Traces of ancient human habitation on the Crimean land are about 100,000 years old. Having survived the Neolithic, Eneolithic, as well as the Bronze and Early Iron Ages, the peoples of the Dnieper region were replaced in Crimea. Despite the strife and wars in the era of antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean economy changed and developed rapidly.
The first railway line on the Melitopol-Simferopol peninsula was put into operation by the Russian Empire on October 14, 1874. Then they were put into operation in turn: Simferopol - Sevastopol (1875), Dzhankoy - Feodosia (1896), Vladislavovka - Kerch (1900), Ostryakovo - Evpatoria (1915), Dzhankoy - Armyansk (1935) , Armyansk - the border of the Ukrainian SSR (1944), Kerch - the port of Crimea (1951), Inkerman I - Inkerman II (1953) and Inkerman II - Kamyshovaya Bay (1969). These railway lines serve more than 150 stations, locomotive depots in Simferopol, Dzhankoy, Kerch, car depots in Dzhankoy, passenger depots and other structural subdivisions.
In the future, it is planned to build a railway bridge across the Kerch Strait Taman - Kerch, reconstruct the Kerch - Armyansk line, as well as build the Proletnaya - Kerch road and new stations.
Railways Crimea
Back in the 20s of the 19th century, the British offered Alexander I to connect Feodosia and Moscow by railway. If the emperor had agreed then, the first passenger railway in Russia would have been laid from Moscow to the Crimea. However, the first was the Tsarskoye Selo railway.
The first experiments with the laying of a railway track in the Crimea over rough terrain took place in 1840. The Sevastopol engineering team explored limestone rocks on the slopes of Kilen-beam, which are denser than Inkerman. Then they built a special scooter railway from the quarry to the pier in Kilenbalochnaya Bay. Support posts were installed on the ground every three meters, and cast-iron wheels rotating on axles were fixed on the top in the nests of the posts. Wooden cargo platforms 8 m long and 2.5 m wide moved along these wheels. Since the tracks had a slight slope to the pier, the platforms with stone were held with ropes. Barges were loaded by dropping limestone directly into the hold.
Then, in 1843, a horse-drawn railway was built in Sevastopol, its length was about 1 km. It was used to transport stone from the quarries during the construction of the Admiralty on the Ship side. How long this road lasted is unknown.
The next railway that appeared in the Crimea had nothing to do with passenger traffic: it was intended for military needs. During the Crimean War, Balaklava turned into a base for the British army for almost two years. At this time, the British not only opened shops and hotels here, created an embankment, but also built a railway leading from Balaklava to Sevastopol, to Sapun Mountain.
The work was approached thoroughly: 1.8 thousand tons of rails, 6 thousand sleepers, 300 tons of boards and about 2 thousand tons of various cargo, including cranes and pile driving machines, were delivered from the UK. In England, a team of specialist railway workers was also hired to lay and maintain the tracks. Construction began in February 1855, and seven weeks later the main line of the railway, about 11 km long, was ready. Later, several more branches were built, total length the road was about 23 km.
On a flat stretch of track, wagons were pulled by steam locomotives; on steep slopes, heavy horses and mules took over. 4 locomotives and 215 horses were delivered to the Crimea from Great Britain, 17 mules were brought from Turkey. 190 wagons were used to transport goods. The train schedule was strictly controlled by the dispatch service. The train departed from Balaklava every hour from 7 am to 7 pm. For the first time in history, an ambulance train was formed on the Balaklava railway - a train specially equipped to transport and treat the wounded. The railway in Balaklava worked until the very end of the war, after which the British dismantled it and sold it to Turkey.
The formation of the railway network in the Northern Black Sea region was accompanied by a great heat of passion. The railway for the port cities was a guarantee of economic prosperity - it is not surprising that there was fierce rivalry between the cities of the region for the right to have a railway.
Feodosia tried to become a railway pioneer in the Crimea. In 1857, the Main Society of Russian Railways, whose founders were the largest banking houses of Paris, Amsterdam and London, began work on creating the first nationwide network of Russian railways. One of the branches was supposed to come to Feodosia. The construction concession was given to the French, and they even built the first 60 versts of canvas near Feodosia, but the financial collapse stopped everything. Three years of railway construction changed both the city and its inhabitants. At this time, from a provincial, God-forgotten outback, Feodosia turned into a fabulous magnet that attracted people and money. In the 1860s, the city experienced a real construction boom - the cost of land increased several times. A real chance to get a railroad reappeared in Feodosia much later.
After the Crimean War, various projects for the construction of a railway began to appear, capable of connecting the peninsula with the mainland.
However, it was possible to realize the plan only in 1875. The railway in the Crimea acquired its real shape after the right to build it was given to the largest industrialist and not a novice in the railway business, Peter Gubonin. The terms (3 years) and the pace of construction were determined - and indeed, it was completed very quickly, even by today's standards.
A 665 km long road from the Lozovaya station through Dzhankoy to Sevastopol was built in 4 years. At the same time, the Crimean section was very difficult due to the features of the relief.
The most time-consuming work on the track was on the Mekenzievy Gory - Sevastopol section. The foothill terrain at the approach to Sevastopol posed a difficult task for the builders. From the station Syuren (modern station Verkhnesadovoye) the railway line had to be raised to a height of 150 meters above sea level, and then lowered to a 10-meter mark to the edge of the Sevastopol Bay. Therefore, due to large elevation changes and difficult terrain, six railway tunnels were pierced, the total length of which is 2 km. And each of them got its own name. The first tunnel from the side of Simferopol is Sukharny, 331 m long. It owes its name to Sukharnaya beam, in which at the beginning of the 19th century the Maritime Department built a factory for the production of crackers.
The second - the shortest tunnel - Grafsky 125 meters long, named after Count M. I. Voinovich, who commanded the Sevastopol squadron from 1889 to 1890.
After Grafskoye, the railway again hides in the next tunnel, which received the name White from the color of limestone - Inkerman stone. Its length is 437 m.
The fourth tunnel is the longest - Gypsy, 559 meters long, after the name of the beam in Inkerman.
The fifth, facing the Kilen-beam, is Troitsky, 294 meters long, it passes in the Troitskaya beam.
The sixth, 228 meters long, decorated with an arch with a relief ornament and aedicules for sculptures, was located on the Ship side, punched under the Lazarevsky barracks and received the name City. A railway station was built at the end of the South Bay.
Another interesting engineering facility on the Simferopol-Sevastopol line is the Shavrinskaya excavation with a length of over 500 meters. It was cut into the sandstone rock more than 130 years ago according to the project of the engineer Shavrin without the use of technology - only with a hand tool. Most likely, this was done due to the cost of building a rock bypass.
On September 15, 1875, the first freight train approached the Sevastopol railway station. The construction of the Lozovo-Sevastopol railway was completed, connecting the city with Simferopol, and through it with the central part of Russia, taking another step towards the revival of Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet.
The construction of viaducts is a very important branch of engineering, especially in countries with large roughness of the earth's surface. In Russia, in the Crimea, during the construction of the Lozovo-Sevastopol railway, they had to resort to their help.
Viaduct at 1517 km
The railroad crosses the Sivash on a bridge and an embankment dam running from the Chongar Peninsula (one of the large ledges of the northern coastline of the bay) to the Crimean coast between the Sivash and Salt Lake stations.
According to the original plan, the railway was supposed to pass a few tens of kilometers from Simferopol. But the city authorities, not wanting to miss such a profitable opportunity, provided land for construction free of charge. As a result, the railway somewhat changed the intended route and passed through the western marshy outskirts of Simferopol. The section Melitopol - Simferopol was officially commissioned on October 14, 1874. On the same day came the first passenger train, although the first commodity arrived on June 1 of the same year.
Thanks to the railway, real industrial enterprises appear in the city, huge opportunities for using local resources open up. The first such enterprises were the branch of the Moscow confectionery factory "Einem" and the factory of A.I. Abrikosova.
At first, only 6 trains per day came to Simferopol - 2 passenger and 4 goods. The trains were small: steam locomotives of those times could pull no more than seven cars and at the same time reach speeds of up to 25 km / h. There were also few passengers at first.
There is a version that in 1912 it was on the platform of the Simferopol railway station that the famous march of Vasily Agapkin “Farewell of the Slav” was first performed. Thus began a tradition that has continued for many years: trains to Moscow and Kyiv leave to the sound of this music even today.
Built at the end of the century before last, the building of the Simferopol railway station, periodically patched up by the authorities, stood until the Second World War, when, as a result of numerous bombings, it left no stone unturned. The last thing that the German troops blew up, retreating in 1944, was the chimney of the station's boiler room. Two years later, construction began on a new building.
The station was conceived as the main gate of the all-Union health resort - the main health resort of the whole country. On the site of the old station destroyed in the war, a grandiose construction project was launched. The whole country participated in the construction of the station. New station immediately became, and still is the pride of Simferopol, a symbol of the city. At that time it was a grand building.
The author of the project, architect Aleksey Dushkin, imagined the "gates of Crimea" in the form of an airy Italian palazzo. The construction took five years. In 1951 the station was put into operation. Cinematographers fell in love with this station, for example, in the film adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy "Twelfth Night" in 1955, the columns of the station gallery became part of the chambers of the protagonist, Duke Orsino.
The station is a magnificent example of southern architecture, organically integrated into the subtropical landscape. The station complex consists of three parts: the main and service buildings, and the clock tower. Parts of the station are organically connected by a system of arches and galleries.
The main building was built of white Inkerman stone in the post-war Soviet "triumph" style. The style of the main building of the station can be defined as Italian: the main building was built in a symmetrical projection, and on two sides of it there are two galleries that create space for the courtyard. The design of the courtyard resembles the Italian courtyard of the Livadia Palace.
On the roof of the station building there is a building made in the form of an ancient temple.
The station clock tower is 42 meters high. On each side of the tower there are clock faces with a diameter of about three meters, the signs of the zodiac are located near the numbers. The length of the minute hands is 2 meters, the hour hands are 1.5 meters. The watch was made at the Moscow Watch Factory in 1951. The clock mechanism is driven by weights, 250 kilograms each. The clock is wound up every nine days. The clock tower is actually a water tower. It contains a reservoir into which pumps pump water from an artesian well located in the same tower. The spire of the tower is crowned with a five-pointed star. Sochi has a twin station built a year later.
Simferopol station in the peak summer months passes up to 50 thousand people daily.
The Dzhankoy station was opened in 1874 as part of the Melitopol-Simferopol launch site. In 1892 the station became a hub. The railway junction was twice destroyed: during the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars.
And the railway finally came to Feodosia only in August 1892. The line was stretched from the station Dzhankoy, in some places using the railway facilities of 1857-1860. The road led to the Feodosia port, the shortest route to which from the north passed along the seashore. As a result, the track was laid on an artificial embankment at the water's edge. On another artificial embankment, which completely changed the coastline in the port area, port facilities were erected. During the construction of embankments, the site was destroyed sandy beach. Near the dacha of the book publisher A. S. Suvorin, the railway cut the hill. For convenient access to the dachas and the sea, a three-arched stone bridge with an openwork fence was erected in this place.
At first, trains ran only to the Bolshoy Vokzal railway station (now Aivazovskaya station), which is in the suburbs of Feodosia. With the device of the port line, the Feodosia-Port station appeared, which eventually became the main city station.
The first station "Feodosia-Port" was wooden - it was built as a temporary one, but it served for almost a quarter of a century. And only in 1914, according to the project of the St. Petersburg architect P. I. Chernyshev, a white-stone (from Inkerman limestone) city station was built, which lived until the autumn of 1941 - during the Second World War, the station was destroyed.
The modern station was rebuilt in 1955 according to the project of the Dnepropetrovsk architect I. Zaraisky.
The road was built by the labor of hired workers, mainly from the central Russian provinces. As it was later calculated, more than 110 miles of canvas with all the necessary equipment and roadside infrastructure cost the treasury 3,159,543 silver rubles. Stations were built at the same time, at approximately equal distance from each other, as the railroad workers say, across the stage. This was not done by chance: steam locomotives needed regular replenishment of water and fuel.
Over time, due to the economic development of the region, some stations became large stations: Kolai (now Azovskoye), Seitler (Nizhnegorsky), Grammatikovo or Ichki (Soviet), Islam-Terek (Kirovskoye), Vladislavovka.
In Feodosia in 1913, one of the four elevators of the Southern Railways was located (this state-owned enterprise owned all the railways of Crimea).
In 1900, traffic was opened along the Kerch Vladislavovka - Kerch Kursk-Kharkov-Sevastopol railway.
This event had a strong influence on the further development of Kerch, giving it a predominantly industrial character. First of all, the opening of the railway made it possible, finally, to begin the construction of the Kerch seaport, which needed a road for the transportation and export of goods (the port project was approved back in 1899).
For the first time, the idea of laying a railway line to Evpatoria appeared in 1873 during the laying of the Lozovaya-Sevastopol line, but only in 1914 did the question of the railway acquire strategic importance (the world war began).
By the Decree of the Council of Ministers of April 22, 1915, a decision was made to build railway line Sarabuz (now Ostryakovo) - Evpatoria, 2 million rubles were allocated for this, not counting the cost of rails and rolling stock. And already on October 21, 1915, traffic was opened along the new railway line.
In 1920, the Dzhankoy-Armyansk section was put into operation. The railway station of Armyansk is connected by a single-track railway line with Krasnoperekopsk station, distance - 18.2 km, Vadim station, distance - 15 km.
The railway in the north of the Arabat Spit once connected salt mines, sand pits and recreation centers with Genichesk.
The construction of railways in the Crimea is associated with another name - a talented Russian writer, an outstanding engineer Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky took part in the design of the railway from Sevastopol to Simferopol through Yalta. Garin-Mikhailovsky insisted on the creation of an electrified railway, trying not to damage the nature of the South Coast and to exclude the pollution of the salubrious Crimean air by steam locomotive smoke.
The Black River, according to his plan, was to become a source of energy. Here he planned the opening of the first hydroelectric power station in Russia. For 8 months, 22 options for the route were considered, but the death of Garin-Mikhailovsky prevented the construction of the road. His research was used in the construction of the intercity trolleybus route Simferopol-Alushta-Yalta - the most beautiful in the Crimea.
In general, it was not easy with the railway business in the Crimea. The idea of laying a road right along the southern coast of Crimea in the 80s of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century became literally an idéfix of the local community. As for the southern coast of Crimea, in general, all undertakings were pursued by evil fate, and its intervention "in the end, rudely interrupted the course of the case and stopped it." The brilliance of engineering ideas, the struggle of groups, passions, intrigues ultimately did not lead to anything - not a single project was ever implemented. And what only plans were not! The project of F. Batalin "Sevastopol-Yalta" with 11 tunnels and an embankment along the coast 85 miles long was dropped due to the death of Alexander III; the project of the engineer Gronsky died with him at sea (the wreck of the steamer "Vladimir"); Von Hartmann's Bakhchisaray-Yalta project failed to raise the necessary capital, and so on and so forth. In the end, in 1902, a state interdepartmental commission was appointed to resolve the issue of the road, which established that it should be electric, have a narrow gauge and serve, if possible, the entire coast. N.G. was appointed chief engineer on this issue. Garin-Mikhailovsky. However, unfortunately, neither one nor the other was destined to materialize.
More and more new options appear: the Sevastopol-Yalta-Alushta road with the prospect of extending it to Feodosia; road "Simferopol-Alushta-Yalta"; the road "Syuren-Yalta" through the main ridge of the Crimean mountains; new version the Bakhchisaray-Yalta road with a six-kilometer tunnel and dead-end branches to Simeiz and Alushta (project by S.N. Chaev); a variant of the “Stukenberg electric tram” with several tunnels and bridges (the main inspiration was the owner of Foros, G.K. Ushkov).
Endless debates went on until 1915, when at last the "Society of the Crimean Railways" was recognized as valid and the final project of the Sevastopol-Alushta road was approved with the Ushkov joint-stock company headed and with government guarantees. Despite the first world war, there were all hopes that construction would begin and be completed. The government intended to use South coast as a giant "sanatorium" for the wounded, that is, the railway was already needed as a strategic facility. But the "evil fate" relentlessly followed on the heels: at first, some unseemly speculation and financial troubles appeared in the case, and then everything was completely lost in the ensuing chaos of the revolution and civil war. In Soviet times, this enterprise was considered unprofitable and dangerous due to possible landslides and the seismic unreliability of the area. And so it did not happen to be on the Crimean South Coast railway.
Materials used in the article:
1. Wikipedia
2. Official site of the Sevastopol writer Ivanov V.B.
3. S. Tkachenko "Crimean Truth"
4. N. Dremova “135 years ago, the construction of the railway was completed in the Crimea”
5. Vladimir Shavshin "Stone chronicle of Sevastopol"
