Khabarovsk Bridge

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Khabarovsk Railway Bridge as it appeared before reconstruction in 1999. It is the longest bridge on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Reconstructed Khabarovsk Railway and Road Bridge as it appeared in 2000. One span of the old bridge is still visible.

Khabarovsk Bridge (1916) is a railway bridge that carries the Trans-Siberian Railway across the Amur River near the city of Khabarovsk. Measuring some 2,590 meters (about 8,500 feet) in length, the structure remained the longest bridge in Imperial Russia, Soviet Union and Eurasia for decades.

The bridge was scheduled to be constructed at a cost of 13,500,000 Russian rubles to designs by the eminent bridge builder Lavr Proskuryakov in merely 26 months. However, a year after construction work began on July 30, 1913 the First World War broke out. As the spans were manufactured in Warsaw, they had to be brought to Khabarovsk through the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean, where the Russian ships were easy prey to German cruisers and U-boats. The bridge was finally completed for an official opening on October 5, 1916. It was named Alekseyevsky after Tsesarevich Alexis.

Five years later, two of the eighteen spans were blown up by the retreating Red Army. The bridge was repaired in 1925 and functioned until a thorough reconstruction was carried out in 1999, when a new bridge carrying automobile and rail traffic on two levels was built right next to the old one. The original spans of the old bridge were subsequently dismantled, though its supports remain. The old bridge is depicted on the 5000 ruble banknote issued the Central Bank of the Russian Federation on July 31, 2006.