(I may be posting this in the wrong forum.)
I stumbled across this and found it interesting. The photos on these pages are of the largely abandonded Circumbaikal Railroad, on Lake Baikal in Siberia. There aren’t many photos, and I wi***hey were larger, but so be it.
I wasn’t sure if it should go here, or the Classic Trains forum. Since this is the one I read most, I decided on this one.
I found one other page with loads of pics. It’s all in Russian, so I can’t read a word of it, but interesting, anyway. The different galleries are in the yellow bar just above the first three pics, and most of the pics are text linked below them:
Did this line have anything to do with the Baikal-Amur Railway (BAM) that was being built back in the 1970s or 80s? I remember seeing a news photo and brief write-up about it in Trains back then. Would be a shame if something so new and modern went to the weeds that quickly. But maybe like the Milwaukee Road, it was one of those spendy main lines that came too late to develop much on-line traffic and cost too much to maintain for whatever amont of end-to-end traffic there was.
If I understand correctly, BAM runs across Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. So they might be connected, but not the same. My knowledge on this is pretty thin, so don’t take my word for it, though.
I found one story which mentions celebrating it’s 30th anniversary:
“Construction of the 4, 234 km rail line, which traverses Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East approximately 380 to 480 miles north of and parallel with the Trans-Siberian railway, began in July 1974, the line launched 15 years ago.” http://vn.vladnews.ru/Arch/2004/ISS423/News/upd09_2.HTM
Another story speaks about the tunnel which was apparently completed last November:
“The Severo-Muisk tunnel is the longest in Russia and the fifth longest in the world. It is 15.34 kilometres long and in places the tunnel is 1 kilometre deep. It is a complex structure which has no precedent. Most of the tunnel cuts through the Severo-Muisk mountain range (300 km in length, 20-30 kilometres across, with mountains up 2500 metres high).” http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnewswire.shtml?nw=41102#n41102
See… Now you’ve gone and given me more stuff to look up!