Railway Museum in Samara (Russia)
I don’t just love trains. I even happened to work for a railway company in Russia. Therefore, I could not pass by the Railway Museum located in Samara, a large regional city of Russia on the Volga River.
The museum for me began with a high-speed train made back in the USSR. For a while the train was traveling on rails, but then the project was curtailed. Russian railways returned to high-speed traffic only ten years later.
I promised not to write about politics, but in the current situation, Russia has rolled back twenty years, left without components and spare parts for high-speed trains. And not just trains. Alas, not everyone understands this. Well, to hell with politics…
Some trains are surprising. Was it really used!? Strange in appearance, technically imperfect, but have become part of the history of railways.
And this is my favorite passenger train Er2. As a child, I often drove it from home to the city. There were wooden benches inside, there was a lot of noise, but it was one of the most beautiful. The train was manufactured in the Baltic States, which left the USSR in the early 90s.
Another train from my childhood was this blue locomotive. These were children’s railways, in which the drivers and conductors were teenagers who drove other teenagers.
For many years there were few passenger wagons in the USSR, so even freight wagons carrying people were converted into them. In addition, there were special wagons for transporting prisoners, of which there were always many in the USSR. These were not always real criminals, most often they were just people who did not agree with the party’s policy.
Back in Soviet times there were many service trains. I used to see them all the time, but now I hardly see them on the roads.
In conclusion, several freight locomotives. In the USSR, there were more of them than passenger ones, because freight rail transportation prevailed due to the lack of roads. Some of them were also used to transport passenger trains. Especially diesels, because in many places there was no electricity on the railways.
There are many more stories about traveling in Russia ahead. Subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss anything. And thank you…