What is the name of a trolley on a narrow gauge railway. History of Russian narrow-gauge railways. The historical purpose of narrow gauge railways

The method of transporting goods in carts along longitudinal guides was invented in ancient times. In the 15th - 16th centuries in Europe, some factories already used railroads, along which trolleys with goods were moved manually or with the help of horse traction (for a relatively short distance). Such roads also appeared in Russia. Initially, they used wooden rails and wooden trolleys.

One of the largest horse-rail roads appeared in 1810 at the Zmeinogorsk mine (the current Altai Territory). The rails were already metal, had a convex surface. The line was 1,876 meters long and had a track gauge of 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in).

The moment of the birth of the railway is considered to be the beginning of movement on the rail tracks of a mechanical crew. Motherland railways is the UK. At the beginning of the 19th century, the first steam locomotives were built and tested there. In 1825, the world's first public railway opened, connecting the cities of Stockton (Stockton-on-Tees) and Darlington (Darlington). The length of this railway was 40 kilometers, the gauge was 1435 mm (later this gauge became an unrecognized global standard).

The author adheres to the following point of view: railroad tracks on which locomotive traction has never been used for the movement of rolling stock (the muscular strength of animals and (or) humans, cable traction has been used or is used), are not railways. In the lists of narrow-gauge railways, such rail tracks are entered "optionally".

In exceptional cases, rail tracks that use only cable traction can be considered as railways (example - "cable tram" in the city of San Francisco, many funiculars).

The rail track becomes a railway from the moment locomotive traction appears, that is, from the moment the first locomotive (or trolley, multiple unit train) passes along it.

Russia entered the "epoch of the railway" in 1834. The birthplace of Russian railways is the city of Nizhny Tagil. At the mine, located near Mount Vysokaya, the first trip was made by a steam locomotive created by the father and son Cherepanovs. The first Russian railway was short (length 854 meters), had a wide gauge (1645 mm). The steam locomotive was destined to work for a short time - soon horse traction began to be used again instead of it.

The officially recognized date of foundation of Russian railways is 1837. Then traffic was opened along the line St. Petersburg - Tsarskoe Selo - Pavlovsk, 23 kilometers long. Her track was also wide - 1829 mm (6 feet).

In 1843-51, the construction of the first major highway, the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway, took place. It was decided to install a track width of 5 feet (1524 mm, later - 1520 mm) on it. It was this gauge that became the standard for domestic railways. Meanwhile, in foreign Europe and in North America, another gauge standard was adopted - 1435 mm.

The consequences of this decision in the middle of the 19th century are estimated inconsistently. On the one hand, the difference in gauge helped us in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War - the enemy could not immediately use the railways in the occupied territory. At the same time, this hinders international traffic, leads to significant costs for the replacement of wagon bogies and transshipment of goods at border stations.

Variable gauge bogies have been around for a long time, but are still expensive and difficult to maintain. Therefore, in Russia they have not yet received distribution. As for abroad, passenger trains, made up of wagons capable of moving on roads with different gauges, run between Spain and France on a regular basis. In modern Japan, there are wagons capable of switching from 1435 mm gauge tracks to a gauge that clearly falls under the definition of narrow - 1067 mm.

The advent of narrow gauge railways

Narrow gauge railways appeared several decades later than broad gauge railways. The spread of narrow gauge railways for a long time was hampered by several factors, one of the main ones was that the narrow gauge was considered unreliable in operation, more prone to accidents than the wide gauge. It was widely believed that with an increase in the gauge, the probability of a train crash decreases.

In 1836, the Ffestiniog horse-drawn railroad was opened in North West Wales (Great Britain). The length was 21 kilometers, the track width was 597 mm. The road was designed to transport oil shale from the mining site to the seaport. In the empty direction, the trolleys were pulled by horses; in the freight direction, the trains moved without the use of traction due to the presence of a slope (while the horses were transported in special trolleys).

In 1863, steam locomotives began to be used on the road. Perhaps the moment of transition of the Festignog horse-drawn railway to steam traction can be considered the date of the appearance of the world's first narrow-gauge railway.

During the 19th century in Russia there was a large number of narrow gauge railroads, on which horse or hand traction was used. To facilitate the walking of animals between the rails, a "foot" - a wooden flooring - was often laid. Horse-drawn narrow-gauge railroads were in many cases created to deliver goods to plants and factories - where it was not possible to build a "normal" railway. The narrow gauge was chosen in order to reduce construction costs.

The largest horse-drawn narrow gauge railroad operated in 1840-62. It connected the Dubovka pier on the Volga with the Kachalino pier on the Don River (in the present Volgograd region), its length was about 60 kilometers.

The first narrow-gauge railway in Russia, as is commonly believed, appeared in 1871. It ran between the Verkhovye and Livny stations (now the Oryol region), had a gauge of 1067 mm. The existence of the first narrow gauge railway turned out to be short-lived: in 1896 it was replaced by a normal gauge railway line.

But that was only the beginning. Almost immediately, mass construction of narrow-gauge railways began in various regions of Russia. They began to develop rapidly throughout the country - and on Far East, and in Central Asia. The largest networks of narrow-gauge railways with a gauge of 1067 mm or 1000 mm appeared in underdeveloped regions separated from the center of the country by large rivers. From the station Uroch (it was located near the banks of the Volga, opposite Yaroslavl) in 1872 a line was opened to Vologda, in 1896-1898 extended to Arkhangelsk. Its length was 795 kilometers. From the city of Pokrovsk (now Engels), located on the left bank of the Volga, opposite Saratov, a meter gauge line (1000 mm) was built to Uralsk. Branches also appeared - to Nikolaevsk (Pugachevsk), and to the Alexandrov Gai station. The total length of the network was 648 kilometers.

The first known 750 mm narrow gauge railways appeared in the 1890s. In 1892, the first section of the Irinovskaya narrow-gauge railway was opened, running in the direction of St. Petersburg - Vsevolozhsk. According to unconfirmed reports, in 1893 a narrow-gauge railway was opened in the vicinity of Ryazan (later becoming the initial section of the Ryazan-Vladimir narrow-gauge railway). Soon, narrow-gauge railways, small in scale (in many cases, with a gauge of 750 mm), began to appear, serving industrial enterprises.

Narrow gauge railways in the 20th century

At the very beginning of the 20th century, there were already many narrow-gauge railways intended for the export of timber and peat. Subsequently, it is precisely such roads that will form the “backbone” of narrow gauge lines in our country.

In the USSR, the general pace of railway construction in comparison with the era Russian Empire decreased markedly. But the number of narrow gauge railways continued to grow rapidly.

The years of terrible Stalinist terror brought a new type of narrow gauge railways - "camp" lines. They appeared at enterprises located in the Gulag system, connected factories and camps with mining sites. The scale of the railway construction of those years is impressive. Contrary to the widespread belief that there have never been railways in the North-East of our country, it is known that there are at least seven narrow gauge railways in the territory of the present Magadan Region, some of which reached a length of 60 - 70 kilometers.

In 1945, the first section of a sufficiently powerful and technically advanced 1067 mm gauge railway was opened, starting in Magadan. By 1953, its length was 102 kilometers (Magadan - Palatka). The railway was to become a significant highway crossing the vast Kolyma region. But after the death of I.V. Stalin, the mass closure of the Kolyma camps began, which meant the actual curtailment of the industrial development of the North-East of the USSR. As a result, plans to extend the railway were abandoned. A few years later, the constructed site was dismantled.

Small narrow-gauge railways also appeared in other regions of the Northeast - in Kamchatka, in Chukotka autonomous region. All of them were later demolished.

Already in the 1930s, the two main specializations of the narrow gauge were clearly manifested: the transport of timber and the transport of peat. The standard narrow gauge of 750 mm was finally approved.

In 1940, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were included in the USSR. These states had an extensive network of narrow-gauge public railways. According to their technical condition, these roads turned out to be almost the best in the country. It was in Estonia that the record for the speed of movement on the 750 mm gauge railway was set. In 1936, the railcar covered the distance from Tallinn to Pärnu (146 km) in 2 hours and 6 minutes. The average speed was 69 km/h, the maximum achieved speed was 102.6 km/h!

During the years of the Great Patriotic War the number of narrow-gauge railways was replenished by many dozens of "military field" railways, built both by the enemy and by our troops. But almost all of them did not last long.

In August 1945, South Sakhalin was included in the USSR, where there was a network of 1067 mm gauge railway lines, built in compliance with the technical standards and dimensions of Japan's main railways. In subsequent years, the railway network has been significantly developed (while maintaining the existing gauge).

The first half of the 1950s proved to be the "golden age" of narrow-gauge timber-carrying railways. They developed at an astonishing rate. During the year, dozens of new narrow-gauge railways appeared, and the length of the lines increased by thousands of kilometers.

The development of virgin and fallow lands was accompanied by the mass construction of narrow-gauge railways in Kazakhstan. Later, many of them were rebuilt into broad gauge lines, but some operated until the early 1990s. As of 2004, only one "virgin" narrow-gauge railway has survived - in Atbasar (Akmola region).

Narrow-gauge public lines belonging to the Ministry of Railways (in 1918-1946 it was called NKPS) occupied not the last place among narrow-gauge railways. But since the 1960s, their length has been steadily reduced. Basically, 750 mm gauge railways were replaced by broad gauge lines built in parallel, along one embankment, or slightly to the side, but in the same direction. The 1000 mm and 1067 mm gauge lines were most often "altered" (a new rail track of a different gauge was laid on the same embankment).

In the 1960s, it became apparent that for timber-carrying narrow-gauge railways better times passed. New narrow-gauge peat-carrying railways were built until the end of the 1970s (and isolated cases of the creation of new "peat carts" were noted later).

Until the early 1990s, the development and mass production of new rolling stock continued. The main and then the only manufacturer of narrow gauge trailer rolling stock was the Demikhov Machine Building Plant (Demikhovo, Moscow Region), and the Kambarka Machine Building Plant (Kambarka, Udmurtia) was the manufacturer of diesel locomotives for 750 mm gauge.

The 1990s were the most tragic years in the history of narrow gauge railways. The economic recession, together with the transition to a new form of economic relations and political changes, led to the fact that a landslide reduction in the number and length of narrow gauge railways began. Each past year "reduced" thousands of kilometers of narrow gauge railway lines.

In 1993, the production of cars for ground narrow-gauge railways with a gauge of 750 mm was completely stopped. Soon the production of locomotives also stopped.

Since the late 1990s, the country has experienced economic stabilization and a gradual transition from decline to development. However, the process of liquidation of narrow-gauge railways has not slowed down.

On some sites you can download schemes of the Elektrogorsk narrow-gauge railway. I downloaded them and tried to layer them on a real geographical map in order to identify all the routes of the now non-existent gauge, but I was puzzled, since the schemes turned out to be very conditional and did not fit on the map at all on any scale. It also turned out that they are very simplified and sometimes erroneous. It was then that I began to look for old maps of the vicinity of Elektrogorsk and save all the designations of the Ural Railways there, which made it possible to make a new scheme of the Electrogorsk Ural Railways in real proportions based on no speculation and verbal descriptions, but actually available maps. Of course, this scheme cannot be considered complete, and as other maps are found that indicate unaccounted for branches, I will update this scheme.

It should be noted that some difficulty in studying this area is due to the fact that it is located on the border of the regions, so the maps have to be examined cropped and of very different information content (since there are more old detailed maps for the Moscow region than for, say, for the Vladimir region.

It should also be understood that this is a reflection of the UR routes for the entire time of its existence, and not a diagram of a real-life railway at any particular point in time. In fact, the railway in this form never existed for the reason that as the peat areas were developed, some of the tracks were removed and the tracks were rebuilt to new areas. That is, the scheme of peat extraction routes has changed dozens of times. The main long-lived lines can be considered the following:

Early years (30-50s):
Elektrogorsk - swamps in the southeast of the Far - Timkovo - Noginsk.
Elektrogorsk - the territory of Novo-Ozerny - the territory of Sopovo - the Red Corner.

Later years (50-70s):
Elektrogorsk - Novo-Ozernaya - Far - Timkovo - Noginsk.
Elektrogorsk - Novo-Ozernaya - Sopovo - Red Corner - Melezhi.
Elektrogorsk - Lyapino - Zheludevo.

Recent years (70-90s):
Elektrogorsk - Novo-Ozernaya (- Far).
Elektrogorsk - Novo-Ozernaya (- Sopovo).
Elektrogorsk - Lyapino (- Zheludevo).

Ideally, it would be necessary to make not one diagram, but a series of diagrams showing changes on the ground every 10-20 years, but detailed maps are not enough for this, and even those that exist did not always keep up with real changes on the ground.

In order for the reader to have an understanding of how the development (and at the end - degradation) of the Elektrogorsk narrow-gauge railway took place, I made a short digression into history, based on a study of more than a dozen maps over different years.

Early 20th century.

Aerial photography for the purpose of cartography became widely used only from the First World War. Before that, the cards were not so attentive to small details. Of the available maps of that time, the Strelbitsky map is the most interesting, since it is considered military.

1921, 1937 Map of Strelbitsky, 1:420000.

There are three versions of the sheet with the Moscow region on the Internet - 1872, 1921 and 1937 (only two are of interest for our study). latest versions). The version of 1921 in the region of the Elektrogorsk swamps does not differ much from the version of 1872, it does not even indicate Power transmission. On the map of 1937 there is an inscription that the railways are coordinated with the official index of the NKPS for 1937. However, even on it we will not find Elektrogorsk narrow-gauge railways, although the Electric Transmission is marked, and there is a railway route to it from the Gorky direction. Other civilian maps of the time are even less informative.

1922-25 Map of the General Staff of the Red Army, first edition 1929, 1:100000.

On some sites, this map is incorrectly issued for the year 1940. The reason for this lies in the fact that some of these maps were indeed printed in the forties, and they are distributed as a set of General Staff kilometers of 1941, but this particular sheet N-37-6 is signed as I indicated. In the upper right corner is written “1922-25. First edition 1929”, at the bottom there is an inscription “The map is redrawn according to 1:50000 survey of the GGU 1922-25”. I couldn't get the top sheet.

This is the earliest of the maps I have, where the Elektrogorsk UZD system is drawn in detail (if you have earlier ones - link in the comments). The main paths at that time already exist:
Noginsk - Far.
Dalnaya - Power transmission (future Elektrogorsk).
Power transmission - towards the Red Corner. *
Surroundings of Dalnaya, lakes White, Gray.
West of Ivankovo ​​(Lake Chernoye).
To the west of the Power Transmission, everything is dug up and generously lined with paths.
Interestingly, the path to Pavlovsky Posad is marked by a narrow track.

*Note. The place Red Corner itself is not visible on the map, since the corresponding map sheet has not yet been obtained. For the first time, the “fork” in Krasny Ugol is found on the map of the Red Army in 1941, however, I will suggest that the branch from Elektrogorsk to the north was originally built to Krasnoy Ugol, since it would be unreasonable to assume that the railway ended at the junction of map sheets, while while the length of the track section above this junction is only about five kilometers. Therefore, I still attribute this fork to the period of construction discussed here. I restored the route on the missing sheet of the map and the fork on my diagram according to a later map in the sizes indicated on the map of the Red Army of 1941 (in subsequent years it will lengthen, and then completely disappear - there will be only one way to Melezhi). For the sake of objectivity, I am ready to make changes to the diagram if someone finds maps of this period, on which the path to the north is, but this fork is not.

1925-1928 Map of the outskirts of Moscow, German edition of 1940, 1:50000.

At the bottom of the map sheet it is written: The map was compiled in the "Goskartogeodezii" at the Research Institute of Geodesy and Cartography based on topographic surveys of the Production Department. G.G.K. produced in 1922-28. on a scale of 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 and based on survey materials from 1925-28. M.Reg.ZU on a scale of 1:10000. Map scale 1:50000. Reprinted by the German General Staff in November 1940, judging by the inscription in the lower right corner. In the upper left corner, after the names of the sheets used on the map, the year 1932 is indicated (probably the relevance of the map from the point of view of the Fritz). German names are applied over the Russian names. Added some new roads that appeared by 1940. Sheet 5 is missing from the collection (just where the Red Corner and Melezh are).

The railways on this map are fully consistent with the previous map, but the path to Pavlovsky Posad is marked with a wide gauge. The path from Zagornovo to Noginsk is shown as a narrow gauge.

1928 Map of the Moscow region GURKKA, 1:500000.

Completely repeats the image on the previous map, but on a less interesting scale. The path to Pavlovsky Posad is shown as a wide track.

1941 Map of the General Staff of the Red Army 1:500000.

Unfortunately, I did not find a normal kilometer sheet of the map of the General Staff of this area during the war times; under its guise, the first map of 1929 in this list is being distributed. This five-kilometer map repeats the previous maps of the late 1920s in terms of the main routes, but with the omission of numerous branches in the peat extraction areas. This can be explained not only by the laziness of cartographers or the five-kilometer scale of the map. Here is what Valentin Kovrigin writes:

“In 1932, the whole city was in smoke, the peat extraction sites were on fire. Near the plots were reservoirs. At first, peat workers fled the fire in these pools. Then the management of the sites decided to evacuate the peat and members of the families to the Power Transmission. They sent me by train, put me in boxes - that's what my sister told me. The narrow-gauge railway was bulk, the locomotive failed on the burning field, the train stopped, the passengers began to jump into the burning peat - there were many victims ... ".

About the failed steam locomotive - this is not fiction - in memory of this event in Sopovo there is a monument to those who died in large fires at peat extraction in 1932 and 1972. Thus, the reason for the "impoverishment" of the track network, most likely, is precisely the fire of 1932, and not dismantling. The line to the north ends on this map west of the village of Pesyane in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe place, which will later be called Red Corner, and bifurcates to the west, but, above, I already suggested that it was like that before (it’s just the first appearance of this section on the available me cards).

1941 German map Osteuropa, 1:300000.

Part of the railway tracks is presented in a modified form: a ring appears between Vasyutino and Alekseevo (hereinafter referred to as simply “the ring”). Regarding this ring, I periodically have doubts, since on more detailed maps of other periods there is a semblance of a ring, but the paths in the southwestern part are not closed, although they come close. If the map is moved away, it seems that the paths are closed in a ring. But maps of this scale often have the feature of smoothing and simplifying. The same closed ring is depicted on Russian three-kilometer and four-kilometer maps of 46-47. More detailed maps (alas, for other years) do not confirm the presence of a closed ring, although this does not mean that it did not exist. Be that as it may, from this ring there is a new branch to the southwest. Many branches have disappeared, in particular, to the east of the village of Dalnyaya and to the west of Elekotoperedachi. But they built a path from Dalnaya to a place that would later be called Sopovo, thereby making a passage to the Elektrogorsk - Red Corner branch.

Lyrical digression.

When examining "enemy" maps, it must be remembered that cartographers could, looking at not always high-quality photographs taken by spy planes, simply confuse some railway tracks with ordinary roads and embankments. They could not send Vanka to the swamps to find out if there was a railway line there or not. Therefore, the "priority of trust" to such cards is less than to the Soviet ones. At the same time, any map is interesting for history, especially if there are no updated Russian maps reflecting that period. As a lyrical digression, I propose to consider German aerial photographs of the city of Orekhovo-Zuyevo and find the narrow-gauge railways of the Orekhovo-Zuevsky peat enterprise. As you can see, if there is a train on the tracks, the railway track is easy to distinguish from the road, but if there is no train, problems begin ...

The second photograph is interesting in that it has preserved for history a unique photo of the cable car, which was used to transfer peat from the narrow-gauge station Torfyanaya through the Moscow-Vladimir broad gauge tracks. The Fritz kindly outlined and signed everything, although they did not think that in 75 years someone would study it ... In general, the Orekhovo-Zuevskaya narrow-gauge railway deserves a separate historical investigation, therefore, let's return to Elektrogorskaya for now.

1942-43(?) American map of the USSR in 1955, 1:250000.

I placed this 1955 map between the 1942 and 1946 maps for the reasons below. This is a very informative map. You can see new branches from the main tracks in the area of ​​the Power Transmission and between the lakes Svetloe and Beloe, north of the village of Dalnyaya. The Dalnyaya-Sopovo path is depicted in a strange way. It starts in Dalnaya, but ends about 670 meters south of the actual location (if, for example, compared with other maps), although it repeats the bends in exactly the same way, so on my diagram it is recreated according to a more accurate two-kilometer line of the 59th year, where this the path is already shown as dismantled (and corresponds in location to modern satellite imagery - now there is a dacha road there). It can, of course, be assumed that the first path fell into the swamp, and a new one had to be built to the north, but this is unlikely. If there are other accurate maps, this issue can be returned and corrected. The path from Krasny Ugl is extended to Melezha and has a small branch to the northwest shortly before the end of the main path.

But again, since the map is “enemy”, there is some possibility that in some places, due to the low quality of photographs, cartographers could mistake ordinary roads or embankments for railway track. The disclaimer at the bottom of the map clearly states this:

In short, the map was concocted by American soldiers in 1953 from the Soviet kilometers of the Red Army General Staff of 1925-1941. The accuracy of the map has been verified from aerial photographs. The classification of roads should be treated with caution. The width and existence of some roads is questionable. And so on.

What makes me think that the Americans had a hand in drawing the roads on the above-mentioned maps of the General Staff 1925-1941 already after the year 41 is that on these maps of the General Staff the northern route ends at Krasnoy Ugol, and on the American map it goes to Melezh, as on Russian maps of 1946 and 1947. In one of the forums I came across unverified information that "Planimetry revised from 1942-43 aerial photography". If we assume that this was the case, then we will have to accept as a fact the existence of a path to Melezhi already in the war years.

One thing is incomprehensible: if in 1942 the network was “simplified” (according to the German map), and in 1946 it remained approximately the same (the ring was supposedly already closed), then how could such a global construction take place between these years offshoots that disappeared rather quickly? And we do not see a closed ring on the American map. If the edits were made between the 46th and 55th year (which seems less likely to me), then on the map we see the period when the ring was already being dismantled. Perhaps the Americans did not go into much detail, outlining aerial photographs, which embankments had paths and which did not. Therefore, as they themselves wrote, "the classification of roads should be treated with caution" - this map should not be taken as a 100% correct reflection of the real railway system of that time. You have yet to read about the quality of American cards below.

1946 Map of the Vladimir region, 1:400000.

The map confirms the appearance of the ring between Vasyutino and Alekseevo, indicated on the German map of 1941. In general, the map is four kilometers long, and cartographers could simplify it by ignoring small branches. But if we accept the map as accurate, then the following changes have occurred. The dismantling of branches to the west of Power Transmission and in the area of ​​the village of Dalnyaya has been completed. The Elektrogorsk-Krasny Angle line runs to Melezha, but the short exit to the northwest shown on the American map is missing. The exit to the road to Pavlovsky Posad was made along the western outskirts of the Power Transmission (previously it was a little to the east).

1947 Map of the Moscow region, 1:300000.

The power transmission is renamed on the map as Elektrogorsk (actually April 25, 1946). The ring loses its southern part, but a branch appears to the north from the northeastern part of the ring. Pay attention to this detail. Presumably in the mid-forties, a kind of “snake” appeared on the section of the path between the Red Corner and Melezh (on my diagram - yellow-green alternating dots). The straight path is shown on this map and on the American map (yellow dots on my diagram), the snake is shown on the map of the Vladimir Region of the 46th and all subsequent ones, and in place of the direct path they began to depict an ordinary road. Whether it was so, I do not presume to say, since no final conclusions can be drawn from 3-4 km maps, and I have not yet seen the km maps of these years. Otherwise, everything on this map is the same as on the map of the Vladimir region of 1946.

1956 No map.

Just a useful quote for understanding what is happening at this moment in time (from mosenergo-museum.ru):

Thanks to the re-extraction of peat in the former quarries of hydropeat at GRES-3 im. Klassona received hundreds of thousands of tons of cheap local fuel. The staff of the peat enterprise creatively worked on the prospect of further work of the enterprise. New areas for the extraction of milled peat were discovered and developed. New peat tracts have been found in the Pokrovsky district of the Vladimir region and a new peat area, Lyapino, has been organized. During these years, the Peat Enterprise carried out a significant mechanization of the extraction of milled peat with the creation and use of various machines: milling drums, edge cutters, stump collectors, rooters, peat harvesters from rolls to stacks. The number of employees at the Peat Enterprise decreased at a faster rate than at the power plant.

1959 Topographic map of the Moscow region, 1:200000.

Enough detailed map, but, alas, ends with the borders of the Moscow region and does not display the entire area occupied by the tracks. On the map we see the following changes.

Dismantling of all branches in the area of ​​Dalnyaya village and Beloe lake. Final dismantling of all branches in the north-west of Elektrogorsk. There was one line left towards Alekseevo, but several new short branches were attached to it. The ring was canceled, there is no more travel to Dalnaya here. The direct route from Dalnaya to Sopovo was also dismantled. Instead of these two dismantled tracks connecting Elektrogorsk with Dalnaya, now a new track has been built from Dalnaya to the east, towards Golovino. In general, two-thirds of this path has already been built and is visible on maps from 1928 to 1942 inclusive, but it was not drawn on the maps of 1946 and 1947 (maybe the scale was not assumed). In any case, this track has now been rebuilt or restored, and extended to the Elektrogorsk-Melezhi branch, to a station that would later be called Novo-Ozernaya. Thus, the Elektrogorsk - Novo-Ozerny - Dalnaya branch was born, which remained the only way from Elektrogorsk to Noginsk. Also, from the Elektrogorsk-Melezhi branch, new short branches were made to the northeast near the villages of Golovino, Krasny Ugol and Melezhi. Also, from the side of Vasyutino, the laying of a branch to the East has begun, which should go towards Lyapino, but I still don’t know how far it was laid, since the map is cut off to the district concrete (according to the quote above, in 1956 the Lyapino section was already known). The map is also interesting in that it shows several dismantled sections that were known to us only from the “doubtful” American map.

Lyrical digression.

Now let's mention the big fire of 1972 again. Surely, some damage was done to the railway network, but, between 1959 and the beginning of the 80s, an unpleasant information gap formed - there are no normal maps. As a lyrical digression, consider two American cards (they are the same):

1984 American, 1:250000. Compiled in 1984. Revised May 1997.

1989 American, 1:250000. Compiled September 1989. Revised May 1997.
U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency

I placed them in front of the General Staff map of 1979, since they are much earlier in content, although I do not presume to guess which period they correspond to. At the General Staff of the 79th year, the branch to Zheludevo (Zheludyevo) was completely built, and here it is only being selected. On the General Staff of the 84th year, only the Far - Novoozernaya - Elektrogorsk remains from the northern branch, the same map shows great prosperity: the Noginsk - Dalnaya and Novoozernaya - Krasny Ogorok branches still exist (moreover, the Krasny Ogorok shows a “tail”, which was cut off no later than 1959, if you believe the corresponding map. Here, for some reason, long-worked-out swamps to the west of Elektrogorsk again acquire rails that were long dismantled no later than 59. And the “tails” cut off at the Far East in the thirties and forties, grow back again True, we guessed that the Dalnyaya-Sopovo route turned into an ordinary road, and thanks for that. And look at the Elektrogorsk - Pavlovsky Posad route, it is marked as a narrow gauge, although even on the map of 1928 it was already marked with a broad gauge ( what it is now).Looking at this map, the thought does not leave that it was drawn by stupid idiots absolutely thoughtlessly.During the Second World War, it was still excusable, because if you didn’t steal secret there is nothing to check with the general staff maps, but 1997 is the time when a great country has already collapsed and it is clearly not a problem to get Russian maps, well, either send someone to Moscow, buy fresh civilian maps at the Soyuzpechat kiosk, or snap satellite images in high permission, but no, it’s not a shame for them to disgrace themselves and publish such garbage. In short, this map cannot be attributed to any period - it is a hodgepodge of all years, plus the fantasies and conjectures of the authors. This map does not show any new railway lines, except for a dubious short branch up in the middle of the Dalnyaya-Nov.Ozerny track. I didn't add it to my chart. Both on the map of the 59th and on the General Staff of the 80s there is a swamp with peat extraction, without any roads at all. Now there is a dacha settlement, and this offshoot is one of the dacha roads. I leave this map only as a demonstration of how Americans make maps. And it's called "Revised May 1997", despite the fact that the railway was completely dismantled in the early nineties!!!

Late 1970s - early 80s General Staff, 1:200000.

Regarding the date, 1990 is given by the authors of the retromap site where I found it. The note says that it is made up of maps from the 80s. But the sheet with Elektrogorsk is clearly striking. Obviously, this sheet is older, since it still shows the last remnants of minor tracks in the north-west of Elektrogorsk, which will no longer be on the maps of the mid-80s. It is noteworthy that only on this map there is a second road from Elektrogorsk to Dalnaya. Its southern part was already visible on the map of 1959. On the GSh maps marked in the mid-80s, this path will also not be. Also, the path still goes to Sopovo, but the top sheet is more recent, and there, instead of the railway, an ordinary one is shown. And this is the only map I have that shows a branch south of Bynino. I hope that this map can be found in the original dated and with all the sheets, then I will correct this fragment.

1979 GSH, 1:100000.

During this year, only a sheet was found showing the eastern fragment of the railway (Zheludevskaya "fork") completed.

1985 GSH, 1:100000 (various sheets come across, mostly 1984-86).

West of Elektrogorsk, all roads were destroyed. One way goes along the route Elektrogorsk - Novy Ozerny (non-residential) - Far. From Dalnaya to Noginsk, the path has been dismantled. Another route branches off in the Vasyutino area and goes east, through Lyapino, then crosses the district railway in the Kilekshino area and goes northeast, soon branching into two small tracks in the Zheludevo area (“fork”).

1990 Unknown provenance, 1:350000.

The map is historical nonsense. The map is taken from the website of S. Bolashenko. How did he sign it? “Narrow gauge railway on a 1:350,000 topographic map published in 1990. The state of the terrain in the "northern" part of the narrow-gauge railway (the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe settlements of Krasny Ugol and Dubki) - for the 1970s. The southern part is reminiscent of the late 80s. Northern - probably the 70s, but not later than the early 80s. The path from Kirzhach is incorrectly shown as a narrow gauge (in fact, until the 90s there was a wide gauge). It is noteworthy that on this map the fork in Zheludyevo was not shown, there was only one way left.

Further examination of the cards does not make much sense, since the memories of eyewitnesses are still fresh, which, oddly enough, are more accurate than cards.

Nevertheless, to show that maps cannot always be trusted, I propose for consideration two maps issued approximately 10 years after the final dismantling.

2001 Topographic maps FSUE "Gosgiscenter", 1:100000 (according to other sources, 2007-2010).

The section Elektrogorsk-Nov.Ozerny and the branch to Zheludyevo are shown in full. The map, of course, is outdated, but it is shocking in detail, you can even see how narrow-gauge tracks passed in Elektrogorsk itself.

2004 Map of unknown origin.

A fragment of the route from Elektrogorsk to Novy Ozerny is shown, with a branch to the east, to the district railway.

Map of the Vladimir region, year unknown.

And one more cartographic incident. The year of the map is unknown. I downloaded this map of the Vladimir region for Ozik already in ready-made cut and glued form back in 2005. It is noteworthy that the Moscow region was completely cleared of the remnants of the narrow gauge railway, but not the Vladimir region. This is how the paths begin on the border of the Moscow and Vladimir regions, in the dense wilderness, and go nowhere ...

As a bonus.

Here is the chronology of the dismantling of the tracks, compiled according to information from the site narrow.parovoz.com

• The Red Corner - Ileikino line existed around 1940-50. Dismantled a long time ago [between 1959 and 1985 according to maps - approx. tol], even fragments of sleepers have not survived to this day, sometimes there are remains of rails sticking out of the ground.
• The line from Dalnaya to Noginsk was dismantled in 1969.
• On the Sopovo-Krasny Ugol-Melezhy section, the road was finally closed in 1982.
• The line through the peat fields was dismantled in 1987 [??? the southern road Dalnyaya - Elektrogorsk, is shown as an ordinary country road already on the map of the 85th year - approx. tol].
• Line to vil. Zheludevo was dismantled in 1993, but in the 90th there was still movement at least to the account. Lyapino.
• The main line was dismantled in 1993 by the very last.
• Bridge over the river Sheredar destroyed in winter 2004

And here is the scheme for the destruction of paths from Evgeny Ermakov (I cannot agree with the accuracy of the scheme).

Doubtful paths and other legends.

Kirzhachskaya narrow-gauge railway.

The Kirzhach narrow-gauge railway and the section of the track from Kirzhach to Melezha is probably the topic that is overgrown with the greatest number of fictions and misconceptions due to the lack of sufficient information. Some I have outlined on a separate page.

Bridge to Filippovskoye.

Many already perceive it as a fact that the train traveled on a narrow gauge for some reason from Elektrogorsk to Filippovskoye, passing over the bridge over the Sherna. I saw the remains of this bridge and the embankment at the beginning of the 2000s. But at the time of writing this article, I was looking for evidence that there were trains running there, and I did not find any. It's one thing if peat trucks drive around peat extraction sites, it's another thing if they drive around old residential areas. settlements, which, most likely, had nothing to do with peat. Filippovskoye is a very ancient village, and not some temporary settlement of peat miners like Novy Ozerny. People there need a connection with the regional center (post office, police and other matters), and this bridge is the main route from Filippovsky to Kirzhach. In addition, this bridge was part of the famous old Stromynskaya road (“Stromynki”), which existed already in the 12th century. It began in Moscow, passed from Stromyn to Kirzhach just through Filippovskoye (the village itself has been known from written sources since the 13th century), and further, to Yuryev-Polsky, Suzdal and Vladimir. Although this road lost its commercial significance with the advent of the Vladimirsky tract (approximately in the 16th century), it still continues to have local meaning up to the present day as the most direct route from Moscow to Kirzhach, Kolchugino and beyond.

Yevgeny Ermakov's scheme contains an even bolder assumption that the train traveled through Filippovskoye to Zakharovo. But on all the old maps that I have seen, these roads (together with the bridge) are clearly marked as road, not rail. Scroll up and see the maps of the General Staff on the 41st, the Vladimir Region on the 46th, the Moscow Region on the 59th. It is especially colorfully highlighted on the German map of the 41st. It was later, presumably in the 60s, during the construction of a large concrete block, a new bridge was built to the north, and cars began to drive there, and before that there was only one bridge in Filippovsky (just the one that is now destroyed), they drove cars and were walking. Here is a map of the roads before the appearance of the concrete road (blue) and after (red).

Who even thought it was a railroad bridge? Even if, after the construction of the new bridge, this bridge was given to narrow-gauge workers, it is still doubtful, because the time was approaching when the line to Melezhi began to be dismantled. At best, at some point in time, trains could travel along this embankment to the river for water, but I have not seen evidence of that either (if someone is in those places, try to find at least one half-rotten sleeper on this embankment). But on the American map of the 55th, next to the turn to the bridge, there is a short branch of the railway, and on the map of the General Staff of the 80s, an embankment (dam) is indicated in that place, going to the ditch. On the map of the year 1959, this place is marked as a peat extraction site. There was an embankment with an arrow turn and a dead end. That's where, most likely, the train went, and not on the bridge, beyond which there are no places marked by peat extraction. If someone has the facts that the train went to Filippovskoye - post it in the comments, and I'm happy to correct / supplement the text, even if you just find a 100-year-old grandfather who testifies that he saw with his own eyes how the train drove along this bridge.

Branches in the District and Pesyan.

According to Yevgeny Ermakov's scheme, they were dismantled in the 67-79s, but I did not find confirmation of their existence on the maps. This does not mean that these branches did not exist, but some facts are needed to include them in the scheme. It is possible to assume their existence by examining modern high-resolution satellite images. Whoever finds maps with these paths, or at least books / magazines / eyewitness accounts where they are mentioned - write in the comments.

Research result.

Now it's time to sum up this study. Once again, this scheme does not claim to be absolute accuracy, but still a little more detailed than those that exist at the time this article was created. Additions and corrections are welcome. As additional information becomes available, the scheme will be corrected, so if we decide to copy the scheme to our blog, it would be better for railway fans to simply link to this page so as not to produce hundreds of different outdated versions of the same scheme on the Internet.

There are two options for the scheme. The SAT is more suitable for general familiarization with the size and layout of the narrow gauge network. GS will be of interest to those lovers of narrow-gauge railways who want to go to the vicinity of Elektrogorsk and find places where the tracks once ran.

I warn you right away - the scheme is still “raw”, there are still some inconsistencies in places. The "dampness" of this version of the scheme is due to the fact that the same roads from different maps do not always lie on top of each other, although this is almost invisible on such a scale. The reasons for the discrepancies are the insufficient detailing of the available maps; the liberties of cartographers and the tendency to round roads (especially starting from 2-3 kilometers, and for five kilometers this is the norm); physical distortions of the card itself, for example, if it was not scanned, but photographed with a distorted perspective; various precise binding problems. In many cases, a detailed satellite image helps out - where the route of the path was clearly visible, I took this option as preferable. But it was not always so. Many places where the tracks were laid were either built up, or distributed as summer cottages, or dug up during the re-extraction of peat in old sections, so it will no longer be possible to restore the original routes, looking at a modern image from space. Therefore, there are two types of points on the diagram: square ones are used for track sections, the exact location of which cannot be recognized from a satellite image, and round ones for track sections that are still visible from the sky. Some places of the paths from the maps of the 20-30s do not lay down neatly enough, although the maps themselves are quite accurate. Most likely, some sections of the path could lie next to the later ones, but I can’t find out without additional maps, since such places are often hidden, built up or simply overgrown for 80 years, and are not checked by satellite.

I used the colors for my own convenience, so as not to forget or confuse anything. For the curious, here's the breakdown:

Red - cards of the 20-30s.
Yellow - American map (either the beginning of the forties, or a little later).
Green - a card of the 59th year.
Pink is a 59-year map, the paths have already been taken apart.
Blue - late 70s and later (GSh and later).
Gray circles in a red frame - possible the route of the "ring" (barely noticeable from the satellite).
Black triangles in a white frame - wide-gauge access road to special facilities.
Black circles in a white frame - a wide track.

To avoid piling up points, only the early year point is used. For example, if the same route was both in the 30th year and in the 70th, then it will be marked in red. If the route appeared only in the 70s, it will be blue. Years should not be taken as years of construction, but as years of appearance on the maps I have. That is, the road could have been laid 20 years before the map was published, and a year before, but obviously not later. The years of dismantling of individual track sections are not yet marked on the diagram due to a lack of detailed information.

The remains of the Kirzhach narrow-gauge railway of the silk factory are preserved on the map of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Gosgiscenter" in full and the western fragment on the map of the 59th year. The entire route is viewed from the satellite quite well, and it was copied from it. Other urban Kirzha railways are shown as narrow-gauge railways, as they are shown as such on the maps of the General Staff of the 80s. Most likely, now a part has been dismantled, a part has been replaced by a wide gauge (I did not find out this question, I just looked at the satellite).

Additions, errors noticed - in the comments or on my soap in the "communication" section. Any map not mentioned here on a scale of 500m, 1km, 2km will greatly help in supplementing and correcting the scheme. For collection and for study, it would not hurt especially real sheet of the General Staff 1 km of the war years (and not obsolete for the 20s, which is issued everywhere for the 40s). I searched diligently for it, but did not find it. If someone has - write to the soap.

History of changes on the map:
170210: first version.
170211: some sections were corrected based on the information found, station designations were added, broad-gauge tracks were shown (I drew them by eye, without reconciliation with the satellite, since they are not the subject of this study). Now there are two versions - satellite and general staff.

Tesovskaya UZhD is the remains of the largest and most advanced Soviet transport department of the narrow gauge railway. The road was built and operated mainly for the removal of peat from the fields of the Tyosovskie peat enterprises. At the time of their maximum prosperity, there were three of them - Tesovo-1, Tesovo-2 and Tesovo-4.

Today, out of more than 200 kilometers of narrow-gauge railway tracks, only 20 remain. At first, this figure is frightening, but when compared with other roads, you understand that it could be much worse. Most of the Soviet peat enterprises are closed, and narrow-gauge railways have been dismantled and sold for scrap.

Pioneer ride. Ways of the Tesovo peat enterprise.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, a group of graduates of the Small Oktyabrskaya Railway began to work closely with the Tyosovo-1 peat enterprise and restore samples of unique equipment. Now the group has at its disposal a section of track 200 meters long, a PD-1 railcar, a TU4 diesel locomotive and several TD5u railcars (colloquially referred to as "pioneers").

In addition to everything they do tours on refurbished equipment. One fine spring day, just on such a trip, we got out.

For the first time I learned about guys in 2009 from the LJ community ru_railway. Then they published a couple of posts about how they built their small 200-meter section of the track. Last year, before the historical reconstruction, we went and got to know them.

The guys are doing a very difficult and important thing, which is not always understood by the locals. During the tour, we often heard “what is there to see?”. And, in fact, there is something to look at.

Restored railcar PD-1 and a passenger car. Station UZhD Tesovo-1.

In the cockpit of the restored PD-1. I do not really like that the equipment is not restored in its original form. But guys can be understood. When such a scope of work, it is difficult to pay attention to details. Especially when you consider that many of them have not been produced for several decades.

In 1994, the main consumers abandoned the use of peat, the need for peat fell to almost zero. Rolling stock, rails and peat-mining equipment began to be scrapped. Around this time, the paths to the village of Tesovo-4 were dismantled. In 2002, a large section of the track from Tesovo-1 to Tesovo-2 was dismantled. At the same time, the peat mining enterprises Tesovo-2 and Tesovo-4 were liquidated. Only the Tyosovo-1 peat enterprise remained.

Today, the peat enterprise is barely making ends meet. To be honest, I don't know how much. in question, but I know that boiler houses in the village of Tesovo-Netylsky are heated with peat. In general, everything looks very old and abandoned. However, several diesel locomotives are on the move. Peat is mined and exported.

At one time it was one of the most modern and advanced narrow gauge railways in the Soviet Union. The track was laid on reinforced concrete sleepers, electric drives were installed on the arrows, new track and peat mining machines were introduced on the road. A new rolling stock was being developed at the local design bureau. Peat enterprises worked around the clock. Dozens of trains with peat were transported by narrow-gauge railway. At the Tesovo-1 station, peat was loaded into broad gauge wagons. During the day, from the Rogavka station, in the direction of Leningrad, up to 12 trains with peat left. More than 30 diesel locomotives and engine locomotives worked on the entire system of the Tesovsky Transport Administration.

In the area of ​​peat extraction, a traveling crane is being prepared for the arrangement of temporary tracks for the removal of peat. The speed, simplicity and low cost of deploying temporary tracks is the main advantage of the UR.

Peat extraction. Endless fields - a small part of the former greatness.

The peat extraction process itself turned out to be somewhat more complicated than I thought. First, land reclamation is arranged and swamps are drained. Then they clean the fields, removing a layer of sod and uprooting all the stumps and snags. For all this there is a special technique. Then, the dry top layer is ground and formed into strips. Only after that the peat harvester collects it. In general, there are quite a lot of various equipment in peat extraction. Some of them differ little from agricultural machinery, and some look very surreal.

If I'm not mistaken, this harvester collects snags, roots, logs and surface vegetation and mills the top layer of peat.

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 Russia, formerly famous for bread and accordions. The merchants in it hosted an important one - 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, Sergey Ivanovich Maltsov, designed and built an extended inter-factory narrow-gauge road at his factories with a three-foot gauge, which ran along 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 platform 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 the 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 usual, 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 unprecedented economic development of the Meshchera environs, which was the result of the opening of a narrow gauge railway (even new villages and settlements were born), the traffic 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 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 of what “was-died” ... The road began to fade 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 recent years in Spas-Klepiki, the wooden bridge over the Pru has 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 railway workers 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 in the opposite direction to Golovanovka, we learned from the road foreman that in order to get to work, he adapted a personal motorcycle to the railway cart - and drove along the line like on the 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 “An 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 an iron forged 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.

Not! 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 one 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 are a 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...

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The first known narrow gauge public railway opened in 1871. It ran between the Verkhovye and Livny stations (now the Oryol region), had a gauge of 1067 mm. But that was just the beginning...

The method of transporting goods in carts along longitudinal guides was invented in ancient times. In the 15th - 16th centuries in

Europe, some factories already used railroads, along which they moved manually or with the help of horse traction

trolleys with goods (for a relatively short distance). Such roads also appeared in Russia. Initially in them

wooden rails and wooden trolleys were used.

One of the largest roads of this type appeared in 1810 at the Zmeinogorsk mine (the current Altai Territory). Rails already

were metal, had a convex surface. The length of the line was 1876 meters, the gauge was 1067 mm ( 3 feet

6 inches).

However, the moment of the birth of the railway is considered to be the beginning of movement on the rail tracks of a mechanical crew. AT

This happened to Russia in 1834. The birthplace of domestic railways is the city of Nizhny Tagil. It was there that it was built

the first Russian steam locomotive, created by the father and son Cherepanovs, was tested. Our first railroad was short ( 854

meters), and "wide" (gauge 1645 mm). The steam locomotive was destined to work for a short time - soon it again began to be used

horse traction.

The officially recognized date of foundation of Russian railways is 1837. Then traffic was opened along the line

St. Petersburg - Tsarskoye Selo - Pavlovsk, 23 kilometers long. Her track was also wide - 1829 mm (6 feet).

In 1843-51, the construction of the first major highway, the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway, took place. She had

it was decided to establish a track width of 5 feet (1524 mm, later - 1520 mm). It was this gauge that became standard for domestic

railways. Meanwhile, in foreign Europe and in North America, another gauge standard was adopted - 1435 mm.

The consequences of this decision in the middle of the 19th century are estimated inconsistently. One side, the difference in track width helped us

In the initial period of the Great Patriotic War, the enemy could not immediately use the railways on the captured

territory. At the same time, it hinders international communication, leads to significant costs for the replacement of wagon

trolleys and transshipment of goods at border stations.

Variable gauge bogies have been around for a long time, but are still expensive and difficult to maintain.

Therefore, in Russia they have not yet received distribution. As for abroad - passenger trains, made up of

wagons capable of moving on roads with different gauges, regularly run between Spain and

France. In modern Japan, there are wagons capable of switching from 1435 mm gauge tracks to a gauge definitely

falling under the definition of narrow - 1067 mm.

Throughout the 19th century, a large number of horse-drawn narrow-gauge railways existed in Russia. The largest of them

about 60 kilometers long, operated in 1840-1862. It connected the Dubovka pier on the Volga with the Kachalino pier.

on the Don River, in the present Volgograd region. These roads were built mainly for the delivery of goods to factories and

factories - where it was not possible to lay a "normal" railway track. The narrow gauge was chosen in order to reduce

construction costs.

The first known narrow gauge public railway opened in 1871. She ran between stations

Verkhovye and Livny (now the Oryol region), had a gauge of 1067 mm. The life of the first narrow gauge railway turned out to be

short-lived: in 1898 it was rebuilt into a normal gauge line.

But that was only the beginning. Almost immediately began mass construction of narrow-gauge lines in a variety of

regions of Russia. They began to develop very rapidly both in the Far East and in Central Asia. The largest networks of narrow gauge

railways with a gauge of 1067 mm appeared in underdeveloped regions, separated from the center of the country by large rivers. from the station

Uroch (it was located near the banks of the Volga, opposite Yaroslavl) in 1872 a line was opened to Vologda, in 1896-1898

years extended to Arkhangelsk. Its length was 795 kilometers. From the city of Pokrovsk (now Engels), located on

On the left bank of the Volga, opposite Saratov, a meter gauge line (1000 mm) was built to Uralsk. There are also branches to

Nikolaevsk (Pugachevsk), and to the station Aleksandrov Gai. The total length of the network was 648 kilometers.

The first known 750 mm gauge railways were opened in 1894. One line ran through the Russian capital and its

nearby suburbs (St. Petersburg - Borisova Griva, length 43 kilometers), another appeared in the Lensky area

gold mines, in the current Irkutsk region (Bodaibo - Nadezhdinskaya, now Aprilsk, 73 kilometers long). Soon

small-gauge railways began to appear in large numbers, serving industrial enterprises.

At the very beginning of the 20th century, there were already many narrow-gauge railways intended for the export of timber and peat.

Subsequently, it is precisely such roads that will form the “backbone” of narrow gauge lines in our country.

In the USSR, the overall pace of railway construction in comparison with the era of the Russian Empire has noticeably decreased. But the number

narrow gauge railways continued to grow rapidly.

The years of terrible Stalinist terror brought a new type of narrow-gauge railways - "camp" lines. They appeared on

enterprises located in the Gulag system connected factories and camps with mining sites. Scales

railway construction of those years are impressive. Contrary to popular belief that what's in the northeast

our country never had railways, known about the existence on the territory of the present Magadan region of at least

seven narrow gauge railways, some of which reached a length of 60 - 70 kilometers.

In 1945, the first section of a sufficiently powerful and technically advanced 1067 mm gauge railway was opened,

started in Magadan. By 1953, its length was 102 kilometers (Magadan - Palatka). The railroad should

was to become a significant highway crossing the vast Kolyma region. But after the death of I.V. Stalin began mass

the closure of the Kolyma camps, which meant the actual curtailment of the industrial development of the North-East of the USSR. As a result,

plans to extend the railroad were abandoned. A few years later, the constructed site was dismantled.

Small narrow-gauge railways also appeared in other regions of the Northeast - in Kamchatka, in the Chukotka Autonomous

district. All of them were later demolished.

Already in the 1930s, two main specializations of the narrow gauge were clearly manifested: timber transport and transportation

peat. The standard narrow gauge of 750 mm was finally approved.

In 1940, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were included in the USSR. These states had an extensive network

narrow gauge public railways. In terms of their technical condition, these roads turned out to be almost the best in

country. It was in Estonia that the record for the speed of movement on the 750 mm gauge railway was set. In 1936, the railcar

covered the distance from Tallinn to Pärnu (146 km) in 2 hours 6 minutes. The average speed was 69 km/h,

the maximum speed achieved is 106.2 km/h!

During the Great Patriotic War, the number of narrow-gauge railways was replenished by many dozens of "military field"

railways built both by the enemy and by our troops. But almost all of them lasted a very short time.

In August 1945, South Sakhalin was included in the USSR, where there was a network of railway lines with a gauge of 1067 mm,

built in compliance with the technical standards and dimensions of the main railways of Japan. In subsequent years, the network

railways has received significant development (with the preservation of the existing gauge).

The first half of the 1950s proved to be the "golden age" of narrow-gauge timber-carrying railways. They developed from

amazing speed. Dozens of new narrow-gauge railways appeared during the year, and the length of the lines increased by

thousands of kilometers.

The development of virgin and fallow lands was accompanied by the mass construction of narrow-gauge railways in Kazakhstan. Later

many of them were converted to broad gauge lines, but some remained in operation until the early 1990s. As of

As of 2004, only one "virgin" narrow-gauge railway has survived - in Atbasar (Akmola region).

Narrow-gauge public lines owned by the Ministry of Railways (in 1918-1946 it was called NKPS) occupied the last place

among narrow gauge railways. But since the 1960s, their length has been steadily reduced. Mostly, railways

750 mm gauges were replaced by broad gauge lines built in parallel, along one embankment, or slightly to the side, but by that

same direction. The 1000 mm and 1067 mm gauge lines were most often "changed" ( a new rail track was laid on the same embankment

other gauge).

In the 1960s, it became clear that the better days for timber-carrying narrow-gauge railways were over. New narrow gauge

peat-carrying railways were built until the end of the 1970s (and isolated cases of the creation of new "peat carriers"

noted later).

Until the early 1990s, the development and mass production of new rolling stock continued. chief, and then

The only manufacturer of narrow gauge trailer rolling stock was the Demikhov Machine-Building Plant

(Demikhovo, Moscow region), and the manufacturer of diesel locomotives for 750 mm gauge - Kambarsky machine-building plant

(Kambarka, Udmurtia).

The 1990s were the most tragic years in the history of narrow gauge railways. economic downturn along with

transition to a new form of economic relations and political changes led to what started a landslide

reduction in the number and length of narrow gauge railways. Each passing year "diminished" thousand kilometers

narrow gauge railway lines.

In 1993, the production of cars for ground narrow-gauge railways with a gauge of 750 mm was completely stopped. Soon

the production of locomotives also stopped.