In Western Siberia, along the frozen banks of the Yenisei River, the remnants of a once-thriving port and railway project lie buried beneath the dense taiga forest. The port of Iermakovo and the transpolar railway connecting Salekhard to Igarka were constructed using the labor of tens of thousands of prisoners from the Goulag, a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. In November 1949, over 29,260 prisoners were recorded working on the project, which aimed to link western Siberia to the northern side of the Yenisei River. This would have facilitated the export of valuable minerals, especially nickel from the Norilsk region. At its height, Iermakovo had up to 15,000 people, including prisoners, engineers, and guards, with facilities like locomotive depots, repair shops, and an electrical power plant. The railway construction encountered major difficulties, including the permafrost—ground that remains frozen for extended periods—which caused the rails and building foundations to shift and deform. Soviet planners eventually concluded that the nearly 1,000-kilometer project had no significant economic justification. Following the death of Stalin in March 1953, the project was abruptly halted. Prisoners were released or moved elsewhere, and all equipment was left behind at the site. The project was abandoned due to both the lack of economic benefit and the technical challenges posed by the permafrost. Today, the site of Iermakovo and the railway stands as a ghost town, with collapsed wooden buildings, sagging bridges, and tracks twisted by years of freezing and thawing. The extreme isolation of the region has helped preserve the ruins, and until the 1970s, hundreds of wooden bridges still stood in the area. Local hunters used homemade carts on some sections of the track. The history of Iermakovo and the transpolar railway serves as a reminder of the immense human cost of projects driven by political ambition rather than practical need. It highlights the excesses of a system that could mobilize thousands of lives for endeavors that ultimately proved to be economically and technically unviable.