The idea of a railway between Siberia and
Russian Turkestan was aired as early as 1886, but it was supplanted by that of
a more practicable line between Tashkent and
Orenburg in the
Urals. On 15 October 1896 the
Verny town duma set up a commission to examine the feasibility of building a Turkestan–Siberia Railway. It was expected that the line would facilitate the transport of cotton from Turkestan to Siberia and cheap Siberian grain from Russia to the
Fergana Valley. An eastern branch would enhance Russia's military and economic presence on the
Chinese border. In 1906 the Russian imperial government decided to finance the construction of the first section, between
Barnaul and
Arys. A team of Russian engineers made a detailed survey of the steppe and semi-desert regions the railway was expected to cross. On 21 October 1915 the northern section linking
Novosibirsk and
Semipalatinsk as the Altai Railway. The missing Arys–
Pishpek–
Tokmak section, officially known as
Semipalatinsk Railway, was left to be built by a French-financed Russian-managed private railway consortium.
World War I put an end to this project. After the
Bolshevik Revolution construction work was suspended for a decade, and the long Semipalatinsk–
Ayaguz line, built-in 1918–19 by the
White Russians on the initiative of
Admiral Kolchak, was demolished for no apparent reason. The remaining railway were constructed with great fanfare as part of the
first five-year plan between 1928 and 1932. Regular passenger service was finally established between Semipalatinsk and Ayaguz on 10 May 1929. The Turksib was completed on 21 April 1930. The locomotive which pioneered the route going from Tashkent to Semipalatinsk (Э-1441(rus)) later became a part of a memorial in
Alma-Ata. Viktor Alexandrovitsh Turin directed a 1929
Soviet documentary film on the building of the railway which also bore the name
Turksib. == Connectivity ==