Significant… it is. It's an important transport link for the Russian economy, and not only it, it even carries some exports from the Far East to Europe. Also, it's a major engineering work, even though mostly unrelated to usual hacker news topics, it should make it at least somehow significant and interesting here.

Awe-inspiring… well, depends. I don't think that a construction and operating of a 10,000 kms long railway line should be dismissed as something trivial and not worth of any attention.