Recently I came across a viral photo on Facebook that showed a railway track dropping over the edge of a cliff, then continuing on below. So where was the photo taken, and why is the track layout so ridiculous?
I found a German-language internet forum where people were laughing at the same photo, which led me to the location pictured – Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, the central railway terminus of Leipzig, Germany.
Apparently the platforms were raised, because in the pictures it is quite flat. I also remember that you had to climb up to the cars and jumped down when you were a kid.
Probably on this platform, for historical reasons, it has been refurbished to show how things used to be.
The CarGoTram commenced operation in 2001, transporting car parts 4km to Volkswagen’s “Transparent Factory” located in central Dresden, from a road served logistics centre. Each bidirectional trams is made up of five units, with services operating along the same tracks used by passenger services.
Lesser known is the ‘Cargo-Tram‘ of Zurich, Switzerland.
This service commenced operation in 2003, travelling around the city collecting rubbish and recyclables from pick up points along the way. A redired passenger trams operates the service, towing two flat wagons loaded with rubbish containers.
A different type of freight service was the ‘Güterbim‘ of Vienna, Austria.
A trial service commenced operation in 2005, transporting freight to Wiener Linien’s tram depots around Vienna, such as driver’s seats, wheelsets and brake blocks. A specially converted works trailer wagon was converted to carry the freight, towed behind a workshop tram. The trial ended in 2007, but I can’t find out what happened to it.
For tramway maintenance
Converting trams to assist with track maintenance is common.
This unit is based out of the Leonova depot (№2) in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
But the strangest operation I found was in Kharkov, the second-largest city in Ukraine, where they once used miniature electric locomotives to move mainline freight wagons through the streets.
Operation of tram electric locomotives began in Kharkiv in 1932, when the tram industry received two industrial electric locomotives of the type EPU (Electric Locomotive Industrial Narrow), manufactured by the Moscow Dynamo plant. Such electric locomotives were produced in the years 1926-1938 specifically to work on tram lines and access roads of industrial enterprises and fed from a 550-V contact network.
For many years, electric locomotives were used to deliver rail cars with cargo intended for the Kharkov confectionery factory “Kharkovchanka”. The latter is located one kilometer from the tram-railway “gate” of the station “Kharkov-Passazhirsky”, opposite the former Cargo depot. Wagons were transported along Chebotarskaya Street, where electric locomotives and passenger trams for a long time worked side by side, practically not interfering with each other.
In the second half of the 1990s, due to the fact that such carriages heavily worn out the rails and created problems for the passenger movement, a certain period of time (from 12:00 to 13:00 on weekdays) was allocated, when the passenger cars were sent to a detour along Kotlov street and a pier on Krasnoarmeiskaya street, and electric locomotives could quickly and unhindered to proceed with cargo. After the transportation was over, the condition of the route was checked and the passenger trams again followed their route.
In July 2001, the tram branch along the Chebotarskaya street was closed to the passenger traffic, after which it was regularly used only to deliver wagons to the confectionery factory. In 2009, the factory abandoned the services of “Gorelectrotrans”. The remaining “no-business” electric locomotives were put off from operation and relocated to the territory of the Saltovskaya tram depot. A few years later these cars were decommissioned.
Similar operations also occurred in other cities across the former Soviet Union, with Трамвайно-железнодорожный гейт (tram-rail gate) being the unofficial Russian langauge term for the junction of the tram and rail networks.
And some historical examples
Saint Petersburg, Russia operated a large network of freight trams until 1997.
Petrograd was the first city in Russia where freight electric transport was established using trams, following the construction laid in the fall of 1914 to the Warsaw freight station. The second cargo branch in 1915 connected the warehouses in Badaevsky to Zabalkansky Prospekt. These early freight trams consisted of two platforms attached to a motorised tramcar that acted as a locomotive. Load capacity of each platform was 4 tons. By the end of 1921, the total length of the special cargo way had reached 13 km, and the number of 4-ton cargo platforms had increased by another 100. The average annual volume of traffic in 1918-1921. was about 250 thousand tons.
The place of 4-ton platforms of pre-revolutionary times began to come 10-ton. Thanks to this, in 1930, 40 tram freight trains carried 491.6 thousand tons of cargo. By 1933, the length of its tracks had almost doubled, reaching 5.9 km, including 3.6 km of tramways and 2.3 km of railways.
By 1940 the freight tram fleet consisted of 67 motor and 177 towed cargo platforms. The number of tram per route reached 43, each with a payload of at least 30 tons. In addition to 10-ton wagons, new 12 and 15 tons capacity wagons were entered service.
In 1950, tram trucking reached 1942.7 thousand tons, and in subsequent years remained at the same level. The cargo tram depot in 1956 daily issued on the line 47 trains, which served more than 20 enterprises and organisations of Leningrad. The amount of work done by the park for this year amounted to 40 thousand railway cars.
The maintenance of enterprises by freight trams was discontinued in 1997. The last serviced enterprise was Sevkabel , which has a base on the right bank of the Neva on the territory of the Neva freight station.
Moscow also had a freight tram system, but it was abandoned much earlier.
Cargo trams operated over the Moscow tram network from 1915 to 1972. The route was completed in May 1915 from the railway station of the Paveletsky railway station to the “Business Yard” beside Varvarsky Gate.
From 1916 to 1919, the number of freight cars grew from 51 to 167 units. During 1918, 15 motor and 24 trailer cars were converted into freight ones. In 1919, about 17 km of new routes were laid for freight traffic, and followed in 1920 by another 10 km, but from the middle of 1921 the volume of traffic began to decrease in connection with the transition to road transport.
At the end of 1931 there were 139 freight cars in the Moscow tram. The cars were used for the largest construction projects: the Moscow Metro and the Palace of Soviets. Specially constructed trains-trailers with the carrying capacity of 50 tons were used for transportation of metal trusses for the construction of the Crimean Bridge, the Bolshoy Krasnokholmsky Bridge, and the Great Ustyinsky Bridge.
The heyday of the freight tram came during the Great Patriotic War , when practically all trucks were mobilized to the front, by 1942 the total length of purely freight branches was 38 km.
After the end of the war, the volume of traffic began to decline sharply – in 1953 they became seven times less than in 1945. In 1951, 9.3 km of cargo branches were dismantled. Some revival occurred in 1954-1955, when it was decided to use freight trams on housing construction. In 1956, 127 freight cars were on the inventory, in 1960 – 67, in 1966 – 30, and in 1971 – only 7 wagons.
In 1972, the freight tram was officially discontinued – the last 7 cars, which were already used only for the needs of the tram network, were transferred from freight to service trams.
Footnote
The German term for ‘freight tram’ is Güterstraßenbahn – German-language Wikipedia has a summary of former operations in western Europe.
With a large fleet of nuclear power stations used for electricity generation across Russia, there is also an increasing quantity of отработанного ядерного топлива (spent nuclear fuel) needing to be safely transported to reprocessing or storage facilities, where the useful material can be reused and the remnant radioactivity can be safely managed for the thousands of years required for it to naturally decay. The chosen model of transport – train.
The irradiated fuel assemblies are loaded into transport casks inside the nuclear power station, which are then loaded inside specially constructed rail wagons.
Heavier than a normal railway wagon thanks to the layers of steel shielding, multiple bogies are needed to spread the load.
Which can then be sent anywhere in Russia.
Footnote
Fresh fuel assemblies are also transported to Russian nuclear power plants by rail – here is a (Russian language) documentary on the process.
Further reading
The Bellona Foundation is an international environmental NGO based in Norway, and has written much about the history of Russia’s transport of spent nuclear fuel.
The US-based Cooperative Threat Reduction Program sponsored construction of six special TK-VG-18-2 type rail cars. The rail cars for spent nuclear fuel passed all the required tests and were certified for operation. Each car can take two 40-tonn containers with spent nuclear fuel. The new train will allow to speed-up the spent nuclear fuel transportation to the storage and reprocessing points. Until recent time Russia had two nuclear trains with four cars each. The Norwegian Government sponsored the second train’s construction.
In July 2006, activists from Greenpeace’s St. Petersburg office discovered several unguarded trains containing uranium hexafluoride at the station at Kapitolovo in the Leningrad Region, where Izotop is based. The train cars were parked directly next to passenger platforms. Moreover, Greenpeace measured the radiation dose on the platforms where passengers were standing at 800 microrontgens per hour, or more than 40 times the normal background radiation level.
“Nuclear and radiation safety is at a level such that transportation of nuclear materials presents no danger to the public,” Shishkin said. “A person would have to stand on the platform at Kapitolovo for 400 hours to receive the maximum yearly dose that would cause no harm to his health.”
Dmitry Artamonov, head of Greenpeace’s St. Petersburg office, disagreed with Shishkin’s reasoning.
“This sort of transportation could be a great present for terrorists, either as a source of nuclear materials, or as a direct target for an attack,” he said. “Such an attack could lead to very serious consequences, since it would not be too difficult to destroy the containers. And even without terrorists, an ‘everyday’ accident could produce an effect just the same.”
The protesters with Bellona and other Russian environmental groups were accosted by the guard bearing an AK-47, who cocked and pointed the weapon at the environmentalists who were filming the results of their radiation measurements – which exceeded background radiation levels by 30 times. The armed guard was travelling with the load as specified by law.
Bellona and Ecodefence have been following the load of uranium tails since it put into the port of St. Petersburg on Friday filled with waste from Germany’s Urenco enrichment facility in Gronau. Bellona and other Russian environmental groups demand the transport of the radioactive waste be ceased immediately.
Environmental protesters where hanging a banner emblazoned with the phrase “No to the import of nuclear waste” on the train platform in Avtovo, a thickly settled suburb of St. Petersburg where the train had come to a stop
A special-purpose train carrying 80 tons of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) near Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg is soon to head out to a closed town in Siberia – a first shipment in an envisioned large-scale SNF relocation project that environmentalists fear will turn Siberia into a nuclear dumpsite and drastically increase overall safety risks, while helping none to address the exacerbating threat of nuclear waste accumulation.
Up to 22,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel generated in Russia’s altogether eleven RBMK-1000 reactors still in operation may be relocated from the country’s European regions to Zheleznogorsk, on the banks of the river Yenisei. Two hundred and ninety “nuclear trains” will be required to transport that much waste – assuming that all three Russian NPPs employing this type of reactors will continue to operate beyond their design-basis useful life terms.
During the 1990s a green four-car train would make the rounds every few months to Russia’s snowy Kola Peninsula to cart nuclear fuel and radioactive waste more than 3000 kilometers south from the Arctic to the Ural Mountains.
At the time, the lonely rail artery was the center of a logistical and financial bottleneck that made Northwest Russia, home of the once feared Soviet nuclear fleet, a toxic dumping ground shrouded in military secrecy.
Infrastructure, technology and the Kremlin were failing to keep up with the mushrooming catastrophe. The nuclear fuel train could only bear away 588 fuel assemblies at a time three or four times a year – little more than the contents of one nuclear submarine per trip. Even if the train ran on schedule, removing broken or deformed nuclear fuel elements at Andreyeva Bay was still seen as impossible.
Russian metro stations are best known for the ornate design at platform level, but the entrance vestibules back at ground level can also be quite amazing.
This is the original entrance to Park Kultury station, opened along with the first phase of the Moscow Metro in 1935.
The vestibule building is an ornate rotunda.
Housing a pair of curved staircases inside.
Continuing the theme is the Saint Petersburg Metro, which has a collection of 1960s stations that share the same circular entrance vestibule design.
Originally opened in 1963, in 2009 the original circular concrete ‘bunker’ that houses the station centre was replaced something at looks more like a UFO!
On the Kiev Metro there is a curious section of tunnel that doesn’t run underground – instead the concrete tube is carried over a deep railway cutting by a bridge, only to head straight back underground.
Called the Гаванський шляхопровід (Harbour Overpass) the bridge was completed in 1971 to carry the M1 Sviatoshynsko–Brovarska line of the Kiev Metro inside a concrete tunnel over the Kyiv-Volynsky – Pochayna mainline railway, with the four eastbound lanes of Проспект Перемоги (Prospect Peremohy) passing over the top.
But for passengers on the metro, the Harbour Overpass is a non-event – the concrete tube means trains pass between Nyvky (Нивки) and Beresteiska (Берестейська) stations in the dark, with nothing to suggest they have momentarily returned to ground level.
Work on the station began in the early-1990s as part of the northern extension of the M3 Syretsko–Pecherska line, but due to the lack of funds and indecision about the ground level entrance to the station at Lviv Square, work on the station stopped.
The metro line through the station opened in 1996, but the station lays empty today, the two platform tunnels and central hall of ‘three-vault deep pylon” design visible to passengers onboard passing trains. Access to the station is sometimes granted, with one notable use being a 2013 fashion show held by Ukrainian brand “Obrani”.
Various plans have been floated to complete the station, the most recent listing a 2018 completion date. This would require the construction of an escalator tunnel to the surface, station buildings at ground level, and fitout of the incomplete platforms.
Теличка (Telychka)
Теличка (Telychka) is the second ghost station on the Kiev Metro.
Work on the station began in the early-1990s as part of a southern extension of the M3 Syretsko–Pecherska line, but due to the industrial nature of the area the decision was made to only build the shell of a station. Of Колонная станция мелкого заложения (shallow column station) design, two flanking platforms were provided, easily visible to passengers of passing trains.
Various proposals have been made to turn the shell into a finished station, but all have been dependant on the redevelopment of the surrounding industrial area as a new residential precinct.
Герцена (Herzen)
Герцена (Herzen) is the least developed of the Kiev Metro ghost stations.
The construction of the station began in the mid-1990s as part of a northern extension of the M3 Syretsko–Pecherska line, under the working title of Заго́рівська (Zagorovskaya). The economic downturn lead to progress stalling, with the decision made to abandon the provision of a station at the site. Trains commenced passing through in 2000 with the extension to Дорогожичи (Dorohozhychi) station.
Today the only sign of the station is a ventilation shaft provided at the site, along with a traction power substation.
You’ve got to hand it to Russia – decades of communism haven’t affected their ability to get people to buy useless crap, if these billboards along the Volga River in Nizhny Novgorod are anything to go by.
‘High returns’ from «Сбербанк» (Sberbank).
Credit cards from «Райффайзенбанк» (Raiffeisenbank).
And ice skates at «реал,-Гипермаркет» (Real Hypermarket).
Exiting via the gift shop is something you expect to do at a museum – but what about at a church? However when I paid a visit to the Church of the Savior on Blood in Saint Petersburg, that is exactly what happened.
The church is best known for it’s mosaics – over 7500 square meters worth.
Stretching from floor to ceiling.
Souvenir stalls line the entrance to the church.
But the gift shop inside the church itself was what really surprised me.
On October 30, 1930, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to close the church. During the Second World War when many people were starving due to the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi German military forces, the church was used as a temporary morgue for those who died in combat and from starvation and illness.
After the war, the church was used as a warehouse for vegetables, leading to the sardonic name of Saviour on Potatoes.
In July 1970, management of the church passed to Saint Isaac’s Cathedral and it was used as a museum. The proceeds from the Cathedral funded the restoration of the church. It was reopened in August 1997, after 27 years of restoration, but has not been reconsecrated and does not function as a full-time place of worship.
Inflight magazines are a common sight whenever you fly, but the Russian Railways also have give their passengers something to read on long train journeys – inhouse magazine «Саквояж СВ».
«Саквояж» is the Russian word for a leather travel bag – an related to what in the west is called a ‘carpet bag‘.
The «ЖД Медиа» (Railway Media) describes the magazine as such.
“Саквояж СВ” is the first in the country ground-based full-color full-fledged on-board magazine, distributed on the trains of OJSC “RZD”. Magazine Саквояж СВ is distributed in all first class carriages (individual copies for each passenger), as well as sleeping cars (one copy per table) of RZD long-distance trains. It is a bright monthly publication in the style of life-style and covers all aspects of life. The magazine allows you to waste time traveling and find useful information for passengers.
Circulation: about 400,000 copies
Published: monthly
Columns of leading journalists
Author’s columns set the style for the whole magazine. Leading Russian and foreign journalists share their thoughts with the readers about the most important issues of the present.
The most interesting novelties
Famous music journalists, film critics, and also commentators of the world of engineering and automotive industry talk about the latest releases and novelties.
Travel, city and country materials
Stories about the most famous railway stations and stations, detailed guides to cities and countries. Qualitative photo-reports about life in Russia and abroad.
Biographies of celebrities
The life path of famous people with all the turns, ups and downs. Stories about compatriots who succeeded abroad. Collections of citations of celebrities of the past.
Cognitive and popular science materials
Everything is new from the world of science and technology. Anything that will seriously change our life in the future and changed it in the past.
Interview
Actual characters of our time – filmmakers, actors, musicians, writers and politicians – talk with correspondents of the magazine “Саквояж СВ”.
Prose
Stories of famous writers, written specifically for the magazine “Саквояж СВ”.
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