И. А. Курбасова Е. И. Силантьева

TEXT В. THE CONSTRUCTION
OF THE TRANS-CASPIAN RAILWAY

(1) There is a great difference between the conditions in which the railway builders had to work in the past and those provided today. The construction of the Trans-Caspian railway may be a good illustration.

(2) In the eighties of the last century a project was worked out to build with the greatest possible speed a rail­way near the Caspian Sea. The job was especially difficult because of lack (недостаток) of drinking water. For the first 177 km the Caspian water had to be distilled and taken to the builders in large tanks.

(3) Other difficulties with which the workers had to meet were diseases (болезнь) and sandstorms. The sand in mo­bile dunes was carried from place to place by strong winds. Great efforts were made to overcome those difficulties. In order to make the sand near the Caspian Sea as hard as pos­sible the workers poured sea water on the sand or built fences (заграждение) of wood to arrest the dunes. It was a hard and a time-consuming job.
(4) The railway was planned as a standard gauge line. The rails and sleepers were all of home production. Over 22,000 people took part in the construction work.
(5) The men worked in six-hour shifts. The building materials and all the needed equipment were carried by trains that ran twice daily from the base. Every day four miles of track were laid down. It was an unheard-of speed for those days.
28. Прочтите текст С без словаря (3 мин.), назовите по-русски основные этапы строительства железнодорож­ного пути и наиболее важные строительно-дорожные ма­шины. Определите значения выделенных слов по контексту
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TEXT С. TRACK CONSTRUCTION

(1) It is not an easy job to build a railway. The rail­way is built on a strip of land which is called the right-of-way (полоса отвода).

(2) The right-of-way must be carefully prepared for laying down the tracks. At first, it must be cleared from trees, bushes and then graded (выравнивать) by special machines known as graders.
(3) After the right-of-way is cleared and graded the permanent way is constructed. Ties and rails are laid upon the ballast foundation and the ballast is packed between the ties and on each side of the track to hold the ties in place. )
(4) The methods of railroad building have changed greatly in recent years. The greatest change has been the replacement of hand labour by machines, such as power­ful bulldozers, huge excavators, scrapers, graders, etc.
(5) The most modern method of railway construction is laying the track in pre-assembled (сборный) lengths, that is, the lengths of rails to which the sleepers are al­ready attached. This work is carried out by a high-speed track-laying crane, a wonderful machine which lays pre-assembled lengths of track in a few minutes. One of the most efficient machines of this kind is the Platov track-laying crane having an output of 900-1000 meters of track per hour.