The ancient Ural mountains are braided with the network of railways that follow the landscape: climb the mountains, run down the canyons, and skirt the cliffs. The main railroad at the Urals is the Sverdlovsk route, a part of Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting the European and Asian parts of Russia. The railway fleet of cars is the third largest in Russia. Every day about 130 passenger trains run along those rails. Construction of railways has always been ahead of roads building at the Urals. Gornozavodskaya railway connecting metallurgical plants was one of the first constructed in the 19th century. Even nowadays there are places at the Urals reachable by railway only. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Wrinkled mountains are reflected by the waters of Chusovaya river, the main river of the Middle Urals. “Iron caravans” – wooden barges loaded with metal, - used to run to Europe down the river. For several centuries, the Urals has been a key industry region of Russia. In the 20th century, modern integrated plants replaced factories of Stroganovs and Demidovs. However, the Urals stretching from north to south for more than 2 thousand kilometers is not just an industry center. It is not just a country rich with minerals and talented craftsmen. It is also a symbolical boundary between the Europe and Asia. And the boundary, according to the words of the famous Russian geographer Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky “serves not as a separator between the two continents but as a junction for an inextricable connection between them. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The continuous motion of heavy trains through wild forests and mountains to the modern industrial metropolices creates a unique image of the Urals: the vigour and beauty of the nature cohere with the fruits of centuries of human labor. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Photo shooting of trains can be a kind of “photo safari”: the trains hidden in the torrents of rain appear in the viewfinder, just like wild animals, and suddenly vanish in the oncoming twilight. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Merging with the landscape, the train reflects in the water and runs through old Ural villages that seem to be created at the same time as the old mountains. Here, the railroad facilities seem to be a natural extension of the mountain terrain, part of the landscape that surrounds the traveler. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The citizens hurry along the reconstructed embankment at the center of Yekateriburg. This town is an unrivaled capital of the Urals and a unique exposition of architecture styles: Constructivism goes along with Baroque and Classicism of the 19th century. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Chussovaya, the main river of the Middle Urals, has channeled its way through rocks creating a 350-kilometer canyon through the mountains. The legendary river that had carried “iron caravans” (barges loaded with metal) for centuries, till the Gornozavodskaya railway was constructed, stores the signs of ages of domination and competition of two famous metallurgical families: Stroganovs and Demidovs. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The Chusovaya river is famous for its “fighters” (“boytsy”) – frowning cliffs cutting into the river flow. The “boytsy” were the main challenge for boats going down the river. More than 100 barges, one fifth of the “iron caravans”, had been broken every year at the violent and riffly river. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
A continuous line of freight cars runs along the main electrified route of Sverdlovsk railway. And only the Utkinsky Zavod, Bilimbay, Sulyom and Ilim stations along the middle flow of Chusovaya recall the names of the former plants and remind about the Urals industrial history. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The train comes down along the Sylva river from Yekaterinburg to Perm. In 1909, this section of the railway was straightened: the shorter railroad through Kungur, the largest copper plant at the Urals, was constructed between Perm and Yekaterinburg. From the beginning of the 20th century, the main route of the Trans Siberian Railway has been moved northward. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Siberia with its overall territory of 10 million square kilometers (more than the Canada territory) is supposed to be unfathomable taiga land. However, Siberia is a bundle of landscapes: plains and marshes of the West-Siberian Lowland, mountain ranges of Sayans, Altai and Kuznetsk Alatau, lowland and mountain taiga of Krasnoyarsk Krai and Eastern Siberia, steppes of Khakasiya and Southern Siberia that used to host Irtysh line of Cossack outposts protecting the country from the nomadic Kirghiz tribes. The line used to be an ancient boundary of the Russian Empire. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
A freight train rushes through Khakasiya steppes along the southern part of the Krasnoyarsk railway, from Abakan to Abaza. Actually, the Trans Siberian Railway connecting the central Russia with the great space beyond the Urals runs right along the Siberian south, through the steppes and along the taiga boundary. Constructors of the longest worldwide railway while threading their way through mountains conquered abundant rivers of Ishim, Irtysh, Ob, and Yenisei. As a result, the Siberian part of the railway is full of unique engineering solutions: the longest bridges (across Yenisei, Ob and Irtysh), the largest railway stations (in Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Omsk), one of the steepest road descends to the west from Krasnoyarsk. The highest-speed leg of the route runs between Ob and Irtysh. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Leaving Omsk and heading for Novosibirsk along Trans-Siberian Railway, the train crosses Barabinskaya steppe characterized by Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky as a country “rich with lakes and almost free from streaming waters”. Here, in the southern part of the western Siberia, taiga turns into forest steppe. Birch woods (called “kolki” by the locals), meadows and fields are interchanging, while the train heads eastward. At the early spring, the sky seems to overturn into the great expanse of melt water, in which patches of soggy soil rarely arise. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The fact that Novosibirsk owes its foundation to the famous writer and engineer Nikolay Garin-Mikhailovsky is not well-known. The scientist conducted surveys for the West-Siberian Railway construction and assigned the place for the bridge across Ob river near Krivoschyokino settlement. The settlement proved to be the key point of the Trans-Siberian Railway to become the town of Novonikolayevsk and later — Novosibirsk. The ancient shape of the bridge, one of the first great constructions of the Transsib, is nowadays stored as a museum showpiece. The station Inskaya near Novosibirsk is also a unique railway construction. It looks like a great insect with numerous railway-legs with trains on them: here is the largest point of train arrangement. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
An evening commuter train crosses Yenisei river approaching the railway station of Krasnoyarsk, the oldest town to the east of the Urals. Unlike Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk has seen lots of events that stimulated its development: layout of the Siberian route in the 18th century, the “gold rush” at Yenisei in the middle of the 19th century and construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway including the bridge across the great Siberian river. The contemporary Krasnoyarsk is a beautiful town featuring eye-catching pieces of Soviet architecture. Ski slopes located within the city accentuate the dynamical sportive air of the modern metropolis. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Baikal is the symbol of a long journey across Russia and one of its most recognizable brands, signifying Russia’s virgin nature. Cubic kilometers of potable water – 20% of worldwide fresh water supply, - and hundreds of kilometers of intact coast line. Any cliff, bay or tree could have become a site of interest, a pilgrimage destination in any other place of the world. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
“Baikal issue” had become a uniquely difficult problem for constructors of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It had taken decades and a lot of power to build railway along Baikal. As a result, Baikal was won by the constructors to become a worldwide attraction for railway travelers. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Blue shadows are about to climb down the Barguzin Range darkening the Barguzin hollow. One of the most beautiful places to the East of the Baikal shore, the hollow goes along the range from the South-West to the North-East for about 400 kilometers and meets Stanovoye plateau with the head of the Barguzin river. Besides the river, lakes, salt marshes, thermal springs and Neolithic age petroglyphs, the Barguzin hollow has preserved the traditional lifestyle of ancient Russian and Buryat settlements. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Near Suvo settlement, low setting sun traces long shadows from buttes resembling ruins of great Bavarian castles. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Beams of setting sun follow a train going from Ulan-Ude to the Naushki frontier station and further to Mongolia. Transbaikal steppes, where the Trans-Siberian Railway branch is laid, is a northern outpost of the great Mongolian and Manchukuo steppes. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Leaving the Baikal shore and heading for Ulan-Ude, the Buryat capital, the Trans-Siberian Railway passes the estuary of the Selenga river. These places are keeping the traditional lifestyle of fishermen settlements. The estuary is a natural object of global significance, a wildlife reserve of waterfowl and semi-aquatic birds resting here on spring and autumn migrations, molting and nesting. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
38 tunnels, 15 rock galleries, 3 ferroconcrete passages, 47 viaducts, bridges and pipes, 280 revetments. Consumption of explosive on construction was 1 carload per kilometer, earthwork equal to those on Suez Canal construction, building rate about 40-50 centimeters per day… It is a numeric picture of the “golden buckle on the Russia steel belt” – the Circum-Baikal Railway, probably the most complicated and picturesque railway in the world. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Raising columns of smoke above the near Baikal hills, a locomotive hauls a train along a picturesque arch bridge. The Circum-Baikal Railway, that had once connected parts of the Trans-Siberian Railway, has later lost its strategic importance to become a historical and architectural monument, an exhibition of engineering pieces of art that agree well with the surrounding landscape. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Trans-Baikal Railway. Transsib. Shilka river. View from a train window. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
A freight train goes eastward by the Trans-Siberian Railway surrounded by typical Trans-Baikal landscape: steppe landscape, high cliff, some snow and severe frost. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
During any railway construction, the moment comes when the further road merges into the natural landscape. Probably, railway is the only industrial fruit that agrees with the surrounding nature. Sometimes Trans-Siberian Railway seems to originate together with the great Siberian landscape. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Trans-Baikal railway, Transsib. Evening mood. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Old Believers, called “family ones” (“semeiskiye”) by the locals, live in Chita oblast, near the route of the Trans-Baikal Railway. They are called so because their whole families moved here. The women standing near the gates at the sunset are not participants of a folk ensemble, but the village inhabitants in their holiday clothes. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The “Rossiya” train arrives in Vladivostok – the terminal point of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the final destination of the 9,288-kilometer-long trip throughout the country. It is symbolic that the “younger brother” of Moscow’s Yaroslavsky Railway Station, designed by architect Fyodor Schechtel, is located next to the city’s Marine passenger terminal. Behind it, you can see grey steel navy ships frozen in the Golden Horn Bay. The military post on the bank of the bay, that is sheltered from all the winds, was established in 1860 by the crew of the Russian ship Manchoo. For more than a century since then, Vladivostok has been a personification of the power and inviolability of the Russian borders on the Pacific. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The landscape behind the window of the “Russia” train running from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk looks more like ancient Chinese prints or images on silk. The picturesque Asian trees and mountain silhouettes are perceptible through a blanket of fog. It seems that men in conical hats are about to come to the imaginary rice fields... And it is no wonder: right behind the mountains, 10-15 kilometers from the main route of the Trans Siberian Railway, the Russia-China border is located. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The longest (2612 meters) railway and road bridge in Russia, well-known to the locals by the image on 5000 banknote, crosses the Amur river right at the center of Khabarovsk. When its predecessor, the second longest bridge of that time, was put in operation on October 5, 1916, the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was formally completed. One of the most mysterious places of the railway is located nearby – the tunnel under Amur, the longest one of the Transsib, that was put in operation urgently by Stalin’s order soon after the beginning of World War II and was a classified object. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Two generations of a big Nanais family rest at the veranda of their house in Sikachi-Alyan, an ancient settlement in Khabarovsk krai. Nations speaking Tungusic languages (Orochis, Udegeits, Nanais) still inhabit the lower Amur and Sakhalin. Small nations of the Far East still cherish the features of their traditional lifestyle, for example, in clothes: wrap coats with ornamental prints. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Overstraining at the long ascending grades and braking at the steep descents, a grimy locomotive runs through marshy taiga and forest tundra of Khabarovsk krai. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Small stone pyramids around a snow-white stupa, built by a famous lama from Bhutan, remind you of pilgrims from a variety of countries, who managed to get to the desert island of Agoy, adjacent to Olkhon island. Nature itself had created Olkhon and Agoy as places for detached contemplation and meditation. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Deeper and deeper cutting into the ridges of the Southern Urals, the Inzer river carries the train away in canyons, gorges, and ravines to the foot of upright rocks. In the Magnitogorsk-Ufa railway section, trains go along the border of the South Ural reserve – a land of mountains with the area of 250 thousand hectares, where the major peaks of this part of the Urals can be found. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Citizens of European Russia have no idea that Lake Baikal is no more than the middle of the way to the Pacific along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The total length of the Far Eastern Railway is 5,990 kilometers. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
In its lower course, the Amur is such an extremely powerful river that it looks more like an elongated sea. The edge of the land that is seen from under the tree festooned with Buddhist prayer flags, is not the opposite bank of the river, but merely the nearest island. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The two mainlines, the construction of which was a great event for the country, the Baikal-Amur railway in the north and a part of the Trans-Siberian one in the south, run through the lands of the Far East. Here, you can see such border-crossing railway stations as Grodekovo and Khasan, as well as most important port stations of Vanino, Sovetskaya Gavan, Vladivostok, and Nakhodka. The unique railroad links the Sakhalin island towns. Built by the Japanese, the railway, whose width is only half a meter narrower than the mainland, currently has a length of 804.9 kilometers and connects 35 stations. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
A Nanai boy is scrutinizing the petroglyphs of the Sikachi-Alyan village, which witnessed the development of the banks of the Amur river in the Neolithic age. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Buryat pilgrims usually make a stop near the weird rocks standing at the very bottom of the Barguzinskaya basin. Here they perform all prescribed religious rituals at the sacred place of Bull stone. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The sky-blue color of the ice on the Tom river suggests that the ice drift is expected pretty soon. A bitter disappointment for the citizens of Tomsk was the fact that the major course of the Trans-Siberian Railway bypassed the city for technical reasons, including one for which it would have been necessary to bridge the Tom and Ob rivers in the broadest sections that were most inconvenient for construction. The townspeople managed to ask Crown Prince Nikolai (future Tsar Nikolai II who passed through Tomsk on his way back from a trip to India) about the laying of a railway branch to Tomsk. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Writer Konstantin Paustovsky first came to Meschera after the WWII and turned it into one of the most vivid and popular nature images ever created in literature. The Pra river, fondly described by Paustovsky, is really amazing with its picturesque landscape, which is to a great extent explained by its sinuosity. The river snakes through the flatlands of Meschera so that the length of the river’s bed is three times greater than its length in a straight line. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The main course of the Trans-Siberian Railway, passing through the “area of influence” of the Eastern Siberian Railway, lies at the very edge of the southern shore of Lake Baikal. From the north, the lake curves tightly around the Baikal-Amur Mainline. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Having escaped from the clutches of the taiga, the short passenger train runs westward along the valley of the Selenga river, the main tributary of Lake Baikal. The train movement puts the traveler into a contemplative mood while approaching datsans, the centers of Buddhist spirituality, located in the Trans-Baikal region. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The train passes a section of the South-Ural Railway over an embankment high above a mountain river. The beauty of a mountain landscape, opening up outside the passenger car’s window, also has a reverse side for railway employees. Such areas with a great variety of railroad profiles – slopes, hillsides, embankments, cuttings, almost upright edges of scarps, numerous bridges over rapid rivers – make a trip along the Ural railway not only an exciting adventure but also complex and precise work of railway services. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Disappearing behind the mountains of the Primorsky Range, the sun lights the “three brothers” – the three rocks by the northernmost tip of Olkhon. The spectacular pyramid-shaped rocks emphasize the scenic beauty of the snow-white rocky cape Sagan-Khushun that is composed of marble and thickly covered with red lichen. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Having passed the Ishimskaya plain, the train arrives in Omsk. During the long and varied history of the region, there were several conventional capitals of Siberia. At first, this was Tobolsk with the easternmost Kremlin in Russia; today the modern megapolises - Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk – share the title. Omsk, founded as the citadel and the foundation for the development of new lands at the point where the Omsk river meets the Irtysh, was considered the capital of Siberia and the center of the Siberian Cossack army over the entire 19th century, but gained special fame as the capital of White Russia and the headquarters of its supreme commander-in-chief Alexander Kolchak. In the 20th century, as a city of rich Soviet history, Omsk received a stimulus for the growth thanks to the agricultural development of the lands of Western Siberia. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The area of Siberia is about 10 million square kilometers, covering a huge variety of landscapes: the plains and marshes of the Western Siberian lowland, the ridges of the Sayan Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Kuznetsk Alatau Mountains, the flat and mountainous taiga zones of Krasnoyarsk region and Eastern Siberia, as well as the vast steppes of Khakassia and the south of Siberia. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
A still operating 19th century hydro electric power station, equipped with units imported from Great Britain and Germany at that time, seems to be a natural part of the landscape, It is hidden in the Urals village of Porogi. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The train, running more or less parallel to the Chusovaya river, now approaching it, then moving away, comes to Kyn, an old station of the Gornozavodsk railway. This was a mainstream railway of tsarist times financed by mining manufacturers. The masterpieces of the modernist style of the Russian wooden architecture, its station chambers are still standing among the impenetrable Ural taiga, astonishing the travelers with exquisite beauty. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Like in old times, the arrival of a train at any of these remote stations becomes a small but a notable event in the life of the locals. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Historically, the laying of railways in the Ural region ran ahead of the construction of highways. Even today, there are places in the Urals, to which the traveler can get only by train. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The main attraction for a person traveling through the Ural region is continuous, sometimes even sharp change of the surrounding landscape: passing by the plains, the train enters the ravines, goes over the mountain ranges, smoothly winding between the picturesque foothills. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The lonely train rushes over the Gornozavodsk railway bridge above the flowing waters of the Sylva and Chusovaya rivers. Having run through the stones of the mountain ridge from east to west, the river finally passes over the mountains to the plain, flowing in the Kamsk reservoir. The legendary and most mysterious Ural river thus reaches Europe, symbolically completing the trip across the Ural region. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
Екатеринбург - не только безусловная столица всего Урала, но и уникальная экспозиция архитектурных стилей: конструктивизм здесь прекрасно уживается с барокко и классицистической застройкой 19 века. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
For a while leaving the mountainous regions, the train takes the traveler to a beautiful agricultural plain lying between the cities of Zlatoust and Miass. The eye sort of contemplates a piece of an experimental artist's work, who bravely squeezes yellow, red, and orange paints from the tubes – and boldly mixes them right on the canvas of the plain. This color spectrum is especially symbolic at the base of the Ilmen range – a mineralogical reserve of Ural semi-precious stones. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
A flash of bright sunlight falls on a single-track railroad to Divnogorsk, a town of the builders of the Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Power Station. Here, from a high cliff, opens up a view to the Yenisei and Ovsyanka village, the birthplace of the famous writer Victor Astafiev, who remained faithful to his homeland throughout his life. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The funny thing about the port city is that a beacon is installed right on the lane line of the main street of Vanino. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
A festive crowd fills the streets and squares of Komsomolsk-on-Amur for the 75th anniversary of the city foundation. Realization of the Soviet dream of a garden city’s creation among the taiga and swamps in the midst of the Far East, Komsomolsk-on-Amur is still the flagship of the Russian industry. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The railroads leading from Moscow split into different directions like rays, following the radial-circular structure of Russia’s capital. Historically, Moscow turned out to be located not only on the intersection of all possible routes of communication, but also at the border of the major geographic and climatic zones. A train trip around Moscow is a fascinating experience. The traveler is easily transported from the taiga forests, lying to the north of the capital, to the vast marsh and meadow lands of Meschera. From there you can get to the boundary of the forest steppe, located to the south of Moscow, and further on to the remains of the still primary great forest belt to the west of the capital. You will discover amazing things everywhere – ancient mansions, oases of Russian culture, national parks and reserves that strike you with virgin and wild nature that is preserved notwithstanding the vicinity to the megapolis. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
The train gains speed and leaves Moscow, basked in bright summer sunlight behind. Ahead is a simple and unostentatious, serene and lyrical beauty of Central Russia. It seems that there is not a single Russian poet, artist, or writer who has not celebrated the beauty of its nature. It is delightful in its vast green or snow-covered meadows, forests that are untouched with a woodchopper’s axe, and crystal water of rivers and lakes. Copyright © 2006-2010, Anton Lange, JSC Russian Railways.
