Monument to Stalin’s folly: relics of the Railroad of Death where ‘300,000 prisoners perished’
Haunting images of this Railway to Nowhere, built by Gulag convicts in the cruellest of conditions on the cusp of the Arctic Circle.
Bent, contorted rails. Rusting steam engines.
Fallen down bridges across permafrost rivers that each cost hundreds of lives to construct in a region with winter temperates below 50C.
Around these twisted tracks lie the graves of unknown hundreds of thousands who expired here.
So it is a vast unofficial necropolis, too.
Today this is all that is left of Josef Stalin’s most madcap scheme begun in 1947 before any detailed plans had been drawn up – a venture his lieutenants knew was impossible, but dared not tell him.
The track of Project 501 was supposed to run 1,263 kilometres through the
CREDIT:SIBERIAN TIMES
