Little-known facts about the railway revealed by the Presidential Library

On August 7, 2022, on the first Sunday of August, Russia annually celebrates the Railway Worker Day - a professional holiday for all employees of the railway industry. The portal and the Presidential Library's collections contain rare materials on the emergence, development and present day of this type of transport in Russia - electronic copies of rare publications, historical documents, atlases and photographs, video lectures and documentaries.

The first track roads appeared in ancient Egypt and went a long way to modern railways, the appearance and use of which many interesting facts are associated with.

The development and construction of railways were carried out in the XVIII-XIX centuries in many countries. In those days, train cars looked like stagecoaches and were connected by chains. Luggage was placed on the roof, and poor passengers also traveled there. To protect against sparks and locomotive burning, everyone was given special glasses. This is illustrated in the essay by Sergei Loskutov South Ural Railway (2001).

In Russia, railways received recognition far from immediately. According to Historical outline of the development of railways in Russia from their foundation to 1897 inclusive. Issue. 1 (1898), in 1835, a special commission, having considered the proposal of Franz Anton Gerstner on the creation of a railway network in our country, concluded that roads using steam engines would be very expensive, and steam engines should be allowed only for the transport of passengers, and for trade ways to keep horsepower. At the same time, Minister of Finance Yegor Kankrin believed that “one assumption of the construction of a railway from Kazan to St. Petersburg should be recognized as premature for several centuries”.

When in 1837, under Nicholas I, the Tsarskoye Selo railway was opened, the new mode of transport frightened everyone. The emperor was forced to set a personal example, ordering during the first flight to put his crew on a cargo platform, and so drove to Tsarskoye Selo. After this historic trip and until the Crimean War of 1853–1856, the song was popular among the people: “What does Russia come to - a samovar walks in a harness”.

Sergey Loskutov in his monograph Gateway to Siberia (2014) wrote that Gerstner, designing the first road, took care of its profitability and attracting passengers. Hotels, buffets and restaurants were opened at the stations, concerts, performances, and dance evenings were held in their halls. At the station in Pavlovsk, a large beautiful building, called the "station", was located in a beautiful park. The word "station" is not related to transport, it is the English name of an entertainment establishment with a garden and halls for balls and concerts. After the opening of a similar "station" at the railway in Pavlovsk, all the buildings of passenger railway stations began to be called that way.

With all the comforts and luxuries provided by the first railroads to wealthy passengers, the earnings of the lower railroad employees were negligible. The commission, which examined the Nikolaev railway, which was considered the best in terms of wages, found that the railway workers "eat once a day, limited to one lunch, while others eat tea with black bread all the time".

The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway - the Great Siberian Route - was of great economic and geopolitical importance for Russia. The book Transbaikal Crossing (2005) by geographer and historian Leonid Kolotilo and other authors tells that the official birthday of the Trans-Siberian Railway was May 19, 1891, when, two versts from Vladivostok, Tsarevich Nikolai, picking up a shovel, loaded a wheelbarrow with earth and drove it from a dozen meters to the place of the future highway. After the solemn ceremony, Nikolai returned to Vladivostok by train along the already prepared track.

In 1897, the Administration for the Construction of the Siberian Road commissioned the artist and traveler Pavel Pyasetsky to create a panorama of a grandiose construction site. He traveled through the work sites from the Volga to Vladivostok and created an artistic chronicle of the life of the steel line. The panorama consists of watercolor miniatures pasted on canvas, its length is almost a kilometer, and its width is about half a meter. The author himself came up with a device of two rollers, which created the illusion of a movie. This is mentioned in Loskutov's essay South Ural Railway.

During the years of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, destroyers and submarines were delivered to the Pacific Ocean along the Trans-Siberian Railway using conventional rolling stock or using specially made transporters. Their loading was carried out in St. Petersburg at the Novy Port station, connected by a direct line with the Nikolaev railway. Vessels were lifted out of the water by cranes.

According to the writer Lev Zhdanov in The Great Siberian Way (1905), “the construction of the road peacefully completed the complete conquest of all rich Siberia for the Russian people now and forever”.

Transport is the most important link in the economy as it plays a huge role in solving political and social problems. In Russia, a country with a vast territory, the main mode of transport has become rail.