The first real railway in Russia was built 180 years ago. On Monday October 30, 1837, at 2:30 pm, from a single-storey wooden station, in the place where the Tsarskoye Selo station later appeared, in the presence of all ministers and diplomatic corps, accompanied by the loud exclamations of a stunned audience, with a terrible metal clash, enveloped entirely in black smoke and gaining its speed very slowly, the first Russian train set out on the cast iron rails from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo. Thus, the history of Russia railways began.
An amazing and little-known fact! On the first Russian train, on an open platform, in a horse stroller rode Emperor Nikolay the First! The real-life painting clearly reflects it: the stroller is located on the second carriage. The emperor was not afraid to personally test the new technological wonder! Before the Obvodnoy channel, for safety reasons, the train was going slowly, and only after crossing the bridge did it gain speed. The train consisted of eight stroller-carriages and covered 27 kilometers in just 35 minutes. The maximum speed of the train then was 64km per hour, and the average speed amounted to 51 hours per hour. The "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" wrote the following day: "You can't notice this speed, terrifying imagination, only the wind whistles in your ears." Half an hour later, accompanied by loud applause and shouts of cheering, the train approached the platform at the Tsarskoye Selo station. There was a banquet for the guests in two large halls. The tables were laden with food, and the emperor received congratulations.
The opening of the railway caused an unprecedented resonance in society. Everywhere, posters, newspapers and foods, images of locomotives immediately appeared. At the Alexandrinskaya Theatre the vaudeville "A Trip to Tsarskoe Selo" was played, in which the key role was given to... a team engine!
Here are a few interesting facts related to this historic moment. It was decided that locomotives and wagons for the Tsarskoye Selo Railroad had to be purchased abroad - in England and Belgium, and not manufactured locally. By the time, the first railroad was opened, 6 steam locomotives, 20 freight platforms and 40 passenger cars arrived in St. Petersburg. The first locomotive was named "Provorny" (meaning "Agile"), and the engineer of the first train was Franz Anton Gerstner, a German engineer from Vienna, who arrived in St. Petersburg at the invitation of Emperor Nikolay I three years earlier, personally designed the Tsarskoye Selo railway and directed its construction. It was Professor Gerstner who, having found himself in Russia, soon concluded that it was here that rail transport would be super-efficient, and construction of railways in such a vast country is vitally important. Franz Gerstner quickly persuaded the tsarist government. Construction of the first Russian railway took exactly a year and a half, from 1 May 1836 to October 1837.
An important fact in this whole story is that track gauge of the Tsarskoye Selo railway. It was 1,829 mm, an unexpected size. The fact is that at that time the measure units in Russia were neither centimeters nor millimeters, but feet and inches. So, 1,829 mm is equal to 6 feet or 72 inches. It is just convenience of calculations, and there is no other secret to it.
As we know from history, the second most important railway in Russia, the Nikolaevskaya, connecting St. Petersburg and Moscow, had a different track gauge - 1,524 mm. This size is also quite simple to explain. 1,524mm is exactly 5 feet or 60 inches, the same convenience of calculations. By then it became clear that this track gauge was more suitable for the performance of locomotives and the rolling stock, which improved year after year. But the fundamentally new track gauge was determined by the Russian Emperor Nikolay I. This size was deliberately chosen differently from the European railway track gauge of 1,435 mm, which was established by that time, because "[...] if any enemy form Europe shall fight against us, he will not travel on our railway...". The exact thing happened later, during the two World Wars in the XX century.
The standard Russian railway gauge of 1,524 mm quickly spread throughout the Russian Empire, reached Warsaw, Vladivostok, Murmansk, and Baku. Then the terrible XX century came. With a new force, wars and revolutions were ravaged, states collapsed and were created again, borders and names of countries changed. Russia itself melted into the USSR. Only the Russia track gauge remained the same, continuing the keep all the Eurasian space under the cover of Russia, then USSR, then Russia once again.
The WWII died down' the post-war generation grew up. The country returned to a peaceful life. Many things were rethought. Everyone began to work on the details, thinking about how to make life better. In 1970, the Soviet Union began a smooth change of the track gauge from 1,524 mm to 1,5200 mm. This process lasted over 20 years, until the early 1990s. Various official sources indicate that the aim for the change was to increase the stability of the railways when operating freight trains, increasing their speed. At the same time, a difference of 4 mm did not require modernization or re-equipment of the rolling stock and was not fundamental. The sources also indicate that the change of the Russia railway track gauge from 1,524 to 1,520 mm began after a widespread discussion between two serious scientific schools that had diametrically opposite points of view. This idea assumed that the narrowing by 4 mm will increase (according to one source) or low (according to another) the speed of freight trains due to so0called waggling of train wagons. In addition, the wear of wheel sets will be either reduced or increased. Somehow, passenger trains were not discussed at all.
Or was there another reason for making a new track gauge and it lay, as usual, on the surface? Wasn't a rounder number - 1,520 mm - more convenient for engineering calculations and became the reason for such a decision? The same reasoning was employed at the time of Emperor Nikolay I. We are sure that veteran railway designers who still remember those times will confirm this version. Especially since the interrelation of the track gauge or, more correctly, the gap between the inner sides of the rail ridges and the crest of wheel in wheelset with the intensity of their wear, had not been possible to establish fully so far. Besides, the effect on speed has not been understood yet, since the launch of the "Sapsan" messed up everything.
It is already the XXI century. And Russian railways continue to pull their steel strings, mastering new directions, territories, and spaces. In an instant, a completely new railway emerged along the Russia Black Earth, so that our train would move faster to the southern seas. And there, in the south, a grandiose event, comparable to the launch of the Tsarskoye Selo railway, has already happened - the opening of the Crimean bridge: a fundamentally new route for our trains. And the northern Latitude railway. Besides, construction of the bridge to Sakhalin, obviously, is not far away in the future. The Russian railways have a glorious past! And an even more interesting future. As they say, long live out 1520 track gauge!