The prerequisites of railway building in Transbaikalia
In the 19th century the dissatisfaction with means of transportation in Transbaikalia, both with the neighboring territories and inside the region reached special sharpness. The first ideas about carrying out the railway proceeded from engineers. So, in 1837 N.I. Bogdanov suggested to construct the railway from Kyakhta to Nizhny Novgorod that, alas, was not presented to the emperor Nicholas I. The next was the proposal on a construction of a railway line beyond Baikal made by businessman P.M. Collins. This proposal of the American traveler as well as the reply of the Second Siberian committee that absolutely rejected Collins’s conditions are revealed in this article. High officials took part in discussion of the offer. The governor general N.N. Muravyev to whom the government charged to refuse “softly” pulled the special strings to the North American, referring to prematurity of the offer. Again, the question of the railway in Transbaikalia was brought up and got the final permission in 1886-1890 when the Irkutsk and Priamurye governor-generals A.P. Ignatyev and A.N. Korf suggested to build railway parts from Tomsk to Irkutsk and from Baikal to Sretensk. Thanks to it and to the will of the emperor Alexander III the issue of a steel way was discussed in June, 1887, at meetings in St. Petersburg then prospecting works were performed in all supposed area including the Transbaikalia.