The direction of the Baikal Amur Mainline geography. Baikal-Amur Mainline

The Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) runs through the territory Irkutsk region, Trans-Baikal Territory, Amur region, Republics of Buryatia and Sakha (Yakutia), Khabarovsk Territory.

Key BAM stations:

Taishet;
Lena;
Taksimo;
Tynda;
Neryungi;
New Urgal;
Komsomolsk-on-Amur;
Vanino;
Sovetskaya Gavan.

The total length of the BAM from Taishet to Sovetskaya Gavan is 4300 km.

BAM is connected with three connecting lines: Bamovskaya - Tynda, Izvestkovaya - Novy Urgal and Volochaevka - Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

Currently double track Railway built from Taishet to Lena (704 km) and single-track - from Lena to Taksimo (725 km). On the rest of the BAM section, a single-track railway with diesel traction was built.

BAM passes through the territory with harsh natural and climatic conditions - through the regions of permafrost (the depth of which is from 1-3 to hundreds of meters) and high seismicity (up to 9 points). The highway crosses 11 deep rivers (among them Lena, Amur, Zeya, Vitim, Olekma, Selemdzha, Bureya) and 7 mountain ranges (Baikalsky, Severo-Muisky, Udokansky, Kodarsky, Olekminsky Stanovik, Turansky and Dusse-Alinsky). Due to the difficult terrain, more than 30 km of the railway passes through tunnels (among them Baikalsky (6.7 km) and Severo-Muisky (15.3 km)).

During the construction of the BAM, the latest designs were applied, new methods of construction and operation of facilities in difficult hydrogeological conditions were developed and patented.

BAM construction history

The preconditions for the start of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline were disappointing results Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, which showed the urgent need for the construction of a second rockad railway in the east of the country, duplicating the Trans-Siberian railway.

According to the original plan, the main line was to run from Ufa along the shortest distance to the eastern sea coast through the northern end of Lake Baikal.

V Soviet time research on the development of the railway network in the east of the country resumed in the late 1920s. - the beginning of the 30s. It was then that the road from Taishet to the east first received its modern name - the Baikal-Amur Mainline. It was proposed to start the road from the Urusha station (approximately the middle of the present BAM in the Skovorodino region), and the final destination was planned to be Komsomolsk-on-Amur, which was then the village of Permskoy.

In 1932 the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline", which approved the construction plan for the BAM. The construction was planned to be completed in 3 years: through traffic along the entire highway in operational mode was to be opened by the end of 1935.

However, the construction of the highway was repeatedly stopped for various reasons (lack of labor, Great Patriotic War, earthquakes in the construction area in the late 1950s).

The active construction of the BAM was resumed in 1974. Komsomol volunteers and military builders became the main engines of the construction. Republican Komsomol detachments competed with each other and had "their own" facilities: the largest station Urgal was built by the Ukrainian SSR, the station Muyakan - Belarus, Uoyan - Lithuania, Kicheru - Estonia, Tayuru - Armenia, Ulkan - Azerbaijan, Soloni - Tajikistan, Alonka - Moldova. Tynda, the capital of BAM, was built by Muscovites.

By 1980 the Baikal-Amur railway was organized with the seat of the road administration in Tynda.

On September 29, 1984, a "golden" docking took place at the Balbukhta junction(Kalarsky district of the Chita region). The eastern and western directions of the BAM builders met, moving towards each other for 10 years. On October 1, the laying of the "gold" links of the BAM took place at the Kuanda station (Kalarsky district of the Chita region).

The final completion of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline can be considered December 5, 2003 when it was traffic on the Severo-Muisky tunnel is open... In terms of its length (15,343 m), it is the longest tunnel in Russia and the fifth in the world. According to the construction conditions, the tunnel has no analogues: permafrost, abundance of groundwater, talus, landslides, tectonic faults.

BAM currently

The construction of the BAM has solved the tasks of the national level:

access to the natural resources of the vast region is open;
transit traffic is provided;
the shortest East-West intercontinental railway route was created, passing over 10,000 km along Russian railways;
in the military-strategic sense, the main line fends off possible disruptions and interruptions in the movement of trains on the Transsib.

Currently, the socio-economic potential of the BAM is not fully disclosed. The operation of this line brings no profit to Russian Railways. The main reason for this situation is the slow development of the adjacent territories. Of the planned nine territorial-production complexes, which were supposed to ensure the loading of the BAM, only one was implemented - in the Neryungri coal basin.

In the direction Taishet - Tynda - Komsomolsk-on-Amur the volume of freight traffic is about 12 million tons per year... The limitation of the throughput capacity of the BAM sections was caused by the closure of separate points during the period of decline in traffic in the 90s, the presence of sections where the turnaround time was violated, there are defects in the subgrade, track superstructure and artificial structures.

BAM carries about 12 million passengers a year... The traffic intensity of passenger trains on the highway is insignificant - 1-2 pairs of trains per day on the Komsomolsk-Severobaikalsk section and 9-16 pairs on the western section.

Prospects for the development of BAM

The strategic position of the BAM, the technical and economic potential of the region where it passes is so enormous that it will undoubtedly be in demand by Russia in the foreseeable future.

The main deposits of minerals in the gravity zone of the BAM

Deposits that are currently being developed on an industrial scale and play a load-generating role for loading the Baikal-Amur Mainline:

Neryungri and Urgalskoe coal;
Korshunovskoe and Rudnogorskoe iron ore.

The most studied fields with an estimated economic efficiency of development:

Apsatskoe, Ogodzhinskoe and Elginskoe coal;
Chineyskoye, Taezhnoye and Garinskoye iron ore;
Udokan copper;
Kuranakhskoye and Katuginskoye polymetallic;
Evgenievskoe apatitov;
Kovykta gas;
Talakanskoye, Verkhnechonskoye, Chayandinskoye, Srednebotuobinskoye, Yaraktinskoye, Dulisminskoye, Ayanskoye and Adnikanskoye oil and gas fields.

The development of these deposits requires the development of transport infrastructure.

Promising fields requiring additional exploration and assessment of the economic efficiency of development:

Neryundinskoe, Kapaevskoe, Polivskoe iron ore;
Khlodnenskoe and Shamanskoe polymetallic;
Golevskoe synnyrites;
Ukduska and Seligdar Apatites;
Nepa potash basin.

January 14, 2014 1:03 pm

The construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline required the mobilization of huge resources from the entire country. Even before the completion of the highway, many declared the construction pointless and unnecessary. Around the history of the BAM construction, there are still many controversies. What is the Baikal-Amur Mainline after all? Is this a road to the future or a huge mistake of the Soviet regime? Below are pretty much Interesting Facts, read and draw conclusions ..

In 1888, the Russian Technical Society discussed a project for the construction of a Pacific railway through the northern tip of Lake Baikal, after which in July - September 1889, Colonel of the General Staff N.A. to those places where the BAM route has now been laid. And he came to the conclusion: "... drawing a line in this direction turns out to be absolutely impossible due to some technical difficulties, not to mention other considerations." Voloshinov was not a pessimist, but he was soberly aware that at that time Russia had neither the equipment nor the means to carry out the grandiose work.

Following this, the construction of three connecting lines from Trans-Siberian Railway to the planned BAM route: Bam - Tynda, Volochaevka - Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Izvestkovaya - Urgal. In 1937, the general direction of the BAM route was determined: Taishet - Bratsk - the northern tip of Baikal - Tyndinsky - Ust-Niman - Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan. In 1938, construction began on the western section from Taishet to Bratsk, and in 1939 - preparatory work on the eastern section from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Sovetskaya Gavan. In January 1942, by decision State Committee The defenses from the Bam - Tynda section built by that time were removed from the track links and bridge trusses for the construction of the Stalingrad - Saratov - Syzran - Ulyanovsk (Volzhskaya Rokada) railway line.

The photo shows a map of the Baikal-Amur Mainline

In June 1947, the construction of the eastern section of Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Urgal continued (mainly by the prisoners of the Amur ITL (Amurlag)). Before the disbandment of Amurlag (in April 1953), embankments were poured along the entire section, tracks were laid, bridges were built on the Komsomolsk-2 - Berezovy (Postyshevo) section. The Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan section was commissioned in 1945, and trains on the Taishet - Bratsk - Ust-Kut (Lena) line opened in 1950. Below is the map, where the Baikal-Amur Mainline is marked in green, against the background of the Trans-Siberian Mainline.

It is more than likely that the BAM would have been built much earlier than the famous Komsomol construction project of 1974 began. Indeed, only from 1947 to 1958, prisoners completed 24 million m3 of earthworks, laid 840 km of main and station tracks, built 55 stations and siding, 5 locomotive depots, 9 power plants, 19 water supply points, 90 thousand square meters of living space near the BAM.

However, as you know, after the death of Stalin, many "cult" projects had to be frozen

One way or another, the official “birthday” of BAM is considered to be July 8, 1974, when the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued a resolution No. 561 “On the construction of the Baikal-Amur railway line”.

The smiles on the faces of the young people who left Moscow on April 27, 1974 to build the Baikal-Amur Mainline were the most sincere. Not all of them "held out" on the BAM long enough, literally a few returned to Moscow on the no less legendary train, which arrived at the Yaroslavsky railway station on the Tynda-Moscow flight in January 1984.

It was from this moment that the active construction of the highway began in many directions at once by the forces of the Komsomol construction "landings" and units of the Railway Troops. Here one cannot fail to note the traditionality of the solution: to use soldiers instead of prisoners in construction.

In 1977, the Bam - Tynda line was put into permanent operation, and in 1979, the Tynda - Berkakit line. The main part of the road was built for more than 12 years - from April 5, 1972 to October 27, 1984, and on November 1, 1989, the entire new three-thousand-kilometer section of the highway was put into permanent operation in the volume of the start-up complex. The longest in Russia Severo-Muisky tunnel (15,343 meters), the construction of which began in May 1977, was pierced to the end only in March 2001 and was put into permanent operation in December 2003.

The photo shows a large junction railway station in Tynda

Such a large-scale construction was only within the power of a great power, with its colossal economic power and resources. 60 branches of the national economy, hundreds of supplier enterprises, design and scientific organizations... BAM is rightly called the route of friendship and brotherhood. It was built by representatives of 70 nationalities of the USSR.

The General Scheme of the District Planning of the BAM Influence Zone was developed, taking into account the regional features of the route, specific factors of the economic development of the adjacent territories, as well as the multinational features of architectural and planning solutions, the art of construction of all republics participating in the arrangement of the highway. Tynda, Neryungri, Severobaikalsk - the largest cities along the highway - were built exactly according to master plans. As a result, each has its own appearance, its own special architectural "accents". However, like any new business, the Baikal-Amur Mainline aroused interest in environmental issues... Virgin nature demanded a careful attitude towards itself. After all, a delicate natural organism, balanced for millennia, is especially fragile in conditions of permafrost, high seismicity and low temperatures.

It was important to use the powerful equipment in the arsenal of the builders wisely, carefully and skillfully so that the industrial power of the BAM would organically combine with the natural landscape, the purity of the air, the transparency of rivers and lakes. The extreme conditions of the track required new scientific, technical, engineering and production solutions.

Here, for the first time in world practice, a fundamentally new design of the foundations of bridge supports was created, a number of new ideas in tunneling were implemented, technologies for filling the subgrade and drilling and blasting operations in permafrost conditions were developed, modern methods anti-icing. The highway passed through the territory of the region in the northern regions rich in natural resources.

Where only the nomadic Evenk hunter used to travel on his reindeer, where geologists only occasionally flew in by helicopter, the drone of a diesel locomotive woke up the taiga, residential settlements have sprung up. Previously, the southern districts of the Amur Region were connected with the North by the AYAM highway (Amur-Yakutsk highway), which runs from the Bolshoi Never on the Transsib to Chulman. And this thin transport stream was replaced by a "full-flowing river" named BAM. But it should be admitted that BAM turned out to be unprofitable. The number of trains and the traffic flow did not correspond to the original plans.

The main mistake was the emphasis on the actual laying of the route to the detriment of the development of industrial infrastructure. "Hammering crutches" became an end in itself and was not sufficiently supported by the use of mineral deposits that became available as a result of the construction of the railway.

The Baikal-Amur Mainline is one of the largest railway lines in the world. The construction of the main part of the railway, which took place in complex geological and climatic conditions, took more than 12 years, and one of the most difficult sections - the Severo-Muisky tunnel - was put into permanent operation only in 2003.

The Severomuisky ridge was one of the most difficult sections of the BAM. Before the opening of the Severomuisky tunnel, trains followed a bypass railway line, laid across the ridge.

In 1985 - 1989, a new bypass line 54 km long was built, consisting of numerous steep serpentines, high viaducts and two loop tunnels (the old bypass was later dismantled). The "Devil's Bridge" became famous - a viaduct in a sharp turn on a slope across the valley of the Itykyt river, standing on two-tiered supports. The train was forced to maneuver between the hills, moving at a maximum speed of 20 km / h and risking being hit by an avalanche. On uphills, it became necessary to push trains with auxiliary locomotives. The site required large expenditures for track maintenance and traffic safety. In the photo Devil's Bridge:

It took over 25 years to build the tunnel through the ridge. The first train passed through the tunnel on December 21, 2001, but the tunnel was accepted into permanent operation only on December 5, 2003. The total length of the mine workings of the tunnel is 45 km; along the entire length of the tunnel, a smaller diameter mine is used for pumping water, placing engineering systems and delivering technical personnel. Ventilation is provided by three vertical shaft shafts. The safety of trains passing through the tunnel is ensured, among other things, by seismic and radiation monitoring systems. To maintain the microclimate in the tunnel, special gates are installed on both of its portals, which are opened only for the passage of the train. Engineering systems of the tunnel are controlled by a special automated system developed at the Design and Technological Institute of Computer Engineering of the Siberian Branch Russian Academy sciences.

Along with the tunnel, the Severomuisky bypass is also maintained in working order - it is expected that it can be used in the event of an increase in cargo traffic along the BAM. There are many trains running along the Baikal-Amur Mainline now.

In 2007, the government approved a plan, according to which it is planned to build "capillary" branches to mineral deposits. Also, earlier it was decided to build a crossing in the form of the Sakhalin tunnel or bridge:

In 2009, the reconstruction of the Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan (Far Eastern Railway) section began with the construction of a new Kuznetsovsky tunnel, it is planned to be completed in 2016.

Now 8 trains pass through BAM every day, the traffic volume is 8 million tons of cargo per year. In general, even today BAM is a piggy bank of railway records: the most severe climatic conditions, the longest tunnels, the highest bridges, the most original engineering solutions.

According to "Strategy-2030" the volume of investments in BAM will amount to about 400 billion rubles. 13 new railway lines with a total length of about 7 thousand kilometers will be built. All these plans for the future and strategies still do not allow us to call BAM a road without a future, and it is no coincidence that work on the construction of the Severo-Muisky tunnel was not stopped even in the most difficult times for the Russian economy. Despite everything, the history of the Baikal-Amur Mainline continues ...

Photo album about construction and life at the shock Soviet construction site:

Diver on the bridge construction

The girls of the Bam village. 1977

The first train on the zero kilometer of the BAM. Lena station 1975

Port Vostochny

Tynda. Caption to the photo with a fireplace: “… cozy houses have been built for the BAM workers in Tynda. Living room in the house of the master of the path ... ".

Hear, time is buzzing - BAM!
R. Rozhdestvensky

Bam is one of the largest railways in the world.
The Taishet - Sovetskaya Gavan route is 4287 km long. and was built with long breaks from 1938 to 1984. At present, BAM is working at the limit of its capacity. The length of the main route Taishet - Sovetskaya Gavan BAM runs north of the Transsiberian railway and is shorter than it by 500 km. How it was..

The route of the highway passes mainly in mountainous terrain, including through the Stanovoe Upland, cutting through seven mountain ranges. The highest point of the path is the Mururinsky pass (1323 meters above sea level); steep inclines when entering this pass require double traction and train weight limits.

Ten tunnels have been punched along the route of the road, among them the North-Muisky tunnel, the longest in Russia. The longest in Russia Severo-Muisky tunnel (15,343 meters), the construction of which began in May 1977, was pierced to the end only in March 2001 and was put into permanent operation in December 2003.

The route of the road crosses 11 large rivers, a total of 2,230 large and small bridges were built on it. The highway passes through more than 200 railway stations and sidings, more than 60 cities and towns.

The cost of building the BAM in 1991 prices amounted to 17.7 billion rubles. Thus, the BAM became the most expensive infrastructure project in the history of the USSR.

The Russian Technical Society discussed the project as early as 1888. Colonel of the General Staff N. A. Voloshinov with a small detachment overcame a thousand-kilometer space from Ust-Kut to Muya, just in those places where the BAM route now lies. And I came to the conclusion that construction is impossible. There was no technology at that time.

In Soviet times, intelligence was carried out by the military. In 1926, the Separate Corps of Railway Troops of the Red Army began to conduct topographic reconnaissance of the future BAM route. In 1932 (April 13), the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR issued a decree "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur railway". Then the war and there was no time for the road.

In 1967, design and survey work was resumed. In April 1974, BAM was declared an all-Union shock Komsomol construction site. The youth went to the BAM. There were jokes about this, like the comic deciphering of the acronym BAM - "Brezhnev Abmits Youth."

And harsh everyday life began! Imported equipment was purchased for the most difficult areas.

On the way of the BAM, it was originally planned to build nine or even eleven territorial-industrial complexes-giants, but so far only one has been built - the South Yakutsk coal complex, which includes the Neryungri coal mine.

On September 29, 1984, a meeting of the brigades of Alexander Bondar and Ivan Varshavsky took place at the Balbukhta junction; on October 1, the "golden" link was solemnly laid at the Kuanda station; both parts of the road are connected into a single whole.

In 2007, the government approved a plan according to which it is planned to build "capillary" branches to mineral deposits. Also, earlier it was decided to build a crossing in the form of the Sakhalin tunnel or bridge.

The weather is harsh there, I've been to those parts. And he lived and served.

On April 13, 1932, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR issued a decree "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur railway", according to which design and survey work was launched and construction began.

The idea of creating the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), the main Soviet construction site of the 1970s, appeared in the 19th century. Even then, local entrepreneurs justified the need to build a road with the prospect of developing mineral resources north of Lake Baikal. In 1888, the Russian Technical Society discussed a project for the construction of a Pacific railway through the northern tip of Lake Baikal, after which, in July - September 1889, Colonel of the General Staff N.A. to those places where the BAM route has now been laid. He came to the conclusion: "... drawing a line in this direction is absolutely impossible due to some technical difficulties, not to mention other considerations." Voloshinov was not a pessimist, but he was soberly aware: at that time Russia had neither the equipment nor the means to carry out the grandiose work.

At that moment, the government was not interested in the idea of building a road, but returned to it only in 1906-1907 - immediately after the Russian-Japanese war, which showed that the eastern borders of the empire were not as reliable as it seemed.

The fact that the design and survey work of the northern branch of the Transsib began precisely in 1907 testifies to a trend that will be visible in the future: the state was preparing for serious investments in the BAM only when it came to security. The Transsib passed too close to the border, and in order to conduct hostilities in the east, the state needed a rokada - a railway that runs parallel to the proposed front line of a possible war and makes it possible to transport and supply troops. In all subsequent years, the state will seriously return to the construction of the road only in moments of tension on the eastern borders.

The first exploration work at the future BAM stopped in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War, in which Japan turned out to be an ally of Russia, and China was not an independent player. The new government returned to the construction of the road only after almost 20 years. Although plans were put forward in the mid-1920s to build a road north of the Transsib, until the early 1930s they remained just an idea. The impetus for the beginning of the process, most likely, was the conflict on the Chinese-Eastern Railway (CER) - on the section of the Trans-Siberian that passed through China, which was then a Soviet-Chinese joint venture and along which, before the revolution, the main part of the movement from Eastern Siberia to the Far East.

In the summer of 1929, in China, after the nationalists came to power, Chinese troops captured the Chinese Eastern Railway and held it for six months. By this time, the CER itself was no longer the only extension of the Transsib to the Pacific Ocean, but the conflict showed a potential danger on the Soviet-Chinese border, along which the main Transsib highway passed. Already in 1930, the Dalkraikom of the CPSU (b) sent to the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars proposals for the construction of a second Trans-Siberian road. This document first mentions the name "Baikal-Amur Mainline". It was proposed to start the road from the Urusha station (approximately the middle of the present BAM in the Skovorodino area), and the final destination was planned to be Komsomolsk-on-Amur, which was then the village of Perm.

By 1932, Dalkraikom's proposals passed all the authorities, and in April the first resolution of the Council of People's Commissars "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline" appeared, approving the BAM construction plan and the route proposed by Dalkraikom. The People's Commissariat of Railways was ordered to ensure "an immediate start to all preparatory work for the construction of the BAM." The construction, according to the decree, was planned to be completed in three years: through traffic along the entire highway in operational mode was to be opened by the end of 1935.

But almost at the very beginning of construction, it became clear that its timing, like many other objects of the Stalinist five-year plans, was too optimistic and it would not be possible to finish the highway on time. The main problem was the lack of manpower: with the officially established contingent of workers at the construction site at 25-26 thousand people, only 2.5 thousand people were attracted to the start of construction in 1932. Moreover, the first head of the BAM construction, Sergei Mrachkovsky, considered even the established contingent to be three times understated. Considering the difficulties with the delivery of building materials and equipment, by the end of 1932, the project had formed, as they said at the time, "huge breakthroughs", funding for construction by the fourth quarter was almost stopped, and its curtailment was already discussed.

The decision was usual for that time: in October 1932, when it finally became clear that the plan for recruiting free workers would not be possible, the construction was transferred from the People's Commissariat for Railways (NKPS) to the OGPU, which at that moment in record time was completing the construction of Belomorsko -Baltic channel. The number of prisoners in the OGPU camps grew every year, the construction of the Belomorkanal ended in 1933, so the problem with the labor force at BAM was resolved: by 1934, about a quarter of more than 500 thousand prisoners were employed in the structure of the Baikal-Amur camp (BAMLAG) who served time in the camps of the OGPU. The most famous of the BAMLAG prisoners were the philosopher Pavel Florensky and the future Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky.

The issue of labor was removed, but the original plans by 1934 still had to be changed: the territory of the future route turned out to be poorly studied, and a significant part of the labor force was thrown into the construction of the second tracks of the Transsib. So far, it has been decided to carry out work on the construction of a new highway only at the connecting section from the BAM station on the Transsib (in the Skovorodin area) to Tynda. But it was also opened with a great delay - only in October 1937. In the same year, after the start of a full-scale Sino-Japanese war in northern China, the Soviet government adopted a second resolution on the construction of the BAM, approving the modern route of the highway from Taishet through Ust-Kut, Nizhneangarsk, Tynda, Urgal, Komsomolsk-on-Amur with exit to the port of Sovetskaya Gavan.

The total length of the route has grown from the originally proposed 1.65-2 thousand km to 4 thousand km or more. For the design of BAM, according to this resolution, a special design institute "BAMtransproekt" was created for the first time (since 1939 it was renamed into "BAMproekt"). In 1937, work began on the construction of the second connecting part with the Transsib - the Izvestkovaya-Urgal line. In 1938, after the first open conflict between the Red Army and Japanese troops on Lake Khasan, another resolution of the Council of People's Commissars followed, which approved a new date for putting the highway into operation - 1945.

The Great Patriotic War that broke out in 1941 confused all plans for the construction of the highway. Two months before the start of the war with Germany, in April the USSR and Japan signed a non-aggression pact. The Japanese military industry began to prepare for a naval war with the United States, and the likelihood of a large-scale war on Far East, and with it the strategic need for the construction of the BAM, has significantly decreased. On the contrary, in the European part of the country, with the beginning of the war with Germany, the situation worsened every day, and in these conditions the NKPS used the materials of the BAM as a reserve. Rails and railway equipment were used in the restoration of destroyed sections of railways in the southern sections of the front, for example, in the construction of a supply road along the western bank of the Volga near Stalingrad - the Trans-Volga Mainline, in the construction of railway sections of the transport corridor for organizing lend-lease supplies to the allies through Iran.

As a result, almost all the constructed lines of the BAM actually ceased to exist. In 1941, the BAM-Tynda line, introduced back in 1937, was dismantled, the construction of the Urgal-Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Taishet-Padun and Komsomolsk-Sovetskaya Gavan sections was mothballed. The Izvestkovaya-Urgal line was preliminarily put into operation in 1942, but a year later it was also dismantled. The railway service on the already constructed sections with a total length of about 400 km was terminated.

Nevertheless, even during the war, BAM remained a priority project for the Soviet leadership. As soon as the situation at the front began to improve, in 1943 the State Defense Committee of the USSR resumed in an accelerated mode the construction of the Komsomolsk-Sovetskaya Gavan line, at that time the most important in case of a war with Japan. With the help of American supplies of railway equipment under Lend-Lease in July 1945 (a month before the Soviet Union declared war on Japan), the line went into operation. Construction continued immediately after the war. Work resumed on the western section of the BAM, in 1947 the Taishet-Bratsk line was opened, and in 1951 it was brought to Lena station (Ust-Kut city), actually forming the current western section of the route. True, the full-fledged commissioning of the site took place only seven years later - in 1958. The lines were necessary to ensure the operation of large construction projects - the Ust-Ilimsk hydroelectric power station, the Bratsk and Ust-Ilimsk LPK.

But these lines were the last to be introduced before the start of new construction in the Brezhnev period. Real threat Soviet borders in the east no longer existed: after the communists came to power in China, Soviet-Chinese relations seemed to forever become exclusively friendly, and Japan no longer existed as a military entity in the region after the defeat in the war. In addition, the new leadership that came to power, headed by Nikita Khrushchev, proposed new large-scale projects in other regions, in particular the development of virgin lands.

And since the end of the 1950s, one more problem has been added to the already known problems of construction - difficulties in attracting labor, permafrost and difficult terrain. In the late 1950s, high seismic activity was recorded on the BAM route: seven earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 to 10 occurred in the area of the highway at once. In 1957, on the northern spurs of the Udokan ridge, the most significant on the territory of the USSR since 1911, the Muya earthquake of magnitude 10-11 occurred, which caused the formation of a system of cracks and faults about 300 km long, a shift in river channels, and the collapse of mountain slopes. In 1961, the Institute of the Earth's Crust of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences began seismological studies along the BAM route, which took several years.

Until the end of the 1960s, only minor work continued on the BAM - embankments were dumped and rocks were cut to the west of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the constructed section of the main highway and the Izvestkovaya-Urgal connecting line were used as a timber road. Construction on BAM was almost completely suspended until the mid-1970s.

The state decided to return to the BAM topic only in the 1960s. As before, geopolitical considerations were the impetus for renewed investment and the start of new design work. Since the late 1950s, relations between the USSR and China began to deteriorate, with the Chinese leadership insisting on a revision of the border with the Soviet Union. By the second half of the 1960s, it became clear that an armed conflict on the Soviet-Chinese border was quite real, and it could be quite large-scale: forces of 658 thousand Soviet and 814 thousand Chinese soldiers were deployed on 4380 km of the Soviet-Chinese border. In 1969, these assumptions were confirmed - between the USSR and China, the first open border conflict took place on the disputed Damansky Island, where 300 Chinese soldiers landed. Fortunately, the conflict did not escalate into full-scale hostilities, but clashes between Soviet border guards and Chinese troops continued after that.

Of course, military-strategic considerations were not the only reason for the start of new work at the BAM. Soviet economists viewed the construction of the railway as the main element of the integrated development of the productive forces of the Irkutsk region, Buryatia, Transbaikalia, Yakutia, the Amur region and the Khabarovsk Territory. The route of the route passed by the largest undeveloped deposits located in these regions, including Udokan copper, the largest oil and gas (Chayandinskoe and Verkhnechonskoe) and coal (Neryungrinskoe and Elginskoe) deposits of Yakutia, polymetallic (Chineyskoe) and uranium (Kholodnenskoe) deposits of the Buryatiya region ...

Economists substantiated the need to create nine territorial-production complexes (TPK) in the BAM zone. In addition, high oil prices spurred government investment in the 1970s, and Transsib traffic increased significantly, raising fears among the country's leadership that the capacity of the main road would be insufficient for the foreseeable future. In the future, the task was to continue the BAM northward to Yakutsk, then to Magadan, Chukotka and Kamchatka.

In 1967, a decree was issued by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the resumption of design and survey work at the BAM, which were entrusted to the institutes Mosgiprotrans, Lengiprotrans and Sibgiprotrans. The design work, in fact, had to be carried out anew - as due to clarification in comparison with the 1930s natural conditions on the route of the route (including increased seismic hazard), and due to a change technical conditions operation of the route, on which, instead of the previously planned steam locomotive traction, it was now supposed to organize movement on diesel and electric. By this time, only the westernmost section of the Taishet-Lena highway was electrified.

The first work on the new construction site began before 1974, from which it is customary to count the history of the modern BAM. The first construction subdivision of the highway, the BAMstroyput administration at the Skovorodino station, was created in November 1971, and the construction itself began in 1972. In April, the first cubic meters of soil were dumped at the BAM-Tyndinsky section, and in September the first link was laid at the zero kilometer of the line.

In March 1974, at a speech in Alma-Ata, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev for the first time called BAM "the most important construction site of the Ninth Five-Year Plan." Four months later, on July 8, a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR N 561 "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur railway" appeared, which is now considered the official start of construction. It was planned to complete the construction of the highway in ten years. The plan envisaged the construction of a 3,145 km highway from Ust-Kut (Lena station) to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the laying of a second 680 km track on the already constructed Taishet-Lena section and a single-track 400-km BAM-Tynda-Berkakit railway - a total of 4,225 km of track.

At the end of July 1974, Pravda published the article "From Baikal to the Amur" on the front page; it launched a mass agitation campaign that lasted until the end of construction. True, very little has been written about the initial stage of construction of the BAM in the 1930s in numerous books, brochures and newspaper articles that were published in multi-million copies. By this time real story even relatively successful projects, such as Belomorkanal, the state preferred not to tell. And about the sections of BAM built and dismantled during the war, for example, in the Soviet encyclopedic dictionary of the 1980s, there was nothing at all - the date of the beginning of construction was 1974, and only in passing was mention of two sections built "in the late 1940s - early 1950s ".

As in the 1930s, during the years of the second construction of the BAM, the state was faced with the task of providing the construction site with a labor force, and relatively cheap at that. This problem had to be solved in other ways. Even before the July resolution of the Central Committee, at the 17th Congress of the Komsomol in April, BAM was declared an all-Union Komsomol construction site. Right at the congress, the first Komsomol detachment was formed to go to the highway. By the summer of 1974, 2,000 Komsomol members were already working at BAM. The share of those who arrived at the construction site "on a public call" in the first year was 47.7% of the total number of employed, and in some subdivisions - up to 80%. In addition to volunteers, university graduates who came to the BAM for distribution also worked at the construction site.

Second driving force the railway troops became - the same Komsomol members, but who got to the construction site no longer voluntarily. The first military construction units arrived at BAM in August 1974. Over the construction of the BAM infrastructure, they took the patronage of the republics of the USSR - the Urgal station was built by Ukraine, Muyakan - Belarus, Uoyan - Lithuania, Kichera - Estonia, Tayura - Armenia, Ulkan - Azerbaijan, Soloni - Tajikistan, Alonka - Moldova, Tynda was built under the patronage of Moscow. In parallel, construction was carried out and "at the exit" - in the ports of Vanino and Sovetskaya Gavan.

Komsomol members and the military built the road almost as quickly as the prisoners. In 1979, the Komsomolsk-Berezovka section was completed, which closed the eastern ring of the BAM (Izvestkovaya-Urgal-Komsomolsk-Volochaevka). By 1981, when the main line in the Ministry of Railways officially became an independent Baikal-Amur railway with management in Tynda, the operational length of the tracks of the new road was more than 1.6 thousand km. In the western section, the Lena-Nizhneangarsk line was put into operation in the same year. In 1982, on the eastern section of the BAM, a working train traffic was opened from Tynda to the Verkhnezeysk station, and in November of the same year the 300-km Urgal-Postyshevo section was put into operation.

The docking of the western and eastern sections of the tracks took place in September 1984, and on October 1, a ceremonial laying of the "golden" links of the BAM took place at the Kuenga station in the Chita region. For another five years, work continued on the completion of the BAM infrastructure and auxiliary branches. In 1989, the acceptance certificate of the line was signed, and the through traffic of trains began on it. But the final work on the construction of the BAM was completed only 14 years later, when the fifth largest in the world 15-kilometer Severomuisky tunnel was opened in 2003, preparatory work on which began in 1976. Before the construction of the tunnel was completed, trains had to walk a 64-kilometer bypass.

The construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline required the mobilization of huge resources from the entire country. Even before the completion of the highway, many declared the construction pointless and unnecessary. Around the history of the BAM construction, there are still many controversies. What is the Baikal-Amur Mainline after all? Is this a road to the future or a huge mistake of the Soviet regime? Below are some pretty interesting facts, read on and draw your own conclusions ..

In 1926, the Separate Corps of Railway Troops began to conduct topographic reconnaissance of the future BAM route. In 1932, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR issued a decree "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur railway", according to which design and survey work was launched and construction began. By the fall, it became clear that the main problem in construction was a shortage of workers. With the officially established number of employees at 25 thousand people, it was possible to attract only 2.5 thousand people. As a result, on October 25, the second decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was issued, according to which the construction of the BAM was transferred to the special management of the OGPU. Following this, the construction of three connecting lines from the Trans-Siberian Railway to the planned BAM route continued (mainly by the forces of the prisoners of the Baikal-Amur ITL (Bamlag)): Bam - Tynda, Volochaevka - Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Izvestkovaya - Urgal. In 1937, the general direction of the BAM route was determined: Taishet - Bratsk - the northern tip of Baikal - Tyndinsky - Ust-Niman - Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan. In May 1938, Bamlag was disbanded and six railway ITLs were created on its basis. In 1938, construction began on the western section from Taishet to Bratsk, and in 1939 - preparatory work on the eastern section from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Sovetskaya Gavan.
The photo shows a large junction railway station in Tynda

In January 1942, by decision of the State Defense Committee, the track links and bridge trusses were removed from the Bam - Tynda section, which had been built by that time, for the construction of the Stalingrad - Saratov - Syzran - Ulyanovsk (Volzhskaya Rokada) railway line.

The photo shows a map of the Baikal-Amur Mainline

In June 1947, the construction of the eastern section of Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Urgal continued (mainly by the prisoners of the Amur ITL (Amurlag)). Before the disbandment of Amurlag (in April 1953), embankments were poured along the entire section, tracks were laid, bridges were built on the Komsomolsk-2 - Berezovy (Postyshevo) section. The site was operated by the Komsomolsk United Railway Transport Enterprise, whose office and depot were located in the village of Khurmuli, Komsomolsk District. The Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan section was commissioned in 1945, and trains on the Taishet - Bratsk - Ust-Kut (Lena) line opened in 1950. Below is the map, where the Baikal-Amur Mainline is marked in green, against the background of the Trans-Siberian Mainline

In 1967, a decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued, and design and research work was resumed. By the decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated July 8, 1974 "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur railway", the necessary funds were allocated for the construction of the first category railway Ust-Kut (Lena) - Komsomolsk-on-Amur with a length of 3145 km, the second track Taishet - Ust-Kut (Lena) - 680 km, the Bam - Tynda and Tynda - Berkakit lines - 397 km.

In April 1974, it was declared an all-Union shock Komsomol construction site, and masses of young people were sent here for internships.
In 1977, the Bam - Tynda line was put into permanent operation, and in 1979, the Tynda - Berkakit line. The main part of the road was built for more than 12 years - from April 5, 1972 to October 27, 1984, and on November 1, 1989, the entire new three-thousand-kilometer section of the highway was put into permanent operation in the volume of the start-up complex. The longest in Russia Severo-Muisky tunnel (15,343 meters), the construction of which began in May 1977, was pierced to the end only in March 2001 and was put into permanent operation in December 2003.

Such a large-scale construction was only within the power of a great power, with its colossal economic power and resources. Sixty branches of the national economy, hundreds of supplier enterprises, design and scientific organizations in Leningrad and Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk and Rostov, Nikopol and Blagoveshchensk took part in providing the construction site with everything necessary. BAM is rightly called the route of friendship and brotherhood. It was built by representatives of 70 nationalities of the USSR. The General Scheme of the District Planning of the BAM Influence Zone was developed, taking into account the regional features of the route, specific factors of the economic development of the adjacent territories, as well as the multinational features of architectural and planning solutions, the art of construction of all republics participating in the arrangement of the highway. Tynda, Neryungri, Severobaikalsk - the largest cities along the highway - were built exactly according to master plans. As a result, each has its own appearance, its own special architectural "accents". However, like any new business, the Baikal-Amur Mainline has aroused interest in environmental problems. Virgin nature demanded a careful attitude towards itself. After all, a delicate natural organism, balanced for millennia, is especially fragile in conditions of permafrost, high seismicity and low temperatures.

It was important to use the powerful equipment in the arsenal of the builders wisely, carefully and skillfully so that the industrial power of the BAM would organically combine with the natural landscape, the purity of the air, the transparency of rivers and lakes. The extreme conditions of the track required new scientific, technical, engineering and production solutions. Here, for the first time in world practice, a fundamentally new design of the foundations of bridge supports was created, a number of new ideas in tunneling were implemented, technologies for dumping the subgrade and drilling and blasting operations in permafrost conditions were developed, modern methods of dealing with icing appeared. The highway passed through the territory of the region in the northern regions rich in natural resources. Near it, the Svobodnenskoe brown coal deposit was explored and transferred for development. In the Zeysky and Tyndinsky districts, there are rich auriferous deposits, on the basis of which dozens of powerful dredges operate. Millions of hectares are covered with forests, the total exploitable reserves of which exceed one billion cubic meters. Mastering all natural resources and serves Baikal-Amur Mainline... Where only the nomadic Evenk hunter used to travel on his reindeer, where geologists only occasionally flew in by helicopter, the drone of a diesel locomotive woke up the taiga, residential settlements have sprung up. Previously, the southern districts of the Amur Region were connected with the North by the AYAM highway (Amur-Yakutsk highway), which runs from the Bolshoi Never on the Transsib to Chulman. And this thin transport stream was replaced by a "full-flowing river" named BAM

The Baikal-Amur Mainline is one of the largest railway lines in the world. The construction of the main part of the railway, which took place in difficult geological and climatic conditions, took more than 12 years, and one of the most difficult sections - the Severo-Muisky tunnel - was put into permanent operation only in 2003.

The Severomuisky ridge was one of the most difficult sections of the BAM. Before the opening of the Severomuisky tunnel, trains followed a bypass railway line, laid across the ridge. The first variant of the bypass with a length of 24.6 km was built in 1982 - 1983; during its construction, slopes of up to 40 thousandths were allowed (that is, up to 40 meters of rise per kilometer of distance). Because of this, only freight trains in several cars; the movement of passenger trains was prohibited (people were transported through the pass on buses)

In 1985 - 1989, a new bypass line 54 km long was built, consisting of numerous steep serpentines, high viaducts and two loop tunnels (the old bypass was later dismantled). The "Devil's Bridge" became famous - a viaduct in a sharp turn on a slope across the valley of the Itykyt river, standing on two-tiered supports. The train was forced to maneuver between the hills, moving at a maximum speed of 20 km / h and risking being hit by an avalanche. On uphills, it became necessary to push trains with auxiliary locomotives. The site required large expenditures for track maintenance and traffic safety. In the photo Devil's bridge

It took over 25 years to build the tunnel through the ridge. The first train passed through the tunnel on December 21, 2001, but the tunnel was accepted into permanent operation only on December 5, 2003. The total length of the mine workings of the tunnel is 45 km; along the entire length of the tunnel, a smaller diameter mine is used for pumping water, placing engineering systems and delivering technical personnel. Ventilation is provided by three vertical shaft shafts. The safety of trains passing through the tunnel is ensured, among other things, by seismic and radiation monitoring systems. To maintain the microclimate in the tunnel, special gates are installed on both of its portals, which are opened only for the passage of the train. The engineering systems of the tunnel are controlled by a special automated system developed at the Design and Technological Institute of Computer Engineering of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Along with the tunnel, the Severomuisky bypass is also maintained in working order - it is expected that it can be used in the event of an increase in cargo traffic along the BAM.

There are many trains running along the Baikal-Amur Mainline. Below is the BAM train schedule

In 2007, the government approved a plan, according to which it is planned to build "capillary" branches to mineral deposits. Also, earlier it was decided to build a crossing in the form of the Sakhalin tunnel or bridge.

In 2009, the reconstruction of the Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan (Far Eastern Railway) section began with the construction of a new Kuznetsovsky tunnel, it is planned to be completed in 2016. The total cost of the project is 59.8 billion rubles. These works will increase the speed of trains, which will entail an increase in throughput and carrying capacity, and will also make it possible to increase the weight rate of trains on the section from 3600 to 5600 tons.

According to "Strategy-2030" the volume of investments in BAM will amount to about 400 billion rubles. 13 new railway lines with a total length of about 7 thousand kilometers will be built. These are, first of all, such cargo-forming lines as Lena - Nepa - Lensk, Khani - Olekminsk, Novaya Chara - Apsatskaya, Novaya Chara - China, Shimanovskaya - Gar - Fevralsk, Ulak - Elginskoye field. The construction of the last branch is already in full swing by private investors

BAM construction history

BAM currently

Prospects for the development of BAM

The main deposits of minerals in the gravity zone of the BAM

The most studied fields with an estimated economic efficiency of development:

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