History of rail transport in Russia
Its geography of north–south rivers and east–west commerce, plus, importantly, the mostly flat terrain, made it very suited to develop railroads as the basic mode of transportation.
The total length of line used by the Russian Railways is, at 85,500 kilometres (53,130 mi),[2] one of the largest in the world, exceeded only by the United States.
The Trans-Siberian Railway connecting European Russia with the Russian Far East provinces on the Sea of Japan was built between 1891 and 1916.
To provide a shorter connection to the Entente powers, a railway was constructed to the newly built Arctic ice-free port of Murmansk as well (1916).
It ran parallel to the main line of the Tsarskoye Selo Railway and then branched south west at the village of Kouzmino.
A notable project of the late 1920s and one of the centerpieces of the first five-year plan was the Turkestan–Siberia Railway, linking Western Siberia via Eastern Kazakhstan with Uzbekistan.
The loss of mining and industrial centers of the western Soviet Union necessitated speedy construction of new railways during the wartime.
As a result of the World War II victory over Japan, the southern half of Sakhalin Island was returned to Russia in 1945.
After the war the Soviet railway network was re-built and further expanded to more than 145,000 km (90,000 mi) of track by major additions such as Baikal Amur Mainline.
The difference is within the normal tolerance so little immediate effect was shown and conversion took place progressively over 30 years as lines were maintained and upgraded.
In 2003 a vast structural reform was implemented in order to preserve the unity of the railway network and separate the functions of state regulation from operational management: On 18 September 2003, Decree No.585 of the Russian Government established the Russian Railways Public Corporation with state holds 100% of the shares.
There are plans for partial privatization of the company in the future in order to raise much needed capital from the sale of shares.
[15][16] In July 2010, RZD signed an agreement for Siemens to provide rolling stock (240 EMUs) and upgrade 22 marshalling yards.
With characteristic slowness in committing himself, Nicholas I nevertheless proceeded with determination, aiming to overcome problems relating to having his capital some distance from the centre of his empire.
"[20] Profits were high: over 100 million gold rubles a year to the government (exact amount unknown due to accounting defects).
Another problem is that it's estimated that over one-third of passengers cheat and pay no fare at all (including bribing the ticket inspector).
The reds (communists) won, resulting in the formation of the Soviet Union (USSR) and a new chapter in railway development.
But then the USSR started restoring and constructing railroads during wartime so that by the end of the war about half of the lost traffic had been recovered.
And then, a few years later in 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart and its largest republic, the Russian Federation, which then hauled about 2/3 of the traffic of the former USSR, became an independent country.
[29] For the USSR in 1989 (shortly before the collapse), the railroads hauled nearly eight times as much ton-km of freight by rail as they did by highway truck.
However the severe depression in Russia in the 1990s [33][34] after the collapse of the Soviet Union (actually beginning in the last year of its existence), resulted in rail freight falling to about 40% of its 1988 value to its low point in 1997 (1020 billion ton-km).
