A railway bridge. The remains of the "Dead Road" built by the slave labourers of the Gulag system between 1949 and 1953. This railway links the towns of Salekhard and Nadym in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region. It was an almost technically impossible project started by Stalin and stopped by the soviet authorities immediatly after the death of the dictator.
The so called ''Road of death'', or ''Dead railway'', or ''Dead road'' was, between 1949 and 1953, an almost technically impossible project led by the soviet Gulag system started by Stalin, and abandonned immediatly after his death in 1953. Its purpose was to link by a railway system the towns of Salekhard, at the mouth of the Ob river, to the town of Igarka, south of the mouth of the Yenisei river. The railway would have lenght 1400 kilometers. The toundra covers this arctic region, which means more than very cold during winter, water and clouds of mosquitoes during summer. Two construction sites started at the same time, one from Salekhard in the west, called ''Gulag construction number 501'', leading to the east, the other one started from Igarka, called ''Gulag construction number 503'', leading to the west. It is said today that about 100 000 slave labourers worked on the project. When soviet authorities stopped the project immediatly after Stalin died, the towns of Salekhard and Nadym on the western ''gulag construction nber 501'', were linked by a 350-kilometer-railway. On the eastern ''gulag construction 503'', 150 kilometers were built. Everything was abandonned in the toundra, espacially steam locomotives, bulldozers, The pictures shown here were taken on the remains of the ''Gulag construction number 501'', between the towns of Nadym and Salekhard, in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. On this section, there are about 500 bridges, 6 slave labourers camps, railway stations.
Size: 6000px × 4000px
Location: Nadym
Photo credit: © Corentin LE GALL / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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