- Turkestan–Siberia Railway
The Turkestan–Siberian Railway (commonly abbreviated as the "Turk–Sib", Russian: Турксиб) is a
railway connectingCentral Asia withSiberia . It starts north ofTashkent inUzbekistan at Arys, where it branches off from theTrans-Caspian Railway . From there it heads roughly northeast throughShymkent ,Taraz ,Bishkek (on a spur) to the former Kazakh capital ofAlmaty . There it turns northward toSemey before crossing theRussia n border. It passes throughBarnaul before ending atNovosibirsk , where it meets theTrans-Siberian railway . The bulk of construction works was undertaken between 1926 and 1931.Construction history
The idea of a railway between Siberia and
Russian Turkestan was aired as early as 1886, but it was supplanted by that of a more practicable line betweenTashkent andOrenburg in theUrals . It was not until 15 October, 1896 that the Verny townduma set up a commission to examine the feasibility of building the Turkestan-Siberia Railway. It was expected that the line would facilitate transportation ofcotton from Turkestan to Siberia and cheap Siberian grain from Russia to theFergana Valley . An eastern branch of the line would enhance Russia's military and economic presence on the Chinese border.In 1906, the Russian imperial government decided to finance construction of the first section between
Barnaul and Arys. A team of Russian engineers made a detailed survey of the steppe and semi-desert regions the railway was expected to cross. On21 October 1915 the northern section linkingNovosibirsk andSemipalatinsk opened under the name of theAltai Railway . The missing section Arys–Pishpek–Tokmak , officially known asSemipalatinsk Railway, was left to be built by the French financed, but Russian managed, private railway consortium. TheGreat War put an end of this project.After the
Bolshevik Revolution , construction works were suspended for a decade. Furthermore, the 140-kilometre long Semipalatinsk–Ayaguz line, built in 1918-19 by theWhite Russians on the initiative ofAdmiral Kolchak , was demolished for no apparent reason. The remaining 1442 kilometers of railway were constructed with great fanfare as part of theFirst Five-Year Plan . Much of the railway was built withgulag prison labour, including ethnically Finnish and Estonian population deported byStalin 's order fromIngria .Regular passenger service was finally established between Semipalatinsk and Ayaguz on 10 May 1929. The Turksib was completed on 21 April 1930. The first locomotive that ran from Tashkent to Semipalatinsk is installed as a memorial in
Almaty .Connectivity
Years after the original Turksib line was completed, it was joined at Shu by Kazakhstan's main north-south line, which serves
Karaganda ,Astana andPetropavlovsk (which is on one of the mainTranssib routes).In 1990, Turksib's
Aktogay (Актогай) station, located roughly midway between Almaty and Semey, became an important junction as well. The rail lines from there run east, connecting atDostyk withChina 'sLanxin railway Line (towardUrumqi ,Lanzhou , and the heartland China), and west, toBalkhash and Karaganda.References
* [http://turksib.com/indexe.php Mysterious Turksib]
* Vitali A. Rakov. "Russian Locomotives", 2nd ed. Moscow, 1995.
* Inkerin suomalaiset GPU:n kourissa. Helsinki 1942. Inkerin karkoitettujen kirjeitä. Helsinki 1943.
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