to its terminus at Tiumen. It offers by far the shortest route from Western Siberia to the White Sea, and now that there is direct rail communication between Perm and Archangel, via Kotlass, this line will before long recapture some of the traffic, which at present goes along the Siberian line via Chelyabinsk. This tendency will be still more assisted if the North Siberian line is extended beyond Tiumen to Omsk, thereby providing the districts of Yalutorofsk, Ishim and Tyukalinsk with a short route to the sea at Archangel. This North Siberian line will therefore in the future carry most of the heavy traffic, such as wheat and timber, from Western Siberia across the Urals to the nearest seaport at Archangel, leaving the present Siberian trunk railway to provide the quickest communication to the Baltic ports and to transport such articles as butter, meat and other perishables from the Western Siberian steppes and Altai foothills. Thus the extended North Siberian line from Tiumen to Omsk will, when completed, have the effect not only of opening up a good region in the southern part of the Tobolsk Government, hitherto untouched, but will provide also a shorter route to the White Sea for timber and grain form Western Siberia.
A third railway scheme which had been discussed for some years past has actually materialized, and the railway is now in course of construction. The contract was given in 1911 for the building of a branch line from the existing North Siberian railway in the Urals across the rivers Nitsa, Tura and Tavda. The line will ultimately be carried to Tobolsk, and will traverse some great forest tracks hitherto untouched in the north-west of the Tobolsk
