Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM)

node · earth · Eastern Siberia — Taishet to Sovetskaya Gavan

A second east–west trunk line north of the Trans-Siberian, declared an All-Union Komsomol construction site in 1974 and driven through some of the worst ground any railway has been asked to cross. Almost half its length is on permafrost, where winter temperatures reported for the route reach around −60 °C. Its hardest single obstacle, the Severomuysky Tunnel under the Severomuysky Range in Buryatia, is 15.3 km long and took about twenty-six years of intermittent work; until it opened, trains climbed a steep temporary bypass over the range. The BAM exists for the same reason the Amur Railway did: a main line that runs close to a contested frontier is a main line that can be cut.