Trans-Siberian Railway Kink

[Daro2]

The great late Douglas Adams states the following here :
http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-02-a.html

there is a large kink in the trans-Siberian railway because when the Czar (I don’t know which Czar it was…) decreed that the trans-Siberian railway should be built, he drew a line on a map with a ruler. The ruler had a nick in it.

I have seen this stated in a couple not-so-true trivia lists on the internet but have not found a single piece of evidence to back it up.

My history teacher says there is a kink in it because of a large lake.

Is this true, and can I back it up easily with a credible source?

[Andy]

From this BBC link

Popular legend has it that when planning the project, Tsar Nicholas accidentally drew around his own finger on the ruler, breaking the straight line on the map. The planners were too afraid to point this out and so the railway was built according to the flawed royal design. But the Russian newspaper Kommersant says there is a more prosaic, if realistic explanation. Russian steam locomotives of the time were not powerful enough to climb the Verbinsky gully and so the by-pass was built.

[Eurograff]

Note that this railroad where the supposed kink happened is Moscow - St. Petersburg line, and while it can be considered as the westernmost part of Trans-Siberian railway, it was built 50 years earlier than the Siberian one. Reigning Tsar in 1842 was Nicholas I, while during the construction of Trans-Siberian between 1881-1905 rulers were Alexander III and Nicholas II, who have nothing to do with this.

[raygirvan]

Yep: there are plenty of sites such as this debunking the tale. Try a Google search for “Tsar’s Finger” or “Verebinsky bypass”. It was in the news a couple of years ago when it was straightened out. It postdated by 26 years the building of the line, and was to circumvent a steep incline; trains overshot the station going downhill, and needed four locomotives to get up it.

[Chronos]

And here, I was picturing leather and chain restraints on the seats.

[Zenster]

*Originally posted by Chronos *
And here, I was picturing leather and chain restraints on the seats.

You’re thinking of the famous Gulag Express Limited.