It is the world`s longest railway line. But it is so much more than that, too. The Trans-Siberian stretches nearly 6, 000 miles between Moscow & Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast & was the most ambitious railway project in the nineteenth century. A journey on the railway evokes a romantic roam through the Russian steppes, but also reminds travellers of the vastness of our world & hints at the hardships that were endured in its construction. Christian Wolmar expertly tells the story of the Trans-Siberian railway from its conception & construction under Tsar Alexander III, to the northern extension ordered by Brezhnev & its current success as a vital artery. He also explores the crucial role the line played in both the Russian Civil War -Trotsky famously used an armoured carriage as his command post
- & the Second World War, during which the railway saved the country from certain defeat. Like the author`s previous railway histories, it focuses on the personalities, as well as the political & economic events, that lay behind one of the most extraordinary engineering triumphs of the nineteenth century.