RAILWAYS - TRANS-SIBERIANID92910069
For the year 2021-2022, taking advantage of the celebration of the European Year of the Railway and the 80th Anniversary of Renfe, the FNMT-RCM is issuing a collection of 20 coins dedicated to the History of the Railway, with the aim of showing our customers the evolution of one of the most important means of transport in Humanity.
The collection consists of twenty coins. The first fifteen will be issued in 2021 and the remaining five in 2022.
The obverse side shows a colourful image of the TRANSIBERIANO which, with its 2,297 km between the Moscow station of Yaroslavski and the Asian station of Vladivostok, is the longest railway in the world. Above the central image is the legend TRANSIBERIANO. On the outer part of the coin are motifs reminiscent of railway rails.
On the reverse (common to all the coins), the legend RAILWAY HISTORY appears inside a central circle; below it, the value of the coin is 1.5 EURO. Outside the central circle is an image of a railway track.
| Series | History Of Railwais |
| Year | 2022 |
| Colour | Yes |
| Diameter (mm) | 33 |
| Face Value (Euro) | 1.5 |
| Metal | Cupronickel |
| Weight (g) | 15 |
| Maximum Mintage (units) | 7,000 |
C overing a distance of 9,297 km from Moscow’s
Yaroslavski Station to the Asian Vladivostok,
the Trans-Siberian is the world’s longest railway
track. On June 1 1891, Nicholas, then the heir of
Tsar Alexander III, symbolically launched the
construction of the track at the terminal station.
Because of the complexity of the works, which were
commenced at both ends and divided into segments,
the first section was not put into operation until
1905 and the track was not fully completed until
1916. The delay was due not only to the track’s
length but also to the orographic challenges along
the way, such as the Ural mountain range, and to
the adverse weather conditions for which Siberia is
known. But there were other hurdles in the way: a
lack of manpower, epidemics and the wars which
broke out during this lengthy period. For all these
reasons, the Trans-Siberian is the most epic railway
engineering feat ever to have been accomplished.
The line is dotted with monumental masonry
works, such as the viaduct across the Obi River in
Novosibirsk, with seven sections and a cost in 1897
of one million dollars. Electrification of the line
started in 1929 and was fully completed in 2002.
The Trans-Siberian railway linked the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans; in political terms, it compounded the
Russian Empire; and, above all, it put an end to
Siberia’s isolation by including the territory first
in the Russian economy and second, in the world’s.
This railway acted like a tree trunk whose boughs
and branches reach out into other countries such as
Uzbekistan and Mongolia. More recently, it has
been put to use as a means of connecting emerging
China to the West.