The idea of a railway between Siberia and Russian Turkestan was aired as early as 1886, but it was supplanted by that of a more practicable line between Tashkent and Orenburg in the Urals.

It was expected that the line would facilitate the transport of cotton from Turkestan to Siberia and cheap Siberian grain from Russia to the Fergana Valley.

A team of Russian engineers made a detailed survey of the steppe and semi-desert regions the railway was expected to cross.

After the Bolshevik Revolution construction work was suspended for a decade, and the 140-kilometre (87 mi) long Semipalatinsk–Ayaguz line, built-in 1918–19 by the White Russians on the initiative of Admiral Kolchak, was demolished for no apparent reason.

Viktor Alexandrovitsh Turin directed a 1929 Soviet documentary film on the building of the railway which also bore the name Turksib.