page_title: East Siberian Railway
section_title: Engineering
hierarchical_section_title: East Siberian Railway / Engineering
caption_attribution_description: Picture of the Slyudyanka train station on the trans-Siberian railway in slyudyanka, Russia. Taken by me 7/06, released into public domain
context_page_description: The East Siberian Railway is a railway in Russia, which runs across Irkutsk Oblast, Chita Oblast, Buryatia, and Yakutia. The railway administration is located in Irkutsk. The East Siberian Railway borders with the Krasnoyarsk Railway, Trans-Baikal Railway, and Baikal Amur Mainline. To the south, the East Siberian Railway runs close to the Russo-Mongolian border. As of 2008, the total working length of the East Siberian Railway was 3,848.1 km; number of employees – 46,233; net weight hauled – 76 million tonnes; long-distance passenger traffic – 3.6 million people; suburban traffic – 29 million people. Annual cargo turnover is 278 million tonnes.
  The East Siberian Railway consists of four divisions, namely the Irkutsk Railway Division, Severobaikalsk Railway Division, Taishet Railway Division, and Ulan-Ude Railway Division. The railway connects the regions of East Siberia, Transbaikal, and Russian Far East with the rest of the railroad network nationwide.
context_section_description: During the construction of several sections of the East Siberian Railway, various scientific and technical achievements were widely used. The railway essentially became a test site for alternating current electrification. They tested and perfected the design of alternating current locomotives, overhead catenary system, means of communication, signaling, centralised traffic control and the automatic block system, all of which would later be introduced on other railways in one way or another. 97% of the traffic along the East Siberian Railway is done by means of electric traction.
  The East Siberian Railway consists of several sections, one of which is the Circum-Baikal Railway – a monument to industrial architecture of federal importance. It stretches for over 85 km (53 mi) from the Baikal railway station to the Kultuka railway station. The uniqueness of this wonder of engineering is that no other railway in the world has as many man-made objects, namely 40 tunnels, 16 avalanche galleries, 470 overpasses, bridges, and pipe culverts, some 280 protecting walls, let alone various buildings at different railway stations. The Circum-Baikal Railway is also known as the "golden buckle of the steel belt" (the Trans-Siberian Railway being the "steel belt") because the construction of the greatest Russian railway was finished on the shores of Lake Baikal.
  In December 2003, the Severomuysky Tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Mainline (a section of the East Siberian Railway) was commissioned, the longest tunnel in Russia and the fifth longest in the world (15,343 m or 9.534 mi).
  The station building at Slyudyanka railway station of the East Siberian Railway is the only railway station in the world made completely of marble.
caption: Railway station in Slyudyanka
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