The Meret - Central Siberian railway line was designed on the modern West Siberian railway. It was intended for the export of coal from the Kuzbass basin to the western regions of Russia. In the 1980s, Government Resolutions were adopted to increase coal production in Kuzbass and to develop the Kansko-Achinsky deposit located to the east. The new route was supposed to remove the transportation of Kuzbass coal from the Trans-Siberian Railway, as well as complete the formation of the Central Siberian Railway. It was assumed that the cargo traffic on the new line will be 30–35 million tons per year.
The main line is designed as a double-track, electrified on alternating current with automatic blocking and centralized dispatching. A progressive form of service for the signaling and communication distance was applied - the near-center service system was replaced with a centralized one. With the existing useful length on the network, the main line allowed heavy trains with a mass of up to 10 thousand tons to pass.
When designing the line, original solutions for the treatment of domestic wastewater were developed. Natural biological treatment facilities - filtration fields - have been developed at four stations. This was preceded by a study of the experience of operating similar structures in the region. The creation of filtration fields should have made it possible to significantly simplify the operation of treatment facilities, reduce costs, provide deep wastewater treatment and exclude the direct discharge of wastewater into water bodies.
On the railway, 11 large bridges and viaducts, 3 medium bridges, 285 culverts, 11 railway and road overpasses, 4 pedestrian and transport-pedestrian tunnels and about 300 small artificial structures were designed.
Since 1984, the construction of the railway began. However, at the final stage, it was decided to mothball the construction site due to the events associated with the collapse of the USSR and the development of new areas of the country's energy base. In 1997, it was proposed to use the existing structures of the Meret - Srednesibirskaya highway for the construction of the Altai - Kuzbass highway.
