Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY. 93 tember 25, 1904, when Prince Khilkoff himself took the first train of seven cars over the western section from the Baikal station near Irkutsk to Kultuck, 57 miles away. The eastern section, from Kultuck to Missovaya, is 106 miles in length. Both sections were finished at that time, and the station build- ings were completed, though much work re- mained to be done at various points owing to the extremely varied character of the region traversed by the line. In the first sub-section of the western part the numerous valleys gave the surveying engineers a freer hand in decid- ing the route, but in the second sub-section the rocky shore of the lake had to be followed. Thus a great deal of tunnelling and blasting was inevitable, work for which the Russian labourers were not adapted by experience or training ; so the Czar’s restriction as to the employment of foreigners was waived, and large numbers of Italian workmen and navvies were engaged. Six miles from the start, after a marshy region, followed by a stretch of sand, had been passed, a rocky headland, coming down to the water’s edge, had to be cut through for a distance of 1,100 yards. From the twenty-first mile to the thirty-first the mountains recede, and the line passes along an undulating terrace, and is laid at some distance from the lake, which it rejoins at the forty-first mile. In the western section the contractors had to build thirty-three tunnels of a total length of 7,830 yards, and two hundred bridges and viaducts, with cuttings 95 Tunnelling yards deep in places—work necessitated by a succession of headlands, ravines, and inlets. To add to the difficulties, the stone was found to be un- suitable for tunnel-making, and the bore had to be lined with, masonry of great strength. On each middle stone of the tunnel arches are carved an axe and an anchor crossed, while below the coping of the entrances ono sees in big letters the words, at the western end, “ To the Great Ocean,” at the eastern, “ To the Atlantic Ocean.” The total cost of laying down the Ring Railway (up to the late summer of 1904) was £5,678,206, or £34,906 per mile. Consider- ing the vital importance to Russia of having the line laid down as speedily as possible Labour Difficulties. in view of her political designs in the Far East, it seems strange that greater care was not devoted to carrying out this part of the work. In the first place, the work was let out to contractors. Probably this departure from custom was advisable under the changed conditions, but the contracts were loosely drawn, and allowed subletting, a fruitful cause of dispute and delay. Some of the contractors showed great indifference and neglect, and their shortcomings gave rise to frequent acci- dents and loss of life, easily avoidable by the exercise of ordinary care and control. The injuries, fatal and otherwise, were out of all proportion to what they should have been under usual conditions, even taking into con- sideration the enormous quantities of rock which had to be removed by blasting—400,000 cubic fathoms for the tunnels, and 461,700 for the permanent way. The men employed were in the main a wild and lawless set, among whom the Jewish pedlars of vodka, or white rye brandy, did a roaring trade. Dynamite in such hands spelt disaster. The Russian Government, hard pressed by the Japanese in Manchuria, had to resort finally to the costly expedient of offering premiums to the con- tractors for rapid work. In laying down this line round Lake Baikal the engineers turned to account in two ways the experience gathered in building the main line from Tchelyabinsk to Irkutsk. First, they used rails weighing 72 lbs. to the yard instead of the light metals of 54 lbs. which were held sufficient for the traffic across Siberia. Second, due care was exercised in regard to curves and gradients. Thanks to the opening of the Ring