Northern Siberian Trade Route and Polar Urals Railway. Part 1

Abstract

A reproduced article published in the journal «Zheleznodorozhnoe delo» in 1912 is devoted to a project to build a railway linking the fluvial network of Siberia (approximately from the nowadays Salekhard to the Ob) with the Arctic coast in Varandey district, where it was supposed to build a seaport.Although development of the transport infrastructure of the Polar Urals and the North of the European part of Russia eventually went the other way, the economic geography, the foreign trade balance changed, the article is of interest in its historical aspect by the balanced and detail-focused approach to the comprehensive assessment of complex transport projects that was developed more than 110 years ago and their feasibility study. The authors of the project under consideration took into account, when arguing, many factors – of a strategic nature (development of the Siberian region, reduction of the transport load on the backbone transport network of the European part of the country, minimisation of competition between domestic producers along the route of goods flows), foreign trade flows, seasonality of navigation along rivers and the Northern Sea Route, technical and economic aspects of construction, distribution of private and public investments, projected optimal tariffs and taxation, payback periods, taking into account payment of dividends, and many others.Of course, the content of factors taken into account and assessment methods have changed significantly since then. One of the paradoxes is that, despite new technologies, modern engineers already assess the risks and difficulties of building in the subpolar zone much higher, while at the beginning of the last century this area was considered almost an easy and cheaper option for building a railway.In general, we must give credit to the authors for complexity of their approaches, taking into account the time when they were made.The authentic style, punctuation, lexis of the time have been preserved as maximum as possible while reproducing the article.Part 2 is to be published in the next issue.