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[[Image:Train-to-almaty.jpg|thumb|A view from the train while travelling along the path of the Trans-Aral Railway. Much of the railway cuts across the vast, rolling [[Kazakh Steppe]].]]

The {{RailGauge|1520mm}} [[Russian gauge|broad gauge]] '''Trans-Aral Railway''' (also known as the '''Tashkent Railway''') was built in 1906 connecting [[Orenburg]] and [[Tashkent]], then both in the [[Russian Empire]].<ref>Coulibaly, S Deichmann, U et al (2012) Eurasian Cities: New Realities along the Silk Road, World Bank Publications, P26</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Desert & Steppe Conquests: Fortresses and Railways in the Sahara and Kazakhstan|url=http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/ironbridge/events/2016/desert-and-steppe-conquests.aspx|website=University of Birmingham|accessdate=29 August 2016}}</ref> For the first part of the 20th century it was the only railway-connection between [[European Russia]] and [[Central Asia]].

An extensive description of the newly built railway was published in 1910.<ref>{{Cite book
| publisher = J.B. Millet Company
| last = Hamilton
| first = Angus
| title = Afghanistan
| series = Oriental series
| location = Boston and Tokyo
| accessdate = 2014-11-23
| date = 1910
| url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/14407/
}}</ref>

==Construction history==
[[File:Railway station in Tashkent 1903.jpg|thumb|Railway station in Tashkent 1903]]
There were plans to construct the Orenburg-Tashkent line as early as 1874. Construction work did not start, however, until the autumn of 1900. The railway was simultaneously built from both ends toward a common junction. It opened in January 1906, linking the existing network of Russian and European railways to the [[Trans-Caspian Railway]].

The Orenburg-Tashkent Railway was the first line to be built across the [[steppe]], replacing the multiple routes once used by caravans with a single, steel path. It introduced the Kazakhs to industrial modernity and tied the distant Governor-Generalship of Turkestan more firmly to the Russian metropole, allowing troops to be rushed to Central Asia and raw cotton to be exported to Moscow’s textile mills.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Morrison|first1=Alexander|title=Railways in Central Asia|url=http://cesmi.info/wp/?p=61|website=CESMI Central Eurasian Scholars & Media Initiative|accessdate=29 August 2016|date=28 March 2012}}</ref>

==Economic impact==
[[File:Cotton boll nearly ready for harvest.jpg|thumb|Cotton boll nearly ready for harvest]]
Because of the [[American Civil War]], cotton shot up in price in the 1860s, becoming an increasingly important commodity in the region, although its cultivation was on a much lesser scale than during the [[Soviet]] period. The cotton trade led to the construction of these railroads. In the long term the development of a cotton monoculture would render [[Turkestan]] dependent on food imports from Western Siberia, and the [[Turkestan-Siberia Railway]] was already planned when the [[First World War]] broke out.<ref>{{cite web|title=History of Central Asia|url=http://cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/h/History_of_Central_Asia.htm|website=McGill University|accessdate=29 August 2016}}</ref>

==Post-revolutionary period==
After the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|revolution]] the line was blocked by [[Cossacks]] under the command of [[Alexander Dutov|Ataman Dutov]]. Cut off from food supplies, and unable to sustain itself due to forced [[cotton]] cultivation, [[Russian Turkestan]] experienced an intense famine. The temporary loss of the Trans-Aral also allowed the Tashkent [[Soviet (council)|Soviet]] a degree of autonomy from [[Moscow]] during the period immediately following the [[Bolshevik]] takeover, which resulted in atrocities like the [[Basmachi movement#The Kokand autonomy and the start of hostilities|Kokand Massacre]], in which between 5,000 and 14,000 people were killed.

==Route==
The line passes through several notable cities in [[Kazakhstan]], including [[Aral, Kazakhstan|Aral]], [[Qyzylorda]], [[Hazrat-e Turkestan|Turkistan]], and [[Shymkent]]. It connects at [[Arys, Kazakhstan|Arys]] with the [[Turksib|Turkestan-Siberia]] rail line toward [[Almaty]], eastern Kazakhstan, and south [[Siberia]].

==See also==
{{Portal|Railways}}
*[[Turkestan-Siberia Railway]]
*[[Trans-Caspian Railway]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Literature==
* [[Hopkirk, Peter]], (1984) ''Setting the East ablaze : Lenin's dream of an empire in Asia'', 252 pp., London: John Murray

[[Category:Railway lines in Russia]]
[[Category:Railway lines in Kazakhstan]]
[[Category:Rail transport in Uzbekistan]]
[[Category:Railway lines opened in 1906]]

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