The state and private capital, mainly foreign, were the main actors of Russian railway network creating process in the post-reform period. At the same time, in Turkestan, the Russian Government consciously discouraged private initiatives in the field of railway construction for a long time, preventing private capital from acquiring the quality of an actor along with the state. Although the government maintained a policy of building railways in the region at the Treasury expense, since the 1870s it has regularly received applications for the right to build Railways on the terms of private concessions. The article examines the content of private railway projects and the nature of concession rights that entrepreneurs requested from the government. The author comes to the conclusion that most of them preceded the state's decisions on the railway line construction in Turkestan, as in the case of the Trans-Caspian railway line extension from Samarkand to Tashkent and Andijan. In this regard, private initiative played a role as a factor in the state's decision - making process on the further development of the region's railway network.