Following is an account of a trip to Siberia in March 1985. It was originally intended to provide an opportunity to witness the completion of rail-laying on the Baikal-Amur Mainline, the 2,000-mile railroad under construction in East Siberia since
1974. However, the final link-up ceremony in October 1984 near Kuanda (see Soviet Geography, December 1984, pp. 771, 773) was not open to outsiders, and this and other circumstances delayed the proposed trip by a few months. It could ultimately
be carried out with private financing in the United States and the cooperation of the Soviet authorities. The trip, which lasted from March 12 to April 3, included several days in Moscow, both at the start and at the end of the visit to the Soviet Union
. The Siberian part of the journey, which is the subject of the present account, was focused on three base citiesYakutsk, Novosibirsk and Irkutskfrom which local side trips could be arranged.
for rail links to the south and west all are attempts to alleviate the city's traditional transport isolation. Urban mass transit functions efficiently because of high population densities and a limited number of trip-generating points.
of a multi-purpose trip. This leads to the prediction that if and when the migrants become more locally oriented for their social contacts, the retail establishments in Amsterdam will see their economic base decline even further.