The line was officially opened on 30 October 1837, when an 8-carriage train was hauled by a steam locomotive between Saint Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo.

The first railways in Russia were short and narrow-track lines with wooden and then steel rails, which were used in the 18th century to transport carriages with ore at numerous mines of the Urals.

However, their design had not found application outside of their factory, and most hardware for the Tsarskoye Selo Railway, including rails, carriages, locomotives and railroad switches, was purchased abroad.

The commission found the project feasible and recommended starting with a short railway between St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo and the nearby Pavlovsk.

[5][6][7][8] The construction and operation of the Tsarskoye Selo Railway was managed by a newly established joint-stock company headed by Count Alexander Bobrinsky (president), von Gerstner and businessmen Benedict Kramer and Ivan Konrad Plitt.

It regularly hosted evening festivities with invited celebrities, such as concerts of Johann Strauss II and his orchestra every summer from 1856 to 1865.

[8] While the line near Tsarskoye Selo was completed in 1836, the steam locomotives had not arrived yet, and the work near St. Petersburg was delayed by land purchasing problems.

Test trips with steam locomotives started in November 1836 on a 7.5 km (4.7 mi) long section between Pavlovsk and the village of Bolshoe Kuzmino.

Gerstner conducted those tests himself, with more than a hundred trips in the first week, and was mostly preoccupied with not hitting the wondering crowds of people who arrived to watch the curiosity.

This train of eight carriages was pulled by a steam locomotive, and its arrival was observed by numerous noble guests, including Nicholas I.

Signals were set by raising 1, 2 or 3 black disks (daytime) or red lamps (night) on the pile and took about 30 minutes to transmit along the line.

Trains left the opposite terminal stations simultaneously and would bypass each other at a specially designed crossing in the middle of the line.

[4][6][7][8] Starting from 1856, imported locomotives were supplemented by local ones, produced on a factory managed by Maximilian de Beauharnais, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg.

[6][7] The opening of the Tsarskoye Selo Railway in 1837 was an extremely popular event, reflected in the news and in handicrafts and theater performances in Russia.

The reverse pictured a steam locomotive and read "The founders of the first railway Count Alexander Bobrinsky, Benedict Kramer and I. K. Plitt.