Construction of the West Siberian was divided into two sections from [M 003 / Chelyabinsk to Omsk] and from [M 043 / Omsk to the Ob River]. On July 19, 1892, construction on the first section of the line began to a slow start.
A crippling shortage of wagons, carts, horses, barges and steamers limited the work to be done. These had to be bought and imported at heavy cost. Experienced laborers were hard to find, therefore the chief engineer, Mikhailovski, was obliged to recruit workers from Italy, Persia (Iran), Russia and Turkey. The countryside was bare of timber suitable for rail ties and [V 006 / bridges], therefore lumber had to be transported from distant points such as Ufa (300 miles west of Chelyabinsk). Stone for culverts and large bridges was absent except for quarries along the upper reaches of the Irtysh River (600 miles south of the railway) and in the Urals. Sand for track ballast, also not readily at hand, required teamsters to drive as much as 50 miles to and from the deposits.
Despite the lack of skilled workers, building materials and drinking water, two miles of track were laid daily during the summer. However, the normal working season was limited by frost to four months. Nevertheless, winter was given over to bridge and station construction, road clearance and accumulation of sledge-drawn supplies - horses could pull twice the amount over snow than what was possible by cart on dirt roads. In winter, workers bunked in portable log cabins, boxcars, or sod huts made with railway ties; in milder weather they camped out.
During the winter of 1894-5 a large company of masons, ironworkers and unskilled laborers were left to build a span across the Irtysh while work continued on the second section. The entire West Siberian was completed in October of 1895, however, the nearly half-mile-long bridge over the [M 043 / Irtysh to Omsk] was not. Only in March 1896 could a train travel the whole route from Chelyabinsk to the Ob.
That same year a spur line was built from Chelyabinsk to Ekaterinburg, the present starting point of the Trans-Siberian. Within three years the construction of the West Siberian had already a tremendous effect on Omsk. By 1899 the value of the city's industrial output had increased by nearly 60 percent, and from 1897-9 its population grew from 37,000 to over 50,000.
