"Give bam!" history of the last superproject of the USSR. Literary and historical notes of a young technician When we finished building bam

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 in the Far East, and with it the strategic need to build 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. There was no longer a real threat to the Soviet borders in the east: 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 - both due to the clarification of the natural conditions on the route of the route (including increased seismic hazard) in comparison with the 1930s, and due to changes in the technical conditions of operation of the route, on which, instead of the previously planned locomotive traction 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, the decree 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, the state preferred not to tell the real story of even relatively successful projects like the Belomorkanal. 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 faced 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.

The second driving force was the railway troops - 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 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 Baikal-Amur Mainline, as an abbreviation, bears the abbreviation BAM, consisting of the initial letters of the words of the road name. Today it is the very same railway laid across the territory of the Far East and across the expanses of the Eastern part of Siberia. Accordingly, the subordination of the constructed tracks occurs on a territorial basis, they are part of the Far Eastern Railway and the Eastern Highways.

BAM in the world is considered one of the most significant and long railway track.

The first ideas of a grandiose construction

At the end of the nineteenth century, in 1888, the Russian Technical Society showed interest in leading the possible construction of a railway in the easternmost regions of the Russian Empire. For discussion, specialists were offered one of the projects for laying railways from the Pacific Ocean, further along the northern end of Lake Baikal. One year later, Colonel N.A. Voloshinov, being a representative of the General Staff, led a small detachment, having covered a path equal to a thousand-kilometer segment, starting in Ust-Kut, reaching the settlement of Mui. It was in these places that the BAM route was later laid. But then, according to the results of the expedition, a completely different conclusion was made. As a red thread in the report, it was written that in these places it is not possible to carry out the planned grandiose construction. One of the main reasons for this conclusion was the complete lack of proper technical support, which at that time was not yet available in Russia at all.

Once again, the question of the possible construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline was brought up a year after the end of hostilities in the Russo-Japanese War, that is, in 1906. At that time, the proposal to create a second branch of the Transsib was still in the air. However, they limited themselves to only carrying out survey work. With the onset of 1924, talks about the beginning of the construction of the aforementioned highway completely cease.

Briefly about the history of BAM

For the first time, in 1930, but still in the project, the name of the railway appears as "Baikal-Amur Mainline". Three years later, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR made such an important decision to start building the BAM tracks, although in reality for another four long years only design and exploration work is being carried out.

With the onset of 1937, construction began to create railway tracks from the station point - Sovetskaya Gavan to the station point - Taishet. The first point is the eastern border of our country, and the station is located just at the fork in the roads of the Trans-Siberian and the future BAM.

The construction of the main route Sovetskaya Gavan - Taishet was carried out with long breaks in the time interval, from 1938 to 1984. The most difficult section is called the Severo-Muisky tunnel, its length is 15343 meters. The permanent operation of the named part of the road began in 2003. The project by which the paths were created is dated 1928.

The volume of freight traffic at the end of 2014 is twelve million tons.

Today the BAM route is undergoing modernization in order to increase the annual cargo flow, it is planned to increase this figure to a value of fifty million tons of annual turnover.

Where is the highway?

The length of the main railway line from Sovetskaya Gavan to Taishet is 4287 kilometers. To the south of this path lies the Transsib railway. The BAM railway tracks cross the river bed: the Amur near the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the Lena near the town of Ust-Kut and the Angara near the town of Bratsk, and the entire route crosses eleven river channels along bridge crossings. The paths ran along the most beautiful places on the northern shore of Lake Baikal. The Bamovskaya route has a number of branches: a one hundred and twenty kilometers road stretches to the station point of the Black Cape. It was there that a tunnel leading to Sakhalin Island should have appeared. Now this construction site is in an abandoned state.

In the direction of the station point of Volochaevka, a railway line with a length of three hundred and fifty-one kilometers was laid. In the area of ​​the Elga field, the length of the branch is three hundred kilometers. The length of the branch line to Izvestkovaya station is three hundred twenty six kilometers. A sixteen-kilometer path has been laid to the Chegdomyn station point. In the direction of the city of Yakutsk, the paths of the Amur-Yakutsk highway lay. In the direction of the station point Bamovsky, the length of the tracks was one hundred and seventy-nine kilometers. Sixty-six kilometers of tracks have been laid to the Chineyskoye field. The branch towards Ust-Ilimsk is two hundred and fifteen kilometers long.

Almost the entire path of the Baikal-Amur highway is laid through mountainous terrain. The highest point of the highway is located on the Mururinsky pass, its height is one thousand three hundred twenty three meters above sea level. The difficult path goes along the Stanovoy Upland. BAM abounds in steep slopes; on some of these sections of the highway, restrictions are imposed on the weight parameter of train trains, and double locomotive traction is used. On this road, ten tunnel structures had to be erected. The longest on Russian territory is the Severo-Muisky Baikal tunnel. Along the entire length of the route, there were created small and large bridge crossings in the amount of two thousand two hundred and thirty units. On the highway there are more than sixty villages and cities, more than two hundred sidings and station points.

Along the entire route: Taishet - Ust-Kut, the railway is electrified with alternating current and has a double-track format. Further along the Ust-Kut route, the road has a single-track electrified format.

On the easternmost section of the track, traffic is carried out using diesel traction of locomotives.

Seaports

The western section of the BAM route was equipped with a whole chain of hydro ports. They were on the rivers: on Selimdzha, near the village of Norsky, on Vitim, not far from the village of Neliaty, on the Angara, in the area of ​​the village of Bratskoye, on the Upper Angara, near Nizhneangarskoye and on Lake Irkan.

Construction history

Stalin period

The acceptance of the direction of the entire Bamov route took place in 1937, it was supposed to run along the following route: Sovetskaya Gavan - Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Ust-Niman, Tynda - northern shore of Lake Baikal - Bratsk - Taishet.

The section located between Nizhneangarsk and Tynda was included in the project when aerial photography of the indicated area was carried out.

In the days of May 1938, Bamlag was disbanded. Instead, six ITLs were formed to support construction on the railroad. In the same year, the construction of a railway line began on the western section, between Taishet and Bratsk. Preparatory work has started on the track section from Sovetskaya Gavan to Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

During the war period, in January 1942, the State Defense Committee decided to dismantle the bridge trusses and track links on the Tynda - BAM section and transfer them to the railway section along the route: Ulyanovsk - Syzran - Saratov - Stalingrad to create the Volga road.

With the onset of June 1947, construction work resumed on the section of the railway between Urgal and Komsomolsk-on-Amur, they were carried out by prisoners from the Amur ITL. Over the next six years, full filling of embankments was carried out throughout the site from Berezovoe to Komsomolsk-2. Subsequently, the mentioned part of the road was operated by railway transport, which is part of the Komsomolsk united economy. The depot and the administration building are located in the settlement territory of Khurmuli, located in the Komsomolsk region. Part of the road from Sovetskaya Gavan to Komsomolsk-on-Amur started working back in 1945. In July 1951, the first train set was launched on the route from Taishet to Bratsk and further to Ust-Kut. The permanent operation of this section began in 1958.

Aerial photography application

An interesting fact is that during the survey work, not only ground reconnaissance was used, but aerial photography, which was then considered an avant-garde direction, was carried out in difficult and impassable places. Aerial photography became possible with the participation of pilot Mikhail Kirillov, who later became a hero of the Soviet Union.

Experts at the Moscow Air Geodetic Trust have confirmed that aerial photographs are accurate and have a certain value, and can be used wherever the need arises. This work can be done by railway specialists. One of the first railway pilots was L.G. Krause. Prior to the implementation of these geodetic works, the named pilot worked on the route: Moscow - Leningrad, delivering the central newspaper "Pravda" to the city on the Neva. Beginning in the summer months of 1936, the pilot L.G. Krause was actively tracing the BAM. The length of the entire reconnaissance was equal to three thousand four hundred and eighty kilometers, and the total area of ​​aerial photography was equal to seven thousand five hundred square kilometers.

The first attempts at aerial photography were unsuccessful. Since the type of aircraft used did not have the proper stability on the course of the given route, and therefore the frames turned out to be blurry. For the subsequent work on aerial photography, other aircraft were used. It was the aircraft type MP-1-bis, which belongs to the seaplane detachment. Their basing was carried out in the Irkutsk hydroport, where there were special hangars for the winter period and there was a base for carrying out the necessary repairs.

Brezhnev period

Nine years later, prospecting work was again required, and already in July 1974, the creation of new branches of the railway began, it was about the construction of a second track along the following routes: Berkakit - Tynda and further to BAM, and from Ust-Kut to Taishet. In total, this is one thousand seventy-seven kilometers of railways. At the same time, a railway belonging to the first category is being created along the route from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Ust-Kut, the length of these tracks is equal to three thousand one hundred and forty-five kilometers.

The geography of the newly built railway stations and stations along the entire length of the line of the road being created is also interesting. Ukrainian builders have built a station building in Novy Urgal. Azerbaijani builders created station points Ulkan and Angoya, Leningraders erected the walls of Severobaikalsk, Muscovites built Tynda. The Bashkirs were building up in Verkhnezeisk. Dagestanis, Ingush and Chechens worked to create Kunerma. Residents of Krasnodar and Stavropol distinguished themselves in the creation of the Lena station. Khabarovsk residents built Suduk. Krasnoyarsk residents were building Fevralsk. The Tulchans created the Marevaya station, the Rostovites built Kirenga. Chelyabinsk residents - Yuktali. Permians - Dyugabud, Sverdlovsk residents - Khorogochi and Kuvyktu. Ulyanovsk - Izhak, Kuibyshev - Eterken, Saratov - Gerbi, Volgograd - Jamka, Penza - Amgun. The Novosibirsk people created Postyshevo and Tungala. Tambovites distinguished themselves during the construction of Hurumuli. Kichera was built by the Estonians.

Since April 1974, BAM has acquired the status of "Shock Komsomol Construction". This railway was built by many young people. At that time local anecdotes and new jokes related to the name of the road were created here.

Since 1977, the road section on the Tynda - BAM line has been in operation on a permanent basis. Two years later, the Berkakit - Tynda line started working. The main construction of railway lines was carried out in a twelve-year period of time, starting from 04/05/1972 and until 10/17/1984. Five years later, all three thousand kilometers of railway lines were put into operation. On the eve of 09/29/1984, the brigades of Ivan Varshavsky and Alexander Bondar met in the area of ​​the Balbukhta junction, and three days later the installation of a "golden" link took place in a solemn atmosphere at the Kuanda station. The road was now a single mechanism with the longest tunnel in Russia, but its full operation began only in 2003.

Beginning in 1986, BAM received eight hundred units of various Japanese-made technical devices at its one-time disposal to ensure the further construction of the road.

At the prices of 1991, the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline cost our state 17.7 billion rubles, which indicates that it is the most expensive infrastructure project in the history of our country. The initial cost of the project was foreseen four times less in relation to the already indicated price.

The implemented project provided that the Baikal-Amur Mainline would be an integral part of the entire complex of enterprises that would be involved in the development of those regions of significant volumes of natural resources. The project envisaged the construction of nine giant complexes with industrial enterprises, but only one such association was created, called the South Yakutsk coal complex. It included the Neryungri coal mine.

A number of experts and specialists believe that the constructed road will be considered unprofitable without creating a massive development of already open and declared places with significant reserves of minerals. It is also noteworthy that all the discovered deposits in this region are located along the routes of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, their actual development has not yet begun. At the beginning of the 2000s, according to one of the high-ranking officials of Russian Railways, in the rank of vice president of the company, a statement was made about the gigantic amounts of annual losses. By that time, they had reached an annual value of 5 billion rubles.

2000s

With the onset of the 2000s, a big jump was expected in the economy of this region. Such rosy forecasts were based on the development of private business. The Udokan copper deposit was to be developed by Alisher Usmanov with his company Metalloinvest. The Chineyskoye deposit was transferred into the hands of Oleg Deripaska, for his enterprise "Basic Element". The development of the Elga coal deposit was to be carried out by the Mechel enterprise. All practical projects aimed at the development of the entire BAM were suspended indefinitely. The plans had to be adjusted due to the onset of the global economic crisis at the end of the 2000s. With the onset of 2011, certain improvements in the economy of the Russian Federation begin. Already in August, its first black coal was mined at the Elga deposit. At the same time, the construction of a new railway line towards the named mine began.

Despite the growth in freight and passenger traffic by the end of 2009, the annual freight turnover was only twelve million tons, and twelve million passengers were transported in a year, the road was still considered unprofitable. In order for the situation to change, the volume of cargo and passenger traffic had to increase.

Modern BAM

Today, the BAM was divided, it became part of the Far Eastern Railway and the Eastern Highways, the border of the road is located in the area of ​​the Hani station point.

The construction of new branches of the BAM railway lines continues. The movement has already begun on the route: Aldan - Tommot, there is already a road to the station point Nizhniy Bestyakh and Amgi, we are talking about the length of the tracks in one hundred and five kilometers.

To date, new railway projects have already been created. To ensure road supply of the deposits at Ozernoye for the extraction of polymetals and the Khiagda deposit for the development of transportation of uranium ores, three hundred and fifty kilometers of routes will be laid along the route: Mogzon - Ozernaya - Khiagda - Novy Uoyan. This road will connect Transsib and BAM.

In the near foreseeable future, it is planned to resume the construction of either a tunnel or a bridge railway crossing to Sakhalin Island.

Since 2009, reconstruction work has been carried out on the railway section from Sovetskaya Gavan to Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The new Kuznetsovsky tunnel is planned to be launched at the end of 2016. Sixty billion rubles, in total, will be required for the implementation of the named project. The implementation of the planned work will significantly increase the speed of train trains, as well as raise the bar for the weight rate of trains to a value equal to five thousand six hundred tons.

Road development plan

The strategic plan for the development of this road provides for a significant increase in the amount of appropriations up to 400,000,000,000 rubles. These investments will enable the commissioning of heavy train sets. New railway lines with a total length of seven thousand kilometers will appear. These are the routes: from the Elginskoye field to the Ulak station, as well as from Fevralsk towards Gari and further to the Shimanovskaya station. From China to Novaya Chara, from Apsatskaya to Novaya Chara, from Olekminsk to Khani and from Lensk to Nepa and further to Lena.

After the completion of a large volume of reconstruction work, the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the direction of the BAM will significantly increase. A number of specialists suggest that the Transsib line should be more specialized in container and passenger transportation. It is expected that in the near future BAM will be able to provide an annual transportation of goods in the amount of fifty million tons.

07/09/2014 on the section Lodya - Taksimo in a solemn atmosphere on the occasion of the celebration of the anniversary date - the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of construction of the BAM, a "silver" link was laid.

December 2013 was the beginning of new design and survey work on the track section between Khani and Tynda, which was headed by specialists from Chelyabzheldorproekt, which is a branch of Roszheldorproekt OJSC. The implementation of this project provides for the construction of eleven new units of railway sidings: Ivanokit, Medvezhy, Mostovoy, Student, Zayachy, Sosnovy, Glukhariny, Mokhovy and other station points. This named site has the highest utilization rate compared to other sites. Therefore, within three years, new second branches of tracks with a total length of one hundred kilometers will appear here.

At the beginning of 2015, within one day, two thousand carriages passed through the Tynda station. Upon completion of the reconstruction, it is planned that the value of this indicator will be increased three times. During the construction of the second tracks, it was planned to use rail sleepers with a reinforced concrete base.

With the onset of 2014, new second railway tracks were laid on the existing embankment. Some parts of the embankment were used as a road, therefore, during the construction of the railway, the embankment was corrected. The subsidence was due to climatic conditions, the fault of which is the presence of permafrost. All detected drawdowns have been eliminated. Along the way, the restoration of the former shift camps is underway. The power supply system, all signaling devices for communication, blocking and centralization are also subject to deep reconstruction. All new sidings will have continuous welded tracks, will be retrofitted with turnouts, with a pneumatic blowing system operating on compressed air.

Assessments of the project for the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline are different, sometimes diametrically opposed. Some cite statements about the high cost, scale and romance, linking the latter factor with the beautiful and amazing nature. At the same time, calling the creation of all these railway lines a meaningless occupation, since the main question: "Why was this road built?" - and hung in the air, without an answer. In modern prices for transportation by rail, all costs have already been taken into account, which will cover the amount of losses incurred. There is no talk of profits yet.

Other pundits express their thoughts of the opposite order. Despite the absence of such an indicator as profitability, BAM became the impetus that allowed the development of local production. Without such a railway, it would be simply impossible to develop anything in this region. Given the large size of our country, one should not forget about the importance of the geopolitical role of the road.

The current President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin stated the fact that the created road is a necessary and necessary infrastructure, which in the future will certainly receive its further development. The importance of the road in the national economy and in the military-strategic one should not be disregarded. Today's resources of BAM are already beginning to be insufficient for the needs of the national economy. That is why it was necessary to modernize the entire Baikal road.

As for the presence of interesting facts, then they are only looking at a hundred to be considered an interesting event. It is not a secret for anyone today that during the construction of the BAM, construction troops in the amount of two corps belonging to the armed forces of the Soviet Union were used for their intended purpose.

The construction of the road removed the transport problem of duplicating the Transsib. This was especially felt during the period of tense relations with the People's Republic of China. One of the asteroids is named by the road abbreviation of the same name. The discovery of this asteroid took place at the Crimean observatory on 10/08/1969 by astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh.

There are also incidental cases on the subject of knowledge of the Russian language, since the phrase: "Baikal-Amur Mainline" according to the main word "mainline" refers to the female gender, but the abbreviation "BAM" used should be attributed to the male gender.

For the needs of BAM, at one time in 1976 from Germany were delivered ten thousand cargo onboard vehicles and dump trucks of the Magirus-Deutz brand with an air-cooled diesel engine. In fairness, it should be noted that a number of cars continue to work to the full on the roads of the Far East. And in those distant seventies, these cars were considered comfortable and prestigious, in comparison with our domestic trucks. Other foreign equipment also worked on the construction of this highway.

There are also many sad pages related to the use of prison labor in heavy construction work. Then it was a common practice on a national scale. That, in those days, one should not have been surprised to meet the famous writer Anastasia Tsvetaeva, who was related to the poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, or the philosopher and engineer Pavel Florensky, at the construction of the BAM.

In June 1974, a joint resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers "On the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline" was issued, since then this sonorous abbreviation has become one of the symbols of the Brezhnev era.
However, in reality, the Baikal-Amur Mainline, one of the largest in the world, has been under construction since May 1938.
In 1937, the general direction of the BAM route was determined: Taishet - Bratsk - northern tip of Baikal - Tyndinsky - Ust-Niman - Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan.
In May 1938, six railway labor camps (labor camps) were created on the basis of Bamlag. 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 June 1947, the construction of the eastern section of Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Urgal continued (mainly by the prisoners of the Amur ITL (Amurlag)). The first train on the full length of the Taishet - Bratsk - Ust-Kut (Lena) line passed in July 1951, in 1958 the section was put into permanent operation. However, further construction of the highway was canceled in April 1953, along with "most of the other great Stalinist construction projects."
They remembered the BAM project in the late 1960s, when relations with China began to balance on the brink of war. The easily vulnerable Transsib needed a backup at a safe distance from the border. In April 1974, BAM was declared an "all-Union shock Komsomol construction site" and soon Komsomol guitars rang out among the endless Siberian taiga.

One of the student teams on the construction of BAM, 1975:

The second part of the BAM epic began ...

Rally dedicated to the arrival of the construction team named after the XVIII Congress of the Komsomol. Russia, Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk region, July 1, 1979:

RIA Novosti

10 years after the resumption of construction. the famous "Golden Docking" took place and through traffic on the highway was opened.

On September 29, 1984 at 4:05 pm local time (10:05 Moscow time) at the future Chita junction of Balbukhta, the oncoming rail-sleepers touched each other:


Officially, the "gold" links were laid at Kuanda station (42 km from Balbukhta) on October 1, almost two days after docking.

However, BAM by that time was barely half ready, it was necessary to build thousands of railway infrastructure facilities, build housing along the entire route so that people could get into it from cabins and temporary barracks.
Leisure bamovites:

On November 1, 1989, the entire new three-thousand-kilometer section of the line was put into permanent operation in the volume of the launch 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.

Severo-Muisky tunnel during the construction period:

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 (all facts according to the article in Wikipedia).

By 1997, the freight traffic on the BAM had halved compared to the peak at that time in 1990 (only a few trains passed through the day). By 2009, the volume of freight traffic in the direction of Taishet - Tynda - Komsomolsk increased again and amounted to about 12 million tons per year. At the same time, even with such traffic volumes, the road remains unprofitable.

April 27, 2009 marks 35 years since the day when the first All-Union shock Komsomol detachment - the detachment named after the XVII Congress of the Komsomol, went to the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline. This day became the second birthday of BAM - from it began active construction of the highway at once along several directions.

The Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) is a railway in Eastern Siberia and the Far East, the second mainline (along with the Trans-Siberian Mainline) railway access of Russia to the Pacific Ocean.

The Baikal-Amur Mainline runs from Taishet to Sovetskaya Gavan and runs through the Irkutsk, Chita, Amur regions, Buryatia and Yakutia, and the Khabarovsk Territory. The total length of the highway is 4300 kilometers.

The main line of BAM is the Ust-Kut section (on the Lena River) - Komsomolsk-on-Amur (3110 km); it is adjacent to two sections built in the late 1940s - early 1950s (Taishet - Ust-Kut and Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan).

BAM is connected with the Trans-Siberian Railway by three connecting lines: Bamovskaya - Tynda, Izvestkovaya - Urgal and Volochaevka - Komsomolsk.

By 2015, it is planned to build 8 sidings, 2 low-power slides and 18 additional tracks at BAM; reconstruction of the Korshunovsky tunnel is also planned.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

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 some pretty interesting facts, read on and draw your own 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: at that time Russia had neither the equipment nor the means to carry out the grandiose work.

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 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 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 forces of 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. Sixty branches of the national economy, hundreds of supplier enterprises, design and scientific organizations 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.

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 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.

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 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 ... ".