CONSTRUCTION OF NEW RAILWAYS IN THE URALS AND WEST SIBERIA IN 1956-1991
The article objective is to investigate preconditions and stages of new railway construction in the Urals and West Siberia; to identify modernization processes in transport construction, and to establish reasons for low rates of the regional railway network development. The author concentrates his attention on the problems of material-technical provision and scientific support of new railway construction in the regions of virgin lands development in South Ural, Kazakhstan and West Siberian oil-gas province. The study deals with the documents of the Ministry of Railways' Scientific and Technical Council and the correspondence of the CPSU's Tyumen Regional Committee on Transport Construction in the northern Tyumen Region. The research methodology is the modernization theory applied to railway transportation as a fundamental technical and economic transport renewal based on electrification, diesel traction and new lines construction. New railway construction is a separate field of transportation modernization associated with increasing the railway network length, rationalizing transportation processes, developing new territories and natural raw materials, forming additional lines between the country regions. The complexity of the construction conditions, weak territorial development, lack of local building materials caused a powerful rise of scientific research and new construction technologies' elaboration. As a result, the railway network was created at a zero level of the territory development, and without the international experience of railroad construction under severe conditions. At the same time, the Ural and West Siberian railway network was not developed to the extent necessary to optimize the transportation process due to material and financial resources concentration on the drastic technical reconstruction of the existing railway network.