THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD
BY HENRY MICHELSEN, SECRETARY NATIONAL IRRIGATION CONGRESS
[This article originally appeared in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN for 26 August 1899.
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The results of the operations of the Trans-Siberian
Railroad for the year 1898 are said to be encouraging to the Russian government.
In its present unfinished state the traffic must be strictly local. An analysis
of the government report shows that the country through which the line runs, though
at present undeveloped and subject to the rigors of the climate on a prairie sloping
to the Arctic Sea under the fifty-first degree of latitude, is still capable of
producing great crops of grain; that it has fine forest resources, that live
stock may flourish in it, and that coal has been found sufficient for the
purposes of the railway and the population which may settle on the lands contiguous
to it. Therefore, the railway may be expected, when finished, to become a factor
in the commercial business of the world, even if its through traffic is not
considered, by the opening up of the riches of the hitherto unknown continent
which it is destined to make accessible.
The length of the road with its projected extensions is so great that even
Americans, who are accustomed to deal with large distances, will have some
difficulty in comprehending the scope of this undertaking. The longest continuous
line on the North American continent is the Canadian Pacific Railway. Its main
line from Montreal to Victoria is 2,990 miles in length. The located line of the
Siberian railway, from Cheljabinsk to Vladivostock, is 4,776 miles; the branch
through the recently acquired territory of Manchuria to Port Arthur will be 1,273
miles; so that the system will commence, before any feeders are built, with 6,000
miles of track. The distance from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg will be nearly
6,700 miles. The distance from Port Arthur to the harbors of the North Sea, on
the estuaries of which the European trade with Eastern Asia is centered, is,
approximately, 6,900 miles by the nearest route.
The Siberian Railway is, like all Russian roads, of a five-foot gage. It is
constructed after the manner of American Western railways, single-tracked,
gravel-ballasted, where ballasted at all, with Howe truss bridges over the
smaller waterways, and steel bridges across the large rivers. The watershed of
the country east of the Ural Mountains is from south to north for more than
3,000 miles, which means a northern exposure entailing more severity of climate
than is known on the railways of the United States and Canada. The rivers here
are deep, full flowing streams, the alluvial bottoms of which necessitate large
spans and make it desirable to have as few bridge piers as possible. Floating
ice is in the rivers for about seven months of the year. The bridge at the Ishim
has openings amounting to 700 feet, that at the Tobal 1,400 feet, that at the
Irtish 2,100 feet; and the bridge over the Yenesei has a total length of just
under 3,000 feet. Lake Baikal is traversed by a steam ferry for a distance of
some forty miles. Forty bridges, each over 200 feet long, cross the tributaries
of the Obi River between Omsk and Irkutsk. East of Baikal the road passes into
the valley of the Amoor River, bridging waterways running from north to south.
After spanning the Amoor at Khabarovka by a steel bridge some 5,000 feet in
length, it turns abruptly to the south toward Vladivostock, running to the
east of the rivers skirting the Khenden-a-Lin Mountains. The total length of
water crossings between Cheljabinsk and Vladivostock is given at 301 miles
exclusive of the forty miles of ferry; the snow sheds and fences at 565 miles.
The western section extends from Cheljabinsk on the European frontier to
Pochitanka, 1,080 miles. It runs for 880 miles over a highland plane so level
that the distance exceeds an air line by only 2½ per cent. There are tangents
on this division of 50, 62, and 86 miles. For fully 600 miles the line traverses
an excellent agricultural country, producing all kinds of grain in abundance.
The 300 miles west of Tomsk run through a fine stock country containing many
small lakes of slightly brackish or alkaline water; 200 miles east of the main
stream of the Obi River the country is hilly, heavily timbered, and cut up by
many small streams. The central division commences at Tomsk and extends to
Irkutsk, through a barren upland, climate and soil alike forbidding settlement.
The third section crosses the Baikal Lake, and extends to Misorskaia. From this
point to the Amoor section, the road passes its summit to drop down into the
Pacific slope, running along the old Chinese frontier, touching Kiahta—the
emporium of Russo-Chinese overland trade—through a country rich in gold, silver,
copper, and iron, producing even now, with antiquated machinery, some fifteen
millions of dollars worth of gold annually. The Amoor section extends eastward
toward the Pacific, approximately 1,600 miles. This is the district from which
the greatest returns may be expected agriculturally. It is well timbered,
contains large bodies of alluvial lands and its climate is tempered by the
proximity of the Pacific Ocean. The next, the Ossoori section, extending
southward to the terminus at Vladivostock, runs through a hilly country fit
for agricultural and stock raising purposes, and rich in excellent bituminous
coal. The branch which runs through Manchuria passes through a thickly settled
farming country; it leaves the Khingan Mountains to the west and crosses the
many streams flowing into the Soongaree River, reaching the fine harbor of Port
Arthur, which, being ice free the year around, will, it is safe to say, rival
Hong Kong at no distant day. Port Arthur is destined to become the great
city of Siberia. The fertile territory tributary to the Siberian Railway
proper is equal in size to Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Denmark combined. This territory is capable, if once peopled, of sustaining
a railroad out of the local traffic it will produce. The long stretch of
1,500 miles extending from Tomsk to the head waters of the Amoor is perhaps
the only distance on the line of the road which a Western railway man would
consider difficult to handle successfully as regards revenue. But this upland
country has not been explored, and there is a possibility of its becoming a
mining country of great importance.
The transportation problem of the Trans-Siberian Railway is a
peculiar one. The products which it may expect to carry are what
Americans wou1d call low-grade freight—grain, ore, live stock, and
timber. To transport these articles from the interior of Asia to the
markets of the world must entail too long a railroad haul. It may be
pointed out that California wheat is carried from San Francisco to
Liverpool via Cape Horn, not all rail by way of New York. In general
it may be held that agricultural staples cannot stand a railroad haul
of over 2,500 miles. The greater part of the import and export trade
of East-em Asia is in the hands of the western European nations, taking
its way through the Suez Canal. The schedule time of the North German
Lloyd’s steamers between Bremen and Shanghai is 46 days. Its tariff
rates are less than $6 per ton or cubic meter of room to Shanghai or Port
Arthur, $6.25 to $8.75 to Yokohama and Hiogo, and $8.75 to $l1.87½ to
Nagasaki. Between London, Liverpool, and other English harbors and Asiatic
points, the freights are a little less than is charged to and from German
ports. This means, practically, that in the competition for through freights,
the Trans-Siberian Railway may not cope with the steamship lines to Europe,
either in rates or time. For, assuming the adoption of the European
classification, with its tariffs running from 0.47 to 2.35 cents per 1,000
kilogrammes per kilometer, we have a rate per ton of the lowest grade of
freight for 7,000 miles of over $200, which is prohibitory. As to the time,
we must consider the necessity of a transfer from the Russian five-foot
gage cars to the standard gage cars at the European frontier, and also
the physical condition of Russian railways in general. Railroad men will
concede that on crowded, single-track Asiatic railways a freight train
will do well if it makes 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, a day, for many
consecutive days, taking into consideration the liability to accidents,
delays by reason of accumulated traffic from opposite directions, and
the uncertainties incident to an Arctic climate. At any rate, this is
the standard adopted by other Russian roads, of which Mr. Poultney Bigelow
says that “an express train means a train that does not carry cattle
and occasionally attains a speed of 25 miles an hour,” and where the
adaptability of the inferior administrative officials to the requirements
of modern railway service has not, as yet, been demonstrated. The time,
therefore, between Vladivostock and Hamburg, under present conditions,
will be about the same either by rail or steamer, with the advantage of
uninterrupted passage and fragmentary rates in favor of the latter. For
east bound freights from the interior of Asia to the United States or
Canada there will be but little demand. Siberia, Canada. and the States
of the Union raise products of the same kind, making an interchange
unlikely to occur. We are therefore bound to assume that if the Siberian
Railway is to earn its expenses at all, it must rely upon its local
traffic almost exclusively. This can only be made possible by the
introduction and establishment of a new population, both agricultural
and manufacturing, originating beyond the old limits of the empire into
the territory traversed by the road. Now this population is close at hand.
It does not have to cross broad seas, as did the immigrants that built up
the United States. The time is big with events in the Far East. The close
of the century witnesses the breaking up of the greatest of old world
industrial nations, the empire of China, and Russia will fall heir to
whatever it may choose to take, both as to Chinese population and territory.
So far from imitating American anti-Chinese legislation, Russia favors the
immigration of its newly acquired subjects into the Siberian provinces.
The “spheres of interest” in China, at present, stand thus:
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