The Japanese astutely attacked the Russians in China before the Trans-Siberian could reliably transport overwhelming legions of troops from Russia. Although Russia lost the war, they still considered striking back. However, an attack on Japan might lead her to seize the rest of the East Chinese Railway, isolating [V 011 / Vladivostok] and the Maritime Province. To avoid such an occurrence construction of a strategically safe railway north of the Amur sector (abandoned in 1896) was urged.
A formal proposal to build the 1200-mile [M 012 / Amur Line] was approved in November 1907. The new route branched off from the Transbaikal Line at Kuenga, 30 miles west of Sretensk, and followed an irregular route to Khabarovosk beyond artillery range of the Amur's Manchurian bank.
One track was laid through a forbidding, unpopulated wilderness of moutains, forests, boglands and marshy plains, but tunnels and major bridges were wide enough for double-tracking in the future. Except for some convicts and a few thousand Koreans, laborers were brought from western Russia. They were considered potential colonists and would keep their earnings within the country to the benefit of the economy.
Construction began at Kuenga in the spring of 1908. Tunelling and bridge-foundation work was possible in winter, but other activites were limited from June to no later than the first week in October. Summers were hot, humid and often rainy. Swarms of gnats, flies and a breed of mosquito, peculiar for its painful sting, kept the men and horses under constant attack. Scurvy and other disorders apparently afflicted 75 percent of the workers, induced by drinking stagnant swamp water where there were no rivers or streams.
With completion in 1916 of the Khabarovsk Bridge (the longest in Russia or Siberia even today) the Amur Line and the Trans-Siberian - one of the world's most remarkable engineering feats - was complete.
