Question

Write a note on railways in Asia.

Answer 1

In Asia, the rail network is the most dense in the thickly populated areas of Japan, China, and India. Other countries have relatively few rail routes. West Asia is the least developed in rail facilities because of vast deserts and sparsely populated regions. One of the most important railways of Asia is trans-Siberian Railways, a major rail route of Russia which runs from St. Petersburg in the west to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast in the east passing through Moscow, Ufa, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Chita, and Khabarovsk. It is the most important route in Asia and the longest (9,332 km) double-tracked and electrified trans-continental railway in the world.

It has helped in opening up its Asian region to West European markets. It runs across the Ural Mountains Ob and the Yenisei rivers. Chita is an important agro-center and Irkutsk, a fur center. There are connecting links to the south, namely, to Odesa (Ukraine), Baku on the Caspian Coast, Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Ulan Bator (Mongolia), and Shenyang (Mukden) and Beijing in China. There is a proposal to build a Trans Asiatic railway linking Istanbul with Bangkok via Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.