Abstract

The construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, the most largescale infrastructure project of the Russian Empire, was accompanied by the solution of a number of problems for the normal operation of this railway. One of them was to supply it with water, suitable for both industrial and domestic purposes. In conditions of time deficit, limited financing and taking into consideration natural and geographical peculiarities of the territory, it was necessary to look for ways of water supply organization which demanded new technical solutions. The various aspects of this problem have not received sufficient coverage in scientific publications, but they are certainly of interest to researchers. The construction of railway water mains was usually preceded by hydrological investigations to determine the most convenient water sources for each station, its properties, and the routes of communications. Additional difficulties often arose because no definitive conclusion about water availability and sources had yet been reached when locating the stations along the main line, and the surveying of the area was still ongoing. As a result, some of the stations were not well located for constant water supply, which required additional funding and engineering effort. Rivers were considered as priority sources of water to be supplied to Trans-Siberian stations and junctions, they were followed by streams, lakes, springs, groundwater and marshes, artesian wells. When selecting a source of water supply, the average daily volume of water consumption of a particular station was necessarily taken into account. At the same time, to ensure an uninterrupted water supply, the selected source had to have a minimum daily flow rate that was twice as high as the maximum daily consumption, which also made it difficult to solve the problems of the construction of railway water pipelines. Despite all the difficulties, the result of the large-scale works was the construction of new variants of water supply and purifying systems on the most part of the Trans-Siberian railway that functioned also in permafrost conditions.