 On the Soviet side, the railway reached the border town of Druzhba (Dostyk) (whose names, both Russian and Kazakh, mean 'friendship' in each respective language) in 1959.On the Chinese side, however, the westward construction of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway was stopped once it reached Urumqi in 1962.Due to the Sino-Soviet Split, the border town remained a sleepy backwater for some 30 years, until the railway link was finally completed on September 12, 1990.