Trans-Siberian Railway: Moscow to Vladivostok

Every through journey starts here: the main route begins in Moscow at Yaroslavsky Vokzal. From these platforms the track runs 9,289 kilometres to Vladivostok, a record eight time zones. The Neorussian revival building facing Komsomolskaya Square was built in 1902–1904 by Fyodor Shechtel. It is still busy, serving around 300 pairs of trains daily.

Visitor guidance: A working terminal on Komsomolskaya Square.

Engineer Evgeny Knorre oversaw the building of a bridge 907 metres long, which cost 3 million rubles. Its builders used wood for the caissons and a unique freezing method to stabilise the soil. It was finished on 28 March 1899, and the structure won a Gold Medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1900. A new bridge took over on 25 December 1998, and the old trusses were dismantled between 2002 and 2007.

Lake Baikal stopped the first trains: the line ended on either side of it. Ice-breaking ferries, built in Newcastle upon Tyne, carried passengers across. SS Baikal was 64 metres long and carried 24 railway coaches and a locomotive. The Circum-Baikal Railway opened in 1904 and bypassed the ferries; it has thirty-eight tunnels. Today tourists can ride a train along the shore or rent handcars, and the ferry Angara survives as a museum in Irkutsk.

Location precision: The line runs for dozens of kilometres around the southern shore; the pin marks Port Baikal at its start.

Visitor guidance: Tourist trains and handcars run on the Circum-Baikal line; check current services locally.

The last link in the chain. The Khabarovsk Bridge, 2,590 metres long, was the longest in Imperial Russia. In autumn 1914 the German cruiser Emden sank the merchant ship carrying its final two spans in the Indian Ocean, delaying work by over a year. It was inaugurated on 5 October 1916 as the Alekseyevsky Bridge, giving a continuous railway from Petrograd to Vladivostok. In 1920 the line was cut here for five years. The old trusses were replaced by a new deck by 2009, but one original truss was saved as a museum exhibit.

In Vladivostok, Tsarevich Nicholas inaugurated construction on 19 May 1891, and the station was consecrated on 2 November 1893. In 1910–1912 it was redesigned in the image of Moscow's Yaroslavsky, so the line has matching stations at both ends. Inside, the floors laid with Japanese clay tiles are well preserved to this day The building was restored in 1994–1996.

Visitor guidance: A working station; the end of the line is the main reason to come.