Permafrost as a track foundation

Assembled from 17 blocks · 1 evidence · 15 related

1. Story
2. Perennially frozen ground behaves like rock until it is disturbed, and then behaves like mud. A ballasted railway insulates and warms the ground beneath it, thawing the active layer deeper each summer; the embankment settles unevenly, the alignment goes out of level and the track has to be relifted, sometimes annually. Almost half the Baikal–Amur Mainline sits on it. This is why the Amur route was harder and more expensive than the Manchurian shortcut, why the eastern Trans-Siberian took longest to finish, and why the maintenance cost of a northern alignment never stops — it is not a construction problem that is solved once but a permanent operating liability, now worsening as ground temperatures rise.
3. Knowledge
4. Siberia
5. Permafrost as a track foundation
6. Connections
7. Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM)
8. Siberia
9. Work begins on the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria
10. The Amur Railway completes an all-Russian route to the Pacific
11. Trans-Siberian Railway
12. Permafrost as a track foundation
13. Construction of the Trans-Siberian begins
14. Train ferries begin crossing Lake Baikal
15. The Amur Railway completes an all-Russian route to the Pacific
16. Evidence
17. Supports the BAM's route, its permafrost exposure and the 15.3 km Severomuysky Tunnel as the longest railway tunnel in Russia. V55 verification basis: RZD's page was returned as a search result and its substance carried in the attributed summary; it was not fetched. RZD is the operator and therefore an interested party for anything about the line's performance.