Talk:Altai Krai
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[edit] Completion of Altai Railway
On 20 October 1915 temporary traffic was opened on the following sections of the Altai Railway: Passenger and freight traffic from Altaiskaja to Barnaoul, a distance of 13.6 versts (14.5 km), and passenger traffic from Barnaoul to Semipalatinsk a distance of 401,1 versts (428 km). Thus, with the sections previously opened, temporary passenger and freight traffic has been opened on the whole of this new railway system, a distance of nearly 800 versts, including the main line from Novo-Nikolaijevsk to Semipalatinsk 615.4 versts (656.5 km), and the branch line from Altaiskaja near Barnaoul to Biisk 135.7 versts (144.8 km).
This new railway has ordered from Kolomna Works (near Moscow) 70 new powerful (steam) locomotives in addition to few shunting locomotives for larger stations. Actually only locomotives 101-165 were delivered due war time problems with Kolomna Works output in their construction due lack of steel for locomotive boilers and other materials.
This railway opens up the vast and rich Altai region of Siberia, hitherto entirely cut off from railway communication. Starting from the town of Novo-Nikolaijevsk, on the Siberian main line, the new line runs to Barnaoul (population in 1913: 33.000), the chief town of the Altai region, with a branch line therefore to Biisk, a seat of the Russo-Mongolian caravan trade, and continues from Barnaul to Semipalatinsk (population in 1913: 32.000), the capital of the steppe territory of that name, communication between which and the main Siberian line has hitherto been maintained by the River Irtish to Omsk, a distance of 1000 versts. The Semipalatinsk territory is noted for its grain. Cattle-rearing is the chief occupation of the nomand Kirgiz forming the main part of the population.
The new Altai Railway will revolutionize the trade and traffic of the whole Altai region, hithero served in summer only by the vast Obi, which, rising in Mongolia flows through Biisk and Barnaoul to Novo-Nikolaijevsk, continuing thence to the Arctic Ocean. Thus, from Biisk and Barnaoul and Novo-Nikolaijevsk, considerable quantities of butter found their way to the main line "en route" to the West-European (mainly British) markets.
Noted for its mineral wealth, and the rich cereals and agricultural rescources generally, for the cultivation of which agricultural machinery is largely imported by International Harvester Company from United States, the whole region only awaited the more rapid and regular means of communication now supplied for its fuller development.
The mineral wealth of the Altai in modern means first become known in 1723, when the specialists followed the old local knowledge of ancient mines, being dispatched by the nobleman Akinfy Demidoff, son of the well known Toula blacksmith Nikita Akinfijev Demidoff, discovered copper veins near Keolyzan Lake. A series of other discoveries followed, and in a short space of time smelting in the Altai of copper, lead, silver, and gold attained dimensions unexampled in those days. The entire eighteenth century was a period of the prosperity for the Altai. Thus, for example, the mining business in the Altai (which in 1747 passed under control of the Cabinet of his Imperial Majesty) at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century yielded annually more than three million (gold) roubles profit.
The exhaustion of the forests, the change inthe chemical composition of the seams, in proportion to the deepening of the mines, which the metallurgy of those days could not cope, the absence of means of communication, and, finally, the fall of the price of silver, which was one of the principal products of the Altai smelters - all these factors together brought the mining business of the Altai almost to a full stop in the second half if the nineteenth century. This decline was not prevented by the circumstance that in the Altai there was discovered an exceedingly rich coal basin, The Kouznetzki, embracing an area of about 15.000 square kilometres. The absence of convenient and cheap means of communication constituted an obstalce very difficult to surmount for any kind of industrial activity in the Altai. A curious and injurious situation arose: such universally celebratde veins of lead, zink, copper, and other metals as the Zyrian, Ridder, Zmieinogor etc, exist in vain, and Russia, who required these metals, obtained them from abroad, chiefly from her neighbour Germany.
With the construction of the Altai Railway a new era will dawn for the Altai mining industry. The yield of coal will swiftly in the Kouznetz basin, where the necessary preparatory work is already proceeding, with the object not only of furnishing with fuel local industry, but also of delivering coke to the Ural districs, which is badly in need of this material.
However, the continuation of the Altai Railway from Semipalatinsk to Viernij in the district of Seven Rivers in Central Asia, and eventually connect Semipalatinsk to Tashkent Railway was left to be built by the French financed, but Russian mangeged, private railway consortium.
JN
