For the first time, narrow gauge railways appeared in the middle of the 18th century in the mines of Scotland, where they were given the name of economical railways, then they began to be built in France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. The first narrow gauge railway in Russia was built in 1871 between st. Livny and Verkhovye are 57 miles long with a track width of 3.5 feet (1067 mm). A special rolling stock worked on the line: two passenger and four freight locomotives. In 1898 the road was changed to normal gauge.
In the USSR, a narrow-gauge railway was preserved near the city of Ventspils - the old Kurzeme line, built at the beginning of the 20th century. On Sakhalin Island, there is a separate network of narrow gauge railways with its own rolling stock. Some of the narrow-gauge roads have been converted to a broad gauge, and some have been given over to the organization of children's railways.
Narrow gauge railway track
In 1919, the Committee of State Constructions installed two types of sleepers (bar and plate) for the main tracks of 1000 mm gauge and two types for station tracks. Later, in our country, a standard gauge of 750 mm was established for ground narrow-gauge railways (up to 90% of narrow-gauge railways in operation). For it, the use of sleepers of the same types, but somewhat shorter in length, was envisaged. The width along the top of the subgrade for the 750 mm gauge was determined by the data given in the table.The narrow-gauge rails corresponded in cross-sectional shape to normal gauge rails, but differed in weight and length.
Turnouts of narrow-gauge railways were characterized by the following parameters:
Locomotives of narrow gauge railways
The main supplier of narrow-gauge locomotives of various series until the 1960s was the Kolomna Locomotive Plant. In addition, steam locomotives of the Maltsevsky, Nevsky, Podolsky, Sormovsky and Novocherkassk plants worked on the lines.Alla Dorozhkina (Grade 11)
Leaders:
A.M. fool
V.F. Kuznetsova
Our work is devoted to the study of narrow-gauge railways (UZhD) of the South-West of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Identification of their features, study of the history of their development, distribution, functioning and reasons for decommissioning.
Goals and objectives:
In the course of the work, we want to find out which narrow-gauge railways functioned in the South-West of the Nizhny Novgorod region. By whom and for what purpose they were built, where they led, why no one needed them and were closed.
Work tasks:
To identify materials on the history of the Ural Railways of our region, including cartographic ones;
Make a picture of the evolution of this UZhD (emergence, development, decline, closure);
Describe a number of expeditions carried out by the children's tourist club along the UZhD recently;
Consider the possibilities of preserving (restoring) the UZhD of the South-West of the Nizhny Novgorod region.
What is UZD?
For the first time, steam traction was used by the Englishman D. Stephenson in the mines to facilitate the work of workers, and the first public railway was built in 1825 in England. In Russia, the first steam-powered railway was built by talented serf mechanics - father and son E.A. and M.E. Cherepanov - at the Nizhny Tagil plant in 1834.
As we can see, railways appeared for the first time in production to facilitate the work of people. Since the first railway appeared: in England - in mines, and in Russia - at a factory, it can be assumed that they were narrow-gauge.
The first public railway in Russia was built and opened for traffic in 1837 - between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo with a continuation to Pavlovsk (27 km). In 1851, the construction of the St. Petersburg - Moscow (now Oktyabrskaya) railway was completed, at that time the longest in the world (644 km).
Railway track - a track formed by two rail threads rigidly fixed on sleepers at a precise distance from one another. This distance, called the track gauge, is measured between vertical planes tangent to the inner edges of the railheads in a straight section (on curves, the track gauge is increased to reduce rolling stock resistance). Railway gauge in Russia is 1,524 mm (5 ft). Abroad, the most widely used railway gauge is 1435 mm, but there are also narrower ones, for example, in the range from 1397 to 1016 mm there are 17, and from 1000 to 750 - 18 various sizes railway gauge, and wider than in Russia (which are used very rarely).
Narrow gauge railway - a railway with a less than normal gauge. Initially, the gauge was chosen arbitrarily for each narrow gauge railway, with the result that there are now over 60 different narrow gauges, from 1397 mm to 187 mm.
By 1950 for ground narrow gauge railways, a gauge of 750 mm became the standard. In the USSR, narrow-gauge railways in 1931. accounted for only 2% of the total number of railways. The total length of narrow-gauge public railways throughout the world in 1890 was 65,000 km. (10% of the entire railway network), in 1912 it was already 185,000 km. (17%), and in 1922 - 255,000 km (21.5%). 60% of the entire African and 89% of the entire Australian railway network are narrow gauge.
As you can see, there were significantly fewer narrow gauge railways in our country than in other countries.
Advantages of the narrow gauge railway:
- Ease of construction and operation.
- Lower financial costs for construction and operation.
- Great maneuverability.
1) Narrow gauge railways are simpler and easier to build and use, so they can be built on time. There are even portable narrow gauge railways.
2) The construction of a narrow gauge railway uses less material and less labor, and if necessary, the railway can be moved to another location, so that no funds or materials are lost.
3) The track is narrower, and therefore the radius of curvature decreases to 40 m. At the same time, a narrow-gauge train can overcome a steeper slope - from 0.02 to 0.045, and even 0.08 with electric traction. The entire structure of the narrow gauge railway, along with the trains, is much lighter.
4) The load on the rails from the axis of the rolling stock is much less than on broad-gauge railways, and for locomotives is from 4 to 9 tons.
From our own experience of hiking in the places of the former narrow gauge railway, we can add that the narrow gauge railway is a much more environmentally friendly mode of transport than the road. The width of a modern asphalt highway is 2-3 times greater than the tracks of the UZhD; accordingly, it is required to cut down less forest to lay a narrow-gauge railway (if, for example, the road goes through the forest, as in the case of the Vyksa UZhD).
The disadvantages of narrow-gauge railways include lower productivity compared to broad-gauge roads. All its advantages are for local use. Narrow gauge railways are bad because when transporting goods over long distances, they need to be transshipped onto broad gauge trains.
Why we are interested in the history of narrow-gauge railways in the South-West of the Nizhny Novgorod Region
This topic also interested us because Sarov also once had a narrow-gauge railway, which was later replaced by a broad-gauge railway. In many small towns and towns, in factories and logging operations, narrow-gauge railways played an important role. There are many abandoned narrow gauge railways in our area, it is very interesting to find out what they served for, where they led and why they were abandoned. It would also be interesting to know, maybe even now, in our time, it would be beneficial to use this type of transport, because it has many advantages.
In some books about the Nizhny Novgorod region, we managed to find references to the narrow-gauge railway of interest to us.
From the book by L.L. We learned through the tube "Our cities" that in 1954 the total length of the railways of the Vyksa region, which occupied an area of about 2000 km 2, was more than 400 km. Narrow-gauge railways belonged to the Vyksa Forest and Peat Administration (LTU). The extraction of timber and peat was carried out by this enterprise not only in the territory of the Vyksa region, but also in the Voznesensky region of the Nizhny Novgorod region and the Ermishinsky region of the Ryazan region. The railway network consisted not only of permanent tracks, but also of wild (temporary) tracks that led directly to the cutting areas.
Passenger traffic was also carried out along the narrow-gauge railways of the south-west of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Before the advent of paved roads, the only connection to outlying villages and towns was the narrow gauge railway. Residents of the Voznesensky district called it "the road of life".
History of the Vyksa Railway
The main railway went from Vyksa to Sarma station. For a long time, this road was the main thoroughfare connecting Kuriha with the outside world.
Initially, the railway belonged to the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant. Its width was 630mm. Factory owners in 1894 built narrow-gauge horse-drawn railways. This gave great savings, reducing the cost of transportation by half compared to horse-drawn ones. The length of these horse-drawn narrow-gauge roads was 60 km.
The laying of the Vyksa-Kurikha narrow-gauge railway began even before the revolution. Steam locomotives appeared in 1912. In 1917-1918 the road was altered to 750 mm, that is, to the standard width. In 1922, the construction of the railway was brought to the Sarma station.
In the 1930s, the metallurgical plant experienced a rebirth. Simultaneously with the construction, the railway transport is being reconstructed. The third stage of the reconstruction of railway transport in Vyksa falls on the late 50s - early 60s. Until this period, the work of steam locomotives operating on wide and narrow gauges was on wood and coal. The rise of economic development in Kurikha falls precisely on the 50s - 60s, because. the railway was the only reliable connection to other cities at that time.
In 1960, the Vyksa plant no longer needed firewood and abandoned the railway. The railway was taken over by the Vyksa timber industry enterprise.
In 1976, the asphalt road Voznesenskoye - Kurikha was laid. From that moment on, the gradual decline of the Vyksa UKRW began. Prior to this, the village of Kurikha (Sarma station) was the transport center of the entire region. Now it has become the village of Voznesenskoye, the administrative center of the district.
In 1996, the forest plot was closed due to remoteness and a decrease in the volume of timber removal. After the logging site was closed, the railroad began to be dismantled. In the 1970s the passenger train Vyksa - Dimara - Kurikha ran several times a day and consisted of 10-12 passenger cars.
According to the schedule of the Vyksa UZD for 1985, it can be seen that trains ran from Vyksa: to Dimara - 1 time per day, to Sarma - 1 time, to Kirpichny - 4 times, 5 times to Vereya, to Inner - 2 times. We can note that the train ran quite often.
In 1999, passenger traffic on the road was closed. The depot in Vyksa closed in 2003.
At present, only embankments and glades at the sites of stations and sidings remain from the railway. Wooden bridges across the rivers are destroyed. Unfortunately, such a fate befell most of the country's narrow-gauge railways; they could not compete with road transport.
Geography of the Vyksa narrow-gauge railway
We had at our disposal several maps belonging to different years.
The oldest of the images of the Vyksa narrow-gauge railway found by us on the maps is, apparently, the “Map of access roads of the Prioksky mountain district”. Unfortunately, the year is not indicated on it. But, since the Priorksky mining district existed from 1920 to 1928, apparently the state of the road is indicated for this period.
Map of access roads of the Prioksky Mining District
The sections of the road on this map are shown, apparently, rather conditionally. For example, the villages of Kochgar and Vladimirovka are in reality several kilometers away from the UZhD line, and looking at the map, you might think that the road passed right through them. It can also be seen that many branches led to peat extraction.
The second time map is a map of our area, no later than the 1940s. This map, in comparison with the previous one, more clearly ties the UZhD to the terrain. At the same time, it can be seen that the state of the UZhD on it is indicated approximately the same.
1940s map
We also have several geographical maps 1964-2004 editions, on which sections of the Vyksa narrow-gauge railway are marked. An analysis of these maps shows that, unfortunately, they cannot be used as a reliable source for analyzing how this road developed. There are many contradictions in the maps, for example, on later maps sections of the narrow gauge railway are indicated, while it is known that in those years they no longer existed. We used these maps to compile a general map of the railway, on which we indicated all the sections that fell on the maps, but without indicating the time of their existence. Such a general map, compiled by us, is shown in the figure.
General route map compiled from various sources
It should be noted that, while traveling on a narrow gauge railway, we met several sections of the road that were not marked on any of the maps available to us. On the general map, these areas are marked in brown. This can be explained by the fact that there were sections of the road that operated for a short time, so they did not have time to get on any of the maps.
From the analysis of the maps, it can be concluded that the Vyksa narrow-gauge railway reached its greatest development in the 1960s-1970s.
Expeditions on UZhD
The first acquaintance with UZhD took place in 2002. Then, during a hike near the village of Ilev, tourists examined the remains of a railway bridge across the Ilevka River. Immediately after this expedition, questions arose before us: What kind of road is this, from where and where did it lead, why did it exist, when it was dismantled. It was decided to collect materials about the railway and make expeditions in which we reconnoitered and surveyed this road.
In the period from 2004-2008 there were 6 expeditions by tourists from the CVR clubs. In total, more than 80 km were covered along the former railway tracks in the territory of the Voznesensky and Vyksa districts of the Nizhny Novgorod region and the Ermishinsky district of the Ryazan region.
First expedition
Route: Kurikha – Ilev – Three Ravines
Time: 2004
Passed along the railway: 15 km
Number of participants: 20 people
Expedition results: We found out that the UZhD ends not in the Ilev region, but 5 km to the east of it (in the forest towards Three Ravines). At the end, the road forks into several branches, which, apparently, each went to its own cutting area. During the expedition, the remains of rolling stock, rails, and crutches were found.
Beginning south of Kurikha, Prudki tract. Passed 3 wooden bridges, two of which can be walked on foot (through the rivers Ulchadma and Ilevka). In the place where the Pokrovskaya branch departs, a large clearing remains, where the “6 km” siding was. There we saw the doors of the wagons and other fragments of the railway.
Wagon doors
Bridge over Ilevka. Photo 2005
Bridge over the river Ulchadma
Expedition members at rest
Second expedition
Route: crossing of UZhD and highway Voznesensk - Vyksa - Kurikha
Passed along the railway: 10 km
Number of participants: 15
Expedition results: we found an unknown technological site. We assume that this could be a place for refueling steam locomotives with water. A large clearing remained at the site of the former Alvaneisky junction.
Map of the area of the Second Expedition
The narrow gauge railway went through the forest
This is how the remains of the UZhD, which went through the field near Kurikha, look like
Bridge over the Sarma in Kurikha
Group of participants of the Second Expedition
Third expedition
Route: crossing of UZhD and highway Voznesensk - Vyksa - Dimara
Passed along the railway: 14 km
Number of participants: 25 people
Results: the beginning of the expedition took place on a high embankment. The first overnight stay was near two bridges across the river. Barnabas and R. Sun. At the site of the Razdolisty junction, we found the remains of concrete structures. From this place to the village of Dimara, the UZD section is used for the removal of timber by road. In Dimar itself, we found several trailers, station buildings, and the remains of rails.
Map of the area of the Third Expedition
Remains of the railway bridge over Barnabas
Remains of a bridge across the Sun River
In some places the embankment is quite high
Turn of the road
Visible remains of the UZhD
Passage Razdolysty
Fork in the road
Dimara Station
Remaining rails are being disposed of
Fourth expedition
Route: Razdolisty - Dimara - Novy Lashman - Lesomashinny - Uglipechi
Traveled: 25 km
Number of participants: 3 people
Results: In Novy Lashman, they examined the cemetery of the Vlasovites, who worked at the logging site. Between Dimara and the new Lashman, local residents pulled out and collected crutches from the sleepers. In Uglipechi we met an old-timer who told Interesting Facts how he was engaged in charcoal burning with his parents as a child. I also remember that in some places the roofs of UZhD cars were used instead of bridges across the rivers (Luktos River).
Remains of UZhD trailers
Remains of a destroyed bridge across the river
Fifth expedition
Route: Combat - Vilya
Traveled: 16 km
Number of participants: 10 people
Results: Tourists found a trailer near the Battlefield. At Domiki station there are remains of wooden buildings, we assume that these were station houses. There are several residential buildings at the Kirpichny junction. The dam of the Vilsky Pond, along which the UZhD ran, has been preserved.
Area of the Fifth Expedition
The car near the Combat
Former station Domiki
Passage Brick
The road passed along the dam of the Wilskoye Pond
Group of participants of the Fifth Expedition
Sixth expedition
Route: Prudki spring - Kurikha (we went around many neighborhoods of Kurikha, but we only passed a small section along the UZD itself)
Passed along the railway: 3 km
Number of participants: 13 people
Results: Two bridges were crossed over the Luktos River and a nameless stream.
Surroundings of the village Kurikha (Sarma)
Bridge over the Luktos river
Bridge over the stream
The road approaches Sarma station (Kurikha village)
This place was the station station Sarma
Group of participants of the Sixth Expedition
Summary of all expeditions
As a result of six expeditions, about 85 km were traveled along the UZhD, of which we traveled about 60 km along the main Vyksa-Ilev highway. The length of all tracks of the Vyksa UZhD was 362 km. Consequently, for all these expeditions we covered about a quarter of the UZhD. We found the remains of 10 wooden bridges. Several abandoned wagons were found.
We came to the conclusion that laying tourist routes along the track of the former UZD is very convenient. Since these areas are not swampy, not completely overgrown, they are straight, drawn on old maps, it is easier to navigate through them. Some sections of the UZhD are now used as automobile (timber) roads. But soon, this operation will be impossible because the road will be broken by these cars, because it is not prepared for such vehicles.
Most of the settlements at sidings and stations ceased to exist. Only the largest ones remained, which managed to switch to other activities.
The driest place for tents is on the railway embankment (May 2006)
Lunch is also more convenient to cook on the road (August 2006)
Opportunities for the revival of UR
We decided to devote a separate chapter of our work to considering the possibilities of restoring the narrow gauge railway.
We know of several places where the narrow gauge railway is used as a tourist attraction. For example: Guam gorge in the mountainous Adygea, Pereslavl-Zalessky. There are many positives to this. First of all, the preservation of historical sites, in addition, riding a narrow gauge railway turns into an exciting attraction. We believe that the restoration of the narrow gauge railway from Vyksa station to Sarma station (this was the main section) will attract many tourists. Of course, the restoration of UZhD will not do without the creation of a tourist infrastructure: the construction of hotels, museums, and entertainment centers. This option is proposed in the work of Anna Mironova "". A restored URW would be a good addition to this project.
The trip, according to our plan, can be made according to the type of the Circum-Baikal Railway. That is, to arrange several green stops along the route, there is an opportunity to swim in Baikal, sunbathe, just enjoy the fabulous nature. In our case, we offer to swim in the pond near Vili, and you can enjoy the natural beauty of the surrounding world during the entire trip. At Sarma station, you can create a museum, similar to the one that exists in Pereslavl-Zalessky. It would be possible to keep samples of wagons, locomotives that used to move along the UZhD.
We are not the only ones interested in this topic. In September 2006, No. 36 in the newspaper Arguments and Facts, an article was published, from which the following quote was taken: “It is planned to turn 65 km of the narrow-gauge railway in the Shatursky district into a living museum. For this, two passenger cars and a motor locomotive have been allocated. Previously, the region had an extensive network of narrow-gauge railways, which were used both to deliver peat from mining sites and to transport passengers. Now passenger traffic remains only between the village of Baksheevo and the village of Ostrov. Currently, work is underway to extend this branch to the Kerva microdistrict and the city of Shatura.
Shatura is a city located in Meshchera near Moscow, next to a system of lakes, 124 km east of Moscow.
Guam Gorge
At the moment, in Alapaevsk (Sverdlovsk region) there is a railway, and it is used not as an object of tourist attention, but as a means of transport.
Literature
1 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Moscow, 1952, v 15, p 626
2 Small Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 9, 1931, p. 109
3 Big Encyclopedia, St. Petersburg, 1904, Partnership "Enlightenment", vol. 18, p. 761
4 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Moscow, 1952, vol. 15, p. 618
5 L.L. Trube "Our cities", 1954, Gorky book publishing house, p. 178
6 Loginov V. "Fatherland", Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod Humanitarian Center, 1994, p. 25
7 Website “Younger brother. Encyclopedia of domestic narrow-gauge railways. Railway of the Nizhny Novgorod Region
8 Yushkova A., Golubin D. History of the Vyksa-Kurikha-Ilev railway.
VIII open scientific-practical conference of young ecologists, local historians and tourists of the CVR "Discovery of the native land". Sarov, 2005.
10 Bormotov I.V. Adygea tourist. Mining and recreational nature management. Maykop: JSC "Polygraphizdat" Adygeya ", 2008
11 Newspaper "Arguments and Facts" No. 36 2006, September
The photographs of A.Yu. Soboleva, A.G. Stepanova, O.B. Shevtsova, as well as the authors
The work was presented at the regional local history conference in Nizhny Novgorod in 2010
At the request of readers, I slowly begin to talk about the old, already forgotten, roads. In the stories I will use texts from my guidebook and new, previously unpublished information.
Introduction
The short road is the familiar road. I remember in my childhood, when I was 10 years old, my father and I were picking mushrooms in the forest, of which there were “at least a scythe” at that time. We came to some fairly straight clearing, already overgrown with large frequent lindens and birches, but still distinguishable in a dense, strong forest. My father then said to me: “Look, son, this is the old Moscow road!” Moscow road! Then it seemed to me that if you walk along this overgrown clearing for a day, two, a week, you will go straight to the Kremlin wall with crimson stars on the towers! From delight, from a sense of the significance of this road, it took my breath away! Then, having matured, I nevertheless ended up in Moscow, though not along this road, I lived there for twenty years, but I don’t feel any particular enthusiasm about this. But since childhood, a reverent awe and some kind of very filial, respectful attitude towards forest roads remained in my soul. In fact, our whole life is a road! The first half of life is the road from home, the second half is the road to home! At the beginning of my story, I want to tell you a little secret. You only think that it is you who choose the path. In fact, the road chooses you! And further. The longest and most difficult road begins with the first step.
narrow gauge railway
Perhaps the most famous, most significant old forest road in our area. This is a road going northwest from the Lakes to the village of Stoyanyevo. The length of the road is 15 km. Initially, it was a narrow-gauge railway built by the Ozersky manufacturer M.F. Shcherbakov for the transportation of firewood from the Stoyanevsky forestry (and, in the future, peat briquettes from forest swamps) for heating the Ozersky factories. There was a small train going along this road. But first things first.
Road history.
Narrow gauge. This road is a project of the manufacturer Mikhail Fedorovich Shcherbakov. According to his idea, as I said, it was supposed to supply the factories and the city (then still a village) Ozyory with forest and firewood from the Stoyanevsky forestry and peat briquettes from the swamps (Bolshie Torf, Small Torf and Zhuravenka). And Mikhail Fedorovich planned to divert a branch from it to the village of Alyoshkovo, where he had an estate and a solid factory production with his own brick factory. (The presence of a brick factory indicated that it was planned to expand production facilities in Alyoshkovo, so the need for a railway line to Alyoshkovo became an urgent matter). Somewhere in 1912, it began to be built. It started from the north-eastern side of the factory complex (in the same place where the abandoned branch is now near the "foam" house), went along Zheleznodorozhnaya Street parallel to the Kolomenskaya railway, in the area of the platform 38 km (Tekstilshchiki) began to gradually move away from the Kolomekskaya road by south. Such a neighborhood of a branch from the Kolomna railway and the narrow-gauge railway under construction was very justified economically. Rails, sleepers, and building materials brought from Kolomna were reloaded at the factories on the platforms of the Narrow Gauge Railway and transported to the construction site. Everything is close, everything is at hand!
First, naturally cut a clearing under the road. I must say right away that even now, walking along this clearing, I want to take off my hat to the Shcherbakov engineers. The glade was pulled not just anyhow, but along the driest, highest places, along the ridge of the watershed of the basins of the Oka River and the Gnilusha River. In order to minimize the number of bridges, embankments, drainage ditches. (Then money was not “sawed” and they knew how to count). And another clearing went next to the swamps of Zhuravenka (Crane), Small Peat, Big Peat. If the clearing comes close to the Small Peats and Zhuravenka, then it is 800 meters further south from the Big Peats. The terrain there is lowered and it was considered costly to bring the road closer to the swamp. It was planned to carry peat pressed into briquettes from these swamps. They managed to build part of the road through the forest from the factory to the forest, the narrow-gauge railway functioned, firewood from the forest was transported to the factories along it. Then came the first World War construction stopped. Revolution. (Well, there was no time for the narrow-gauge railway!)
Again, they returned to this road somewhere in 1920, when factories began to run again. Moreover, the road project was ready, M.F. Shcherbakov is still alive, and the road has already been partially built. Of course, there was no longer any talk about the branch to Alyoshkovo. I don’t know how it was before Stoyaniev, but before the Rebrovsky Forest (near Rebrovo), the narrow gauge railway was built accurately. I myself found "crutches" for sleepers there, and the guys used devices to find places for dugouts for workers and all sorts of railway pieces of iron. By 1925 the road was functioning. A steam locomotive with platforms for transporting firewood walked along it. Where he went, I don't know yet. But up to the Unfrozen ravine that goes to Komarevo, I went exactly. The Komarevka factory workers used it to reach the ravine, and then went down to the village on foot. Wells were dug along the road, from which the locomotive was refueled with water. (Some of them have survived to this day).
Starting somewhere in 1930, coal began to be delivered to Ozyory along the Kolomna railway. The narrow-gauge railway lost its economic importance, became unnecessary, and by 1935 was dismantled.
But the life of the road went on. Straight, dry, running along watersheds and ridges, with drainage ditches and wells, the road was still in great demand. On it they rode horses (and then on rare cars) to distant villages and villages: Obukhovo, Rebrovo, Rechitsa, Moschanitsy, Alyoshkovo, Stoyanyevo, etc. The road gained its second wind, its second life during the years of the Great Patriotic War. It was then that the dismantled Narrow-gauge railway was very regretted. (But who knew!). Factories and the city, due to interruptions in the supply of coal, again began to heat with firewood and immediately, without waiting for it to “reach the bottom”, they took up the development of peat bogs, since the project for the development of peat bogs already existed, it remains only to implement it, which was done in the shortest possible time . All the men were taken to the war, and our women dug drainage ditches with shovels to drain the swamps (they are still preserved), they mined peat, molded briquettes from it, loaded it, drove it. Firewood and peat briquettes were brought to the city along the native narrow-gauge railway on horse-drawn carts and sledges. The narrow-gauge railway at that time became the real Road of Life for the Lakes!
It turns out that the deceased already by that time M.F. Shcherbakov saved our city from freezing in the cold winter, and factories from a complete stop! Deliveries of coal to the city were restored a little later, as the Germans were driven away from Kashira and from the railways. Then, after all, “they rose from their knees” quickly. After the war, the narrow-gauge railway did not lose its transport significance for a long time, until the construction of the Ozyory-Moshchanitsy ring highway (until 1980). They traveled along it from the Lakes to all the northwestern settlements of our area, they carried wood. Gradually, it became the road of hunters, berry pickers and mushroom pickers. For them, the Narrow Gauge Railway (the name of the road has been preserved since ancient times) is a kind of cult road that determines their forest activities. Where did you collect mushrooms? For the narrow gauge! Where did you get a jar of blueberries? In front of the narrow gauge railway! How to get to the raspberry? Along the Narrow Gauge to the former Devil's Bridge, which is opposite Komarev, and to the right! Mushroom pickers and berry pickers who got lost in the forest (hunters don’t stray) often ask: “How to get to the Narrow Gauge Railway?” (Then they will figure it out).
It is best to start a trip along the Narrow-gauge from the Lakes, from the Rogov Pole. A sandy, rolled road leads you into a pine forest. On the left is a transformer substation, on the right is the Ozyory-Kolomna railway. The road goes down to the Dolovaya ravine. On the right is a railway bridge, a concrete pipe under the rails, on the left is Krasnaya Gorka, known to all Ozersk skiers. Then the road takes a little up and to the right. Here the narrow-gauge railway and the Ozyory-Golutvin railway diverge. The railway turns sharply to the north, and the Narrow Gauge Railway approaches its first swamp (which is to the right of the road), Zhuravenka (or Zhuravlikha). On the left there will be a wide, straight clearing going to the edge of the forest. In Soviet times, it was an illuminated ski track, on which lake dwellers loved to ski on winter evenings. (Everything was broken, everything was lost!). Then there will be a concrete pipe under the road in front of the swamp and a well miraculously preserved from ancient times, to the left of the road.
If you go further along the Narrow-gauge railway, then opposite Bolotov (opposite Buturlinka) there will be Small (or City Soviet) Torf. Three swamps. One to the left of the road and two to the right. Beautiful lilies grow on the left swamp (also called the Forest Lake). Further, on the right side there is a huge, approximately 800x600m fresh clearing - "Burned Clearing". In 2005, a forest burned here during a summer drought. This forest was then cut down. Hence the name of the cutting. Behind the clearing, the road is crossed by an unfrozen ravine. There is a concrete pipe. The ravine here is not yet deep, not gaining strength. If you go up from the ravine further along the road, then on the right there will be a round small swamp called Saucer. Having passed 200 meters further, we will see a road crossing the Narrow Gauge Railway. This is the old road between Komarev and Patkin. The road in the past is very famous, very significant. Having passed 100 meters farther, we see that the narrow-gauge railway passes through a lowland. This is the famous Kola ravine, originating from a swamp called Bolshie Torf, which is about eight hundred meters to the right of the road. This ravine, after long wanderings through the forest, goes to the Alyoshkovskaya river. To the left of the road there is a round puddle, four meters in diameter and up to one and a half meters deep, which dries up in summer. Behind the puddle solid sand begins, the ruts of the road, washed out by spring waters and rains, become deep. On the right, in a large pine forest, there is a raspberry well-known to all berry growers. Further on both sides of the road begins a large clearing. On the edge of it, on the left side, is a spruce planting. Ate large, even, tall. They stand in neat rows. In autumn, porcini mushrooms are collected here, and in winter, wild boars like to hide from the February winds. True, the dense spruce forest cannot hide them from a bullet.
Behind the spruce plantation on both sides of the road, large, overgrown with grass and young trees, clearings begin. Here is the Serpentine Gully overlooking the fields. Along this ravine on the field used to be the village of Obukhovo. Now only a pond surrounded by ancient willow trees, and one more pond, down the ravine, remains from the village. The snake ravine, having passed through all the Obukhov fields, flows into the Kola ravine. From the narrow-gauge railway, a road leaves to the left, leading to the Obukhov fields and further to Rebrovo.
Rebrovo The narrow-gauge railway bypasses, to the east, the forest. Behind Rebrov, it is noticeably withering, overgrown with aspen and linden forests. Here, they don’t ride anything on it, they just walk. Then it becomes a little cleaner and straightens like an arrow. Going downhill, the road goes to the Stoyanievsky fields and ends here. Nearby, a kilometer away, is the village of Stoyanyevo - the end point of the Narrow-gauge railway and the Moschanitsy-Ozyory highway.
Many thanks to my old and very good friend, smartest person, a competent historian, an excellent local historian Evgeny Isaev for the information provided on the Narrow Gauge Railway. Eugene is a very modest man, does not stick out, keeps in the shadows, but knows very, very much about the history of the Lakes. Together with him, we have restored an approximate (I emphasize - APPROXIMATE so far) history of this road.
Sergey Rogov 10/19/2017.
Mikhail Fedorovich Shcherbakov (1871 - 1936). Ozersky manufacturer, philanthropist. It was on his instructions that a project for the construction of a narrow-gauge railway was developed. Part of the road he managed to build
Narrow gauge railways have played a huge role in the history of Russia. They worked in agriculture and industry, fought in two world wars, explored virgin lands, worked where there were no other means of communication. Unfortunately, by the end of the 20th century, they practically disappeared from the face of our Motherland, unlike other countries where narrow-gauge railways are protected by the state and are museum exhibits.
But when did narrow gauge railways appear?
Great Britain is considered the birthplace of railways. There they were built for the first time in the early 19th century, and in 1825 the first public train was launched between the cities of Stockton and Darlingon. The length of the road was 40 kilometers, and the width of the glue was 1435 millimeters (now this is the world standard).
In Russia, for the first time, the railway appeared in Nizhny Tagil at a mining mine. The creators of the steam locomotive were the Cherepanov brothers. The length of this road was 854 meters, and the track width was 1645 millimeters. Soon it was closed.
Railways officially appeared in Russia only in 1837. The line ran between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo. And already in 1843-1851 the railway appeared between St. Petersburg and Moscow. The track gauge was 1520 millimeters, which is now the standard for domestic railways. IN modern world different countries have different gauge standards, which is a particular problem in the transport of passengers and goods.
Narrow gauge railways appeared a little later than conventional railways. It happened in 1863 in the UK in Northwest Wales. The road was intended to carry oil shale from the mine to the port. The length of the road was 21 kilometers, and the track width was 597 millimeters.
In the 19th century in Russia there were many roads with narrow gauge and with horse or hand traction. This made it possible to transport goods in places where the construction of a normal railway could not be carried out, and reduced costs.
The largest narrow-gauge horse-drawn railway in Russia at that time was the road that connected the Dubovka pier on the Volga River with Kachalino on the Don River. The length of the road was 60 kilometers and operated in 1840-1862.
The first narrow-gauge railway in Russia existed in 1871-1876 in the Oryol region. The track width was 1067 millimeters.
From the end of the 19th century, the construction of a whole network of narrow-gauge railways to the underdeveloped regions of the country began. For example, there were branches: Yaroslavl-Vologda-Arkhangelsk (795 kilometers), Pokrovsk-Uralsk. Their gauges were 1067 and 1000 millimeters in size.
Since the 1890s, narrow-gauge railways with a gauge of only 750 millimeters began to appear. For example, branches: St. Petersburg-Vsevolozhsk, Ryazan-Vladimir narrow-gauge railway. They were built mainly to serve industrial enterprises.
At times Soviet Union the number of narrow gauge lines continued to increase.
The emergence of "camp lines" is associated with the times of Stalinist terror. They connected camps and factories to mining sites. Narrow-gauge railways were built mainly in the north-eastern regions of the country (Magadan region, Kamchatka, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug).
In the 1930s, the specialization of narrow gauge railways was finally developed - this is the transportation of timber and peat. The standard for the track is 750 millimeters.
In the 40s of the 20th century, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became part of the USSR, where there was perhaps the best network of narrow gauge roads in the country.
During the Great Patriotic War, the network of narrow-gauge railways was replenished due to the construction of roads, both by our troops and by the enemy.
And in 1945, Sakhalin was annexed to the USSR with a developed system of narrow-gauge railways, which was further developed.
From the middle of the 20th century, a real boom in the construction of narrow gauge railways began. It is associated with the development of virgin and fallow lands in Kazakhstan.
But since the 1960s, the number of narrow-gauge roads has been declining. This is due to the fact that narrow-gauge railways began to be replaced by roads of normal width, which were built in parallel. So narrow-gauge railways for peat and timber purposes were built until the end of the 1970s. Until the 1990s, trailer rolling stock and locomotives for narrow gauge railways were produced. In 1993, production was stopped.
The first narrow-gauge railways in Russia
The first narrow-gauge public railway in Russia was the Verkhovye - Livny branch, which belonged to the Orlovo-Gryazskaya railway. By the way, what does "public use" mean? This means that this line was intended for regular (that is, on schedule) train traffic and is available for use by any citizen of the country (not to be confused with industrial, military, temporary, special railways). Previously, such roads belonged only to the department of the Ministry of Railways - the Ministry of Railways. The narrow-gauge railways belonging to the Ministry of Railways worked strictly according to the instructions that existed in this department.
The narrow-gauge railway Verkhovye - Livny was laid in 1871 (1067 mm gauge - that is, 3 feet 6 inches). This was preceded by a foreign visit of the Imperial Russian Technical Commission to the first Festignog narrow-gauge railway in the history of England. In the same place, the members of the commission saw in action a "push-pull" steam locomotive of the Ferli system (subsequently, steam locomotives of such a system worked on a wide gauge on the hardest Surami pass in Georgia). The advantages of a narrow gauge and "push-pull" immediately made themselves felt. According to L. Moskalev, the author of the book “Our narrow-gauge steam locomotives”, L. Moskalev, for the Livny railway, steam locomotives were purchased in England and Belgium (there were no steam locomotive building capacities and experience in this area yet), including the same Ferli steam locomotives designed to work with heavy trains without a turn at the final point of the route (their driver's booth was in the middle of the locomotive, as later on many European shunting diesel locomotives). On the Livenskaya narrow-gauge railway, steam locomotives received poetic names: “The Lyubovsha River”, “Russian Ford”, “Livny”, “Verkhovye”, “Robert Furley”. They were heated first with wood, and then with oil.
The "Livenskaya" passed through the rich grain-growing districts of the Oryol province and therefore did not suffer from a lack of cargo. During the harvest season, the flow of export grain abroad was such that even on this branch it was necessary to build elevators and warehouses for storing grain - there was never enough space for storing "bulk" storage. Livny is a city in Rus', formerly famous for bread and accordions. The merchants in it were in charge of important things - they could afford to have their own cast iron. Although the road was supposedly built at public expense, it certainly could not have done without the involvement of merchant capital - merchants gave one and a half million, according to the legend. How great was the productive power of such small towns in the south of Russia that the railways were drawn to them - and on what a grand scale! According to the Narrow-gauge Railways website, a certain engineer-inventor Shubersky, a member of the Road Construction Administration, took part in the construction of the Livenskaya narrow-gauge railway. He applied a number of his own inventions: a safe system for coupling cars, a new type of five-ton freight car, special lubrication boxes, buffers, introduced sleeping cars (!) - and this is just on one narrow gauge railway. And how many such innovations were used throughout Russia!
Soon a similar narrow-gauge grain-carrying branch was laid from Okhochevka near Kursk to the large county town of Kolpny. Subsequently, English steam locomotives of the Furley system from the Livenskaya were transferred to it. Already in 1896, the Livny road was changed to a wide one due to the increased volumes of cargo shipments, and the Kolpenskaya road was changed in 1943, during the Battle of Kursk, for enhanced supply of troops. In 2006, life on these roads still somehow flickered.
Merchants were attracted by the simplicity and cheapness of building narrow-gauge railways with their relatively large transportation capacity - however, the reader sees that such savings, in a sense, went sideways, because many of these roads then had to be changed to a normal gauge. In May 1871, the Chudovo-Novgorod narrow-gauge railway (1067 mm) was opened, and then it was extended through Shimsk to Staraya Russa along the western shores of Lake Ilmen. The Chudovo-Novgorodsky section was changed to a normal gauge in 1916, and the line to Staraya Russa was decided not to be restored after the Great Patriotic War due to the small size of traffic. In 1872, a narrow-gauge railway was stretched from Urochya to Arkhangelsk with a length of 837 km (a whole line, a separate legend! - Powerful multi-cylinder steam locomotives “mallets” worked on it), which was changed to a wide gauge only by 1917. And in 1877, the Bryansk industrialist, a talented engineer-inventor and an outstanding public figure, Sergei Ivanovich Maltsov, designed and built an extended interfactory narrow gauge railway at their factories with a gauge of three feet, passing through the Kaluga and Bryansk regions in the Lyudinovsky industrial region. Moreover, the rolling stock for this narrow-gauge railway was built by the factories of the Maltsov partnership according to Sergey Ivanovich's own projects.
The first organization in Russia, engaged in the systematic construction of narrow-gauge public railways, was the so-called First Society of Access Lines (1898). The name of this organization clearly indicates the auxiliary nature of the activities of narrow-gauge railways. The society paved its first road in Ukraine from Rudnitsa to Olviopol, and it was vividly described by Sholom Aleichem in the collection "Railway Stories".
When the society built the Vladimir-Ryazan narrow-gauge line in the Meshchersky region, it found its own poets. With one of the stations of the road - the current regional center of Spas-Klepiki - the early years of Sergei Yesenin are connected. By the way, in the color album of 1967, dedicated to his biography and work, a fragment of the poem "Sorokoust" ("Have you seen how he runs across the steppes, hiding in lake fogs ..") is illustrated with a frame from this narrow gauge railway. Perhaps it was made near the Gureevsky junction at the site of a branch to Golovanov Dacha. But this road gained real fame thanks to perhaps the best story by Konstantin Paustovsky "Meshcherskaya Side":
“For the first time I came to the Meshchersky region from the north, from Vladimir. Behind Gus-Khrustalny, at the quiet Tuma station, I changed to a narrow-gauge train. It was a Stephenson train. The locomotive, resembling a samovar, whistled like a child's falsetto. The locomotive had an offensive nickname: "gelding". He really looked like an old gelding. At the curves, he groaned and stopped. Passengers went out to smoke. Forest silence stood around the panting gelding. The smell of wild cloves, heated by the sun, filled the carriages.
Passengers with things sat on the platforms - things did not fit into the car. Occasionally, on the way, sacks, baskets, carpenter's saws began to fly out from the site onto the canvas, and their owner, often a rather ancient old woman, jumped out for things. Inexperienced passengers were frightened, while experienced passengers, twisting the "goat's legs" and spitting, explained that this was the most convenient way to get off the train closer to their village.
The narrow-gauge railway in the Meshchersky forests is the slowest railway in the Union.
The stations are littered with resinous logs and smell of fresh felling and wild forest flowers…”
I especially want to talk about this narrow gauge railway. Because today it is the last narrow-gauge public railway in Russia. It has always been subordinate only to the department of the Ministry of Railways.
Meshchera is still a reserved kingdom on the Ryazan land with pristine forest nature, secluded monasteries and hermitages, springs and lakes, “village huts” ... Sung by Yesenin and Paustovsky, Meshcherskaya land is original. One of its symbols is this narrow gauge railway.
As usual, let's start with history. In the 90s years XIX For centuries, the eyes of energetic Ryazan and Vladimir industrialists increasingly turned towards the Meshcherskaya lowland - the primitively untouched space between the Klyazma and the Oka. The wilderness, frightening for a resident even of the then Russia, complete impassability, fabulous tracts and swamps - it would seem, what kind of railway can pass where even the goblin can easily get lost? However, the unfinished wealth of Meshchera - timber, resin (pine resin), peat, sand - prompted the true, "old" Russians to invest in business: in 1897, Vladimir began to quickly build the Ryazan narrow-gauge railway, making his way with axes through a clearing in the thickets and bogged down with bast shoes in the swamps.
By the beginning of 1900, the construction of 213 kilometers of track was completed. All buildings and structures were built in the same style, in the noble spirit of wooden railway architecture. At Ryazan, the line began near the port on the Oka (the station was called Ryazan-Pristan), from Yesenin's Spas-Klepikov to Tu we went along the crowded and lively Kasimovsky tract, but basically to Vladimir itself it rested in forest silence. The frightened forest creatures saw for the first time the curls of steam hanging on the spruce paws, and heard the piercing whistle of a locomotive with a huge chimney, puffing rapidly on strips of rails as wide as a footpath.
And by the way - why did you choose a narrow (750 mm) gauge and not a wide (1524 mm) gauge? The flows of Meshchera cargo and passengers at first did not promise to be large - and when the gauge is twice as narrow as normal, then the costs of construction and operation are half as much. A narrow-gauge locomotive sawed birch round logs - it will be enough for him until Ryazan itself, and he can draw water from the bridge through a hanging sleeve from any river along the way. So, by the way, they did.
However, the Ministry of Railways is the Ministry of Railways - state order and supervision from above, regardless of the size of the track and dimensions. The steam locomotives and wagons of the society were painted according to the purpose and class with the application of sovereign eagles, signaling - kerosene, candle lanterns and a telegraph, each station agent dressed in uniform, in the waiting rooms there are stoves and wooden benches "MPS", there are timetables hanging - everything is as it should be.
In 1903, the company turned out to be in profit - 61,919 rubles of the time and 1 kopeck. They transported 139,497 people and 9.5 million pounds of cargo. The state tax in bulk did not exceed 13%, including 5% on profits: today there would be such financial freedom for the railways and for our entire economy! In 1904, the company turned out to be at a noble loss - they paid the due creditors, shareholders and reimbursed the bills. Things, therefore, were conducted honestly.
Along the line, puffing in smoke, there were undersized trains with hemp, wood, peat, cotton wool from Spas-Klepikov, glass from Gus-Khrustalny, with goods from Kasimov and Tum artisans, striking in their diversity the modern Russian, tired of overseas goods. After the unseen economic development Meshchera neighborhood, which was the result of the opening of a narrow gauge railway (even new villages and settlements were born), the movement increased so much that in 1924 the most stressful section of Tumskaya - Vladimir had to be changed to a broad gauge. This section is famous among fans of the old piece of iron for the fact that until 1980, steam locomotives ran here and, if it were not for the Olympics-80 with its window dressing, they would still be like. Some major nomenklatura figure, unfortunately for retro lovers, on the eve of the Olympics, saw a live steam locomotive at the Vladimir station and burst into noble anger: “Do you know that Vladimir is a city of international tourism ?! What will foreigners think about our country when they see such samovars here ?! And instead of creating a unique steam-powered tourist road and collecting dollars, francs and guilders from these same tourists, the steam locomotive traffic on the Tumskaya branch was closed overnight.
... You read the eloquent royal statistics of past passenger traffic on the Vladimir-Tumskaya road, and you still imagine men and women jumping into Ryazan-Pristan from a small train and waiting, sitting on the grass-ant, for a steamer near the Oka ...
But all this is long in the past. Only one rusty rail, lying in the middle of a country road near the Oka shore, now reminds us of what “was-died” ... The road began to freeze back in the 1960s, for various reasons. In Ryazan, after all, there was no bridge across the Oka before, and the line to Shumashi itself was often flooded during the flood. When a road bridge across the Oka and an asphalt highway to Spas-Klepiki were built, the need for a passenger train immediately disappeared. Yes, and the former customers preferred to send wood and cotton wool by cars immediately to the place, without transshipment on a narrow gauge railway. IN last years in Spas-Klepiki, the wooden bridge over the Pru was completely dilapidated, and this finally decided the fate of the reserved road.
The leadership of the Gorky Railway (the legal owner of the narrow gauge railway) did not try to do anything to preserve the line, despite the uniqueness and memorial significance of the Ryazan section and the abundance of tourists in these parts. On the contrary, in the late 1990s, the rails were quickly sold as scrap to an outside cooperative, while regularly reporting to the Ministry of Railways about the road as if it were operational. The legendary Yesenin Solotcha, Barsky, Spas-Klepiki will never again hear the noise of the train that has been running here for 100 years ...
Today (2006) the last living narrow-gauge section remains here: Tumskaya - Golovanova Dacha. The statistics are as follows: one diesel locomotive TU7, two 30-seat cars, two conductors, four drivers, a road foreman and four railwaymen for 32 km of track - that's all his economy. The train runs four times a week, twice a day. Finance? Income from transportation is 20 times less than expenses ... The administration of the Spas-Klepikovsky district compensates for this loss. Why? Yes, because just as there were no other roads to Golovanov Dacha under the tsar, there are none today. If the “narrow” is closed, the population of Kursha and Golovanovka will face a specific death.
... With a great enthusiast of the history of railways, locomotive engineer Konstantin Ivanov and the director of the only Pereslavl narrow-gauge museum in Russia, Vadim Mironov, went to Tumskaya in November 1997. The 953rd "narrow" left Tumskaya at 14.00, a ticket to Golovanova Dacha cost 4 rubles 20 kopecks in those days. Ride it with God!
Twitching and swaying, rattling chains of couplers and clanging buffers, as if 100 years ago, moving as if through force, stumbling like a peasant cart over bumps, a small, unusually comfortable train rides. First, through the fields to the Gureevsky junction, which miraculously preserved in its pristine houses all the ancient essence of the road, its hundred-year-old spirit, and then turns away to Kursha, Golovanovka, into the forests... they sometimes have to). Close branches of trees often stroke the car. Speed - 15 km / h, and once the passenger walked here 80 km / h!
The everyday surroundings of the car, I remember, differed little from those described by Paustovsky in the Meshcherskaya side, from the times when the locomotive "had the offensive nickname" gelding "". The cars, when we were driving, were jam-packed, people even stood in cramped vestibules. I heard a lot of little things about the road, typical for the world of narrow-gauge railways. For example, that in Golovanova Dacha there is no connection with the outside world, except for the timber industry's walkie-talkie - telephone poles in the forest collapsed ... That sometimes there is no electricity for weeks. It is not known why the shop wagon was suddenly canceled and food is delivered to Golovanovka and Kursha from now on in shopping bags - whoever can. That in the summer, before the eyes of passengers and drivers, the station “on Curonian” burned down: a chimney collapsed behind its dilapidation, sparks scattered across the roof - and it started. The traveler, who lived in the station, was sleeping at that time, the brigade that arrived with the train woke him up when the house was already on fire. At first, he jumped out, but then rushed out the window for documents into the very smoke ...
While the diesel locomotive was maneuvering in Gureevsky, moving to the tail of the train to go to reverse side to Golovanovka, they learned from the road foreman that in order to get to work, he adapted a personal motorcycle to the railway trolley - and drove along the line as if on an autobahn! And about how once in the winter we went after snowstorms to the line with a snowplow and got stuck in the snowdrifts most often, for help in Tuma, the driver ran 10 miles on foot, fearing wolves.
Here is Golovanova Dacha - a dead-end station. On a large clearing in the forest there are huts, a boarded-up station with a royal ticket composter, a boarded-up grocery store, a boarded-up club. People, lined up in a row, meet the train. It's a tradition here. It is painful to think that when the train leaves, people are left here alone... You can drive an UAZ along the winter road to Golovanovka in dry weather, and even then only from neighboring villages.
But earlier, before the war, it was not a dead end. Another mustache stretched from Golovanovka to the forced labor camp, where they were engaged in logging, which was supplied to ... Germany, to the Messerschmitt plant. The last shipment was made on June 22, 1941.
... We drove back to Tuma on a clear frosty night under garlands of stars, and the headlight of the diesel locomotive artistically highlighted the patterns of branches floating right at the window. In the darkness of the car with a single flashlight flashing like a firefly, the conductors moved as if in some kind of blissful timelessness ...
I recently found out from the patriot and local historian of these places Gennady Starostin in Tum: he says that this road is the same now. He lives like a divine being: if he needs it, he lives. Vadim Mironov said well about the Tumskaya narrow-gauge railway: “She is a match for Meshchera - a shy worker with discreet beauty and charm, which can only be appreciated with a leisurely glance.”
I am sure that this road must be kept alive at all costs. She is part of our history. Her death will become irreversible both for herself, the “shy toiler”, and for hundreds of people in the desolate space of Meshchera, in the depths of Russia ...
One of the reasons for the death of narrow-gauge railways is the reduction in peat extraction. It is no longer needed in the previous quantities - power plants everywhere have switched to gas or fuel oil. Valuable forests in Central Russia have already been cut down for the most part, so there is no purpose for narrow-gauge railways here either, especially since now wood is being transported directly from the clearings in autotrailers. The narrow gauges are leaving. There are fewer of them, and there will be very few - it was not for nothing that the production of PV-40 cars was stopped.
In the village of Talitsy, Pereslavl district Yaroslavl region there is a unique museum of narrow gauge railways. The impression of his visit with remarkable lyricism was expressed by a modern researcher of the history of locomotives, photographer and writer Leonid Makarov in a short essay entitled “Old narrow-gauge car”: “A passenger car that has served its purpose. Riveted trolleys, shabby sides and six narrow windows - all windows are lowered all the way down. Open areas. Get out on this one, lean on the forged iron handrail, look around, dream ... How such a car will sway, tremble weightily at the junctions of a weak track with its four axles. Light up if you smoke, but I'd rather drink a hundred grams and go to the site. The air there is amazingly fresh, smelling of forests and swamps, and our carriage is moving at a leisurely pace… From Vologda to Arkhangelsk? From Ryazan to Vladimir?
…How many hours will we drive? Or maybe a few days? But that car was rusty and the green paint had peeled off.
Timelessness.
No! It's just a long parking lot...
Here they are - the five tracks of the half-asleep station. Rare pine trees, black huts lost between them. Dranochny roofs and red brick rough. Somewhere a dog is barking, a child is screaming, a cow is mooing. Grasshoppers crackle in the tall grass. In a narrow open window - very close, you can touch it with your hand - the sharp nose of a snowplow, unnecessary until next winter, and on the last journey, in a trembling sultry haze - two small abandoned steam locomotives buried in a dead end ...
... Grasshoppers crackle, flood, and butterflies fly from one open window to another. Parking for four hours… Four months… Forty years.
Where is that reserved forest side from my dreams? Where is the distant narrow-gauge railway with a long and low locomotive that has turned gray from old age? Will the old wagon answer me?
Maybe doze off in it under the light noise of pines, and then wake up - and here it is, that inaccessible region ...
Old wagon, do a miracle, take me with you!
Quiet. Only butterflies fly from one broken window to another.”
Back in the early 2000s, the narrow-gauge railway museum in Pereslavl was connected to the network of the former P.Zh.D. - the industrial Pereslavl railway (750 mm gauge), once the most powerful transport network in this region, engaged in the transportation of passengers, peat and other goods. Dozens of locomotives worked here in the old days! The network stretched from Olkhovskaya through Kubrinsk with branches to Msharovo and Talitsy, where there was a depot (the building of the current museum), to Veksa, a large junction station, then after the junction of the Pereslavskaya branch, it went along the northern shore of Lake Pleshcheyevo through a dense forest to Beklemishevo station. There was a transshipment station where the narrow-gauge railway was docked with the main wide passage Moscow - Yaroslavl. There was an intersection with this narrow-gauge railway of the Yaroslavl highway in two places - in Pereslavl itself at the former bus station and on the Yaroslavl highway between Pereslavl and Petrovsk in the forest, near the village of Govyrino, where there was a guarded crossing with a barrier. Now there is no hint of these transfers.
The narrow gauge railway was finally closed in 2003. Amazingly, the trains from Pereslavl to Botik Petra were always full of tourists who were attracted by the originality of such a movement, but the administration of the Yaroslavl region nevertheless closed this road. It seems to me that we should try to preserve it, to include it in the Pereslavl reserve complex - well, let's say, to use it for tourism purposes, because nearby, in Talitsy, there is the only narrow-gauge museum in the country, not to mention ancient Pereslavl with its museums and temples. All over the world, narrow-gauge railways in such tourist places - good business, and no less than on broad gauge retrolines - after all, the cost of operating a narrow gauge is much less. Not to mention the fact that this narrow-gauge railway is simply a considerable memory for the region.
However, who cares about memory these days? Now is the time to forget...
From the book "Jewish dominance" - fiction or reality? The most taboo subject! author Burovsky Andrey MikhailovichMontefiore's first adventures in Russia The first time Montefiore was approached back in 1842: The Russian government needed an expert who would help the government "cultivate" the Jews, change the strictly orthodox kagal way of life. An attempt to deprive the Jews
From the book Secrets of the Romanov House author From the book True History of Russia. Notes of an amateur author Guts Alexander KonstantinovichHistorians and history: the first books on the history of Russia until the 19th century. Who was the first to write the history of the Russian state? Most people know about our history only from school textbooks. Someone knows about the “History of the Russian State” by N.M. Karamzin, written in
From the book of the Romanovs. Family secrets of Russian emperors author Balyazin Voldemar NikolaevichThe first years of life in Russia on January 10, 1744, mother and daughter left Zerbst and arrived in St. Petersburg through Berlin, Koenigsberg and Riga on February 3, and on February 9 they reached Moscow, where Elizaveta Petrovna, Pyotr Fedorovich, and the entire imperial court were. They arrived in Moscow
From the book History of encryption business in Russia author Soboleva Tatiana AThe first organizers and leaders of the cryptographic service of Russia Yet the first of the Russian sovereigns, who very clearly realized the importance of encryption of dispatches and the development of encryption business for ensuring the security of the state, was Peter the Great (1672-1725).
From the book Alexander III and his time author Tolmachev Evgeny Petrovich3. THE FIRST SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC CIRCLES AND ORGANIZATIONS IN RUSSIA From the first half of the 1980s, when capitalism took deep roots in Russia, when the proletariat class grew, the class struggle of the workers unfolded more widely and Social Democratic groups and
author Popov Igor MikhailovichRussia's Movement to the East: First Contacts with China The first contacts between Russia and China date back to the 13th century. Information about Rus', the Slavic lands and the peoples of Eastern Europe as a whole reached the Chinese lands along the main Trans-Asian trade route - the Great
From the book Russia and China: 300 years on the brink of war author Popov Igor MikhailovichThe first military clashes between Russia and Qing China From the mid-40s of the 17th century, especially after the return of the expedition of V.D. Poyarkov, interest in this region in Russia has increased dramatically. By the end of this decade, the actual accession was completed
From the book Passionary Russia author Mironov Georgy EfimovichTHE GREAT Mute: THE FIRST STEPS OF CINEMATOGRAPHY IN RUSSIA On December 28, 1895, the first public session of the “Lumière cinematograph” took place in Paris at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines, and already in the first half of 1896, the invention of Louis Lumiere was imported to Russia. First
From the book History of the Russian Church. Volume 2. History of the Russian Church in the period of its complete dependence on the Patriarch of Constantinople (988-1240) author Macarius MetropolitanChapter II. The first churches in Russia and the state of worship As soon as the people of Kiev were baptized, the Grand Duke ordered that churches in Kyiv be cut down and put in places where idols had previously stood - a truly prudent measure! The pagans, no doubt, are accustomed to consider these places for themselves.
author7.6.3. Russia's first Nobel laureates in the 21st century The sad history of the development of domestic science in the last 15-20 years has not yet been written. But scientists in Russia have not yet died out. Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born in 1930. In 1979 he became an academician, in 1989 - chairman of the Presidium
From the book Russian history in faces author Fortunatov Vladimir Valentinovich7.7.3. The first ladies of the new Russia The first lady in the new post-Soviet Russia was the wife of Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin Naina Iosifovna (maiden name Girina). She is younger than her husband by a couple of weeks. Boris and Naina studied at the same university - the Ural Polytechnic Institute. WITH.
From the book History of the book: Textbook for universities author Govorov Alexander Alekseevich19.1. BOOK PUBLISHING IN RUSSIA IN THE FIRST YEARS OF SOVIET POWER In the period between the February bourgeois-democratic and October socialist revolutions, a situation arose in the country when the Provisional
From the book SMERSH in battle author Tereshchenko Anatoly StepanovichThe first operations of the Cheka in the new Russia It is well known that the Cheka was created after a note by V. I. Lenin addressed to F. E. Dzerzhinsky. On the first page of this document it was said: “TO COMRADE DZERZHINSKY. For your report today on measures to combat saboteurs and
From the book Russian Empire in Comparative Perspective author History Team of authors --The First Five Stages of Russia's Expansion First, I will briefly talk about the first five stages of expansion. Russian Empire from the 15th to the beginning of the 18th century, and then about different types of integration of peripheral regions. The first stage in the formation of the Russian Empire began already at the time