Rail Fact sheet

• At 9,446 kilometers (5,869 miles) it is the world's longest continuous railroad.
• Some stretches are the heaviest used railway in the world.
• Work on the line began in 1891. Most of it was built without any form of machinery.
• In some permafrost areas the ground had to be dynamited before rails could be laid.
• Work gangs suffered from floods, bubonic plague, extreme cold, cholera, landslides, anthrax, bandits and tigers.
• The line was completed at the bridge at Khabarovsk in 1916.
• But by then entire sections had been rebuilt. Cost-cutting expedients such as cheap light-weight rails had led to frequent derailments.
• Even so a trillion roubles had been spent.
• The Circumbaikal loop to the south of Lake Baikal needed 200 bridges and 33 tunnels.
• Conversion to electricity began in 1927. Steam engines were finally retired only in 1987.
• Today's ChS4t locomotives weigh 126 tonnes and can travel 180 kph (112 mph).

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