Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Russian government issued an imperial rescript announcing its intention to construct a railway across Siberia on the 9th of March 1891. Tsarevich Nicholas later became Tsar Nicholas II and inaugurated construction in Vladivostok on the 19th of May that year.
Russian admiral Stepan Makarov designed both ships though they were constructed in Newcastle upon Tyne by Armstrong Whitworth. Each vessel arrived as knock-down components marked with numbers for reassembly at Listvyanka where a dedicated shipyard had been built.
Planners decided to lay the railway outside existing cities to avoid clashes with land owners and save money. However, swampy banks near Tomsk led to rejection of bridge construction there so the line ran south crossing the Ob at Novonikolaevsk which later became Novosibirsk.
A trainload of containers can travel from Beijing to Hamburg via Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian lines in as little as fifteen days though typical cargo transit times run significantly longer. The railway delivers containers in one-third to one-fourth the time required by sea voyages.
As the single-track line forced trains to wait in crossing sidings for opposing traffic transit slowed considerably. A troop train traveling east delayed arrival of supplies moving westward while injured personnel transport blocked ammunition delivery.