Petersburg Tram: Pages of history reflected in the materials of the Presidential Library

September celebrates two memorable dates related to the Saint-Petersburg tram. September 3, 2020, marks 140 anniversary of the creation of the first electric tram. 113 years ago, on September 29, regular electric tram traffic along the streets of our city was launched.

The Presidential Library collections feature lots of materials about this transport. Some of them are provided by the digital collection "Petersburg Tram", which includes plans, drawings, archival documents covering all stages in the history of the development of tram traffic, the arrangement of carriages, parks and tracks, periodicals about the functioning of the tram in besieged Leningrad. A separate section is dedicated to the Museum of Urban Electric Transport. For example, the Presidential Library's portal presents photographs of the driver's cabin, exterior and interior of the legendary tram LM-33, which became a salvation for Leningrad residents during the Great Patriotic War.

The first public transport appeared in Saint-Petersburg in 1830. It was the prototype of the tram - the horse-drawn omnibus - a large sprung horse-drawn vehicle. The Presidential Library's collection features a digital copy of the "Case on allowing the Retired State Councillor Trico to acquire a special kind of carriages or horse-drawn omnibuses for transporting passengers to Saint-Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk" (1844), which provides a detailed description of the new transport. "All seats must have the same arrangement and do not exceed 16. <…> The place of destination of each carriage is indicated by an inscription on top. <…> Each carriage, besides the coachman, should have a fare collector. <…> This fare collector lets passengers in and out and collects a fare. <…> Only quite presentable persons are allowed into horse-drawn omnibuses".

In the 1860s, the city horse-drawn omnibuses were replaced by horse-drawn trams or horsecars. At the beginning of the XX century, the city centre had a system of about thirty lines. The book "Statistical Essay of Saint-Petersburg: City Plans and Theaters" gives the "General plan of Saint-Petersburg, updated up to 1894" with the horse-drawn tram routes, which covered most of the city by that time.

The significant event in the development of the Russian network of urban public transport took place in Saint-Petersburg on September 3 (August 22), 1880, at noontime. Engineer Fyodor Pirotsky arranged a demonstration run of a "carriage moving on rails, driven by electricity" in the district of Peski, at the corner of Bolotnaya Street and Degtyarny Lane. Thus, the former carriage of a horse-drawn tram became the first electric tram in the world.

However, the familiar tram appeared on the streets of Saint-Petersburg almost 30 years later, due to various factors. In autumn of 1907, the first tram line connected the 8th line of Vasilievsky Island with the General Staff building. The route ran near the Synod building, where the Presidential Library, a national repository of historical documents, is located today.

The library collections contain an electronic copy of the "Project for the conversion of the Saint-Petersburg railways to electric traction", which illustrates the development of the future urban railway network: Designing routes should look like the straight lines between the distant city outskirts, they run through the central city traffic arteries to allow each passenger, as far as possible, to travel from one end of the city to another without changes, with the minimal loses of time and money".

The volume of work was great. The conversion of the horse-drawn railway to electric traction required a lot of money: the cost of 8 years of construction was approximately 52 million rubles. The title page of the "Financial report on the construction of the Saint-Petersburg city electric tram for 1905–1908" contains an interesting detail. First of all, there is a resolution "Reject because of the overestimated price ...", and then: "reduce the spends by 2.01 per cent and hang out 45 459 729 rubles in cash from the public treasury. Approved".

The Presidential Library's reading room provides access to digital copies of maps with tram routes of different years, which allow tracing the development and expansion of the tram network.

It developed and expanded rapidly. Before the Great Patriotic War, 750-800 trains (1,835 carriages) were running along 42 lines every day, carrying over three million people. The length of the network of lines was over 700 km, and, as it was planned, connected all city districts and provided direct travel for the majority of passengers. This information is from the book "Leningrad Tram, 1941-1945" (1995) from the collection of the Presidential Library. The modern study spotlights the life and activity of employees of the Tram and Trolleybus Administration during the war and the Siege when the tram was the only public transport for residents.

Materials from the "Moving tram during the Great Patriotic War" section of the "Petersburg Tram" collection of the Presidential Library's portal also features the history of the Siege tram. It contains, in particular, a digital copy of the Leningradskaya Pravda newspaper (April 15, 1942). It includes an article about a memorable event that showed that the besieged city was alive and had no intention to surrender. It highlights the resumption of the tram traffic in Leningrad: "Car No. 2035 is led by Adrian Fedorovich Titkov. He does it masterfully and carefully at the same time. After all, this is the first run along the route - a trial one. Dozens will follow this train in the morning. <…> The car speeds up and follows the route No. 9, a famous route in Leningrad: from Lesnoy to the Narva Gate. And, looking at the familiar train again, the Leningrad residents joyfully greet it as an old friend who was absent for a long time. <…> Today the traffic runs the routes No. 3, 7, 9, 10, 12. There are 116 trains on the line".

The Presidential Library has collected a lot of engaging documentary evidence concerning major events in Russian history. Today, the electronic collections of the national electronic depository stores about a million stock units.