Railway. construction of the Baikal Ring Railway. The tremendous difficulties con- fronting the engineers on this part of the route have already been alluded to. A start was made in 1899 on both shores of the lake, but the two sections were not joined until Sop-