Rail transport in the Soviet Union

[5] A notable project of the late 1920s, which became one of the centrepieces of the first five-year plan, was the Turkestan–Siberia Railway, linking Western Siberia via Eastern Kazakhstan with Uzbekistan.

[9] However, in other cases "crisis" was used to describe a situation where the stocks of inputs stored at a plant (such as iron ore at a steel mill) almost ran out due to the railway's failure to deliver on time; no substantial harm would be done to production output, but it would be a close call.

Gosplan advocated the rationalization of the railways, coupled with tariffs based on actual cost, which would reduce traffic demand and provide funds for investment.

But then the USSR started restoring and constructing railways during wartime so that by the end of the war about half of the lost traffic had been recovered.

This rapid growth may seem impressive, but it was also in some senses a failure, since railway traffic at times did not grow fast enough to satisfy demand, partly due to congestion.

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.

[23] For the USSR in 1989, shortly before the collapse of Soviet Union, the railway hauled nearly eight times as much tonne-km of freight by rail as they did by lorry.

The invasion of Germany deep into the USSR along with German bombing of railroads, took its toll and greatly reduced passenger rail travel.

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 Japan's loss in World War II, the southern half of Sakhalin Island was annexed by Soviet Union in 1945.

After the war the Soviet railway network was re-built and further expanded to more than 145,000 km of track by major additions such as Baikal Amur Mainline.

This steady growth in rail transport can be explained by the country's need to extract its natural resources, most of which were located close to, or in Siberia.

During much of the country's later lifespan, trains usually carried coal, oil, construction material (mostly stone, cement and sand) and timber.

Most Soviet citizens did not own private transport, and if they did, it was difficult to drive long distances due to the poor conditions of many roads.

This avoided the situation in the US where two (or sometimes more) railway companies would construct lines that more or less paralleled each other resulting in wasteful duplication of effort.

[46] The high traffic volumes per kilometer of line resulted in congestion problems that at times became so severe that goods available for transport could not be shipped and factories, etc.

In 1989 the President of the Council of Ministers of the USSR stated[48] that economists estimate that the failure of railways to provide adequate transportation, costs the Soviet economy 10-12 billion roubles per year.

On single track lines between passing sidings, trains can't travel in opposite directions at the same time.

This method was used in the Soviet Union mostly as a temporary expedient[53](especially in cases where a length of track was temporarily closed for maintenance work).

[54] It was proposed to select two large end stations on a single track line that have enough trackage to hold several trains.

Especially in the 1970s, some railway depots/shops began to provide a much improved working environment and whole books were written on this subject,[55] sometimes called "production esthetics" (производственная эстетика).

They also provided improved amenities when workers traveled to work on remote sections of track and lived in sleeping cars.

Production esthetics included planting of greenery,[58] providing proper lighting and pleasant colours,[59] background music and sports areas.

The Soviet rapid transit system was seen as the cheapest way of urban transport, and eventually another point acquired greater significance; the authorities could allocate their resources from the automobile industry to the rapid transit sector and save a substantial volume of the country's diesel and petrol.

But the USSR failed to make steady progress and while they led the United States at first, they soon fell behind and their last steam locomotives were retired about 15 years later than for the US.

Then in 1937 the small scale production (only several units per year) of diesel locomotives (for desert use) came to a halt[73] by order of Kaganovich, the head of the national railway committee (NKPS)[74] and a leading figure in the Communist party.

The dimensions were converted to metric and sometimes modified, the Soviet system of air brakes were used, and the engine speeds at certain controller positions were changed.

During the last 30 years of the Soviet Union, it hauled as much rail freight as all the other countries in the world combined and in the end, over 60% of this was by electric locomotives.

Electrification was cost effective due to the very high density of traffic and was at times projected to yield at least a 10% return on investment (as compared to diesel traction).

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, railway traffic in Russia sharply declined[77] and new major electrification projects were not undertaken except for the line to Murmansk which was completed in 2005.