The Salekhard–Igarka railway, known as the Dead Road, is an abandoned Soviet Arctic rail project built by Gulag prisoners that was halted and left to decay upon Stalin's death in 1953.
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What is the history and background of the Salekhard–Igarka railway, also known as the Dead Road?
Stalin had tens of thousands of Gulag prisoners lay track across the subarctic permafrost between 1947 and 1953, aiming for a deep-water port on the Yenisey. The moment he died, the whole project was halted overnight.
Because the tracks were thrown straight onto waterlogged muskeg without proper foundations or ballast, the permafrost promptly heaved and swallowed them. It earned the name Dead Road both for the horrific death toll of the prisoners who built it and the eerie, decaying graveyard of warped rails, rotten bridges, and rusted steam locomotives left behind in the taiga.