Museum Stations
THE STATION’s HISTORY
With the outbreak of the First World War, the Russian Empire’s Council of Ministers decided on the urgent need to build a railway connecting Petrozavodsk with the coast of the Barents Sea. The Baltic and Black Seas were under an enemy blockade, so the main task was to ensure the transportation of military equipment sent by the Allies to the ports of Soroka, Kandalaksha and Semenovsky on the White and Barents Seas. Emperor Nicholas II gave permission to build the line, later named the Murmansk Railway, on 1 January 1915.
Medvezhaya Gora – Bear Mountain – was built in 1915-1916 and became one of the stations on the line. The name “Bear Mountain” came from prospectors who were laying a route under the railway, which periodically disturbed the bears and then gave rise to many legends. As a result, a designation bearing the name “Bear Mountain” appeared on the map. Later, a town grew up around the station – the residents say it was - “a town born to the whistle of a steam locomotive.”
In November 1916, a temporary train service opened along the entire length of the Murmansk line.
During the revolutionary period and the subsequent civil war, the station occupied a significant strategic territory. In May 1919, Russian White Guards and British interventionists occupied Bear Mountain, which became their main front-line station and which took delivery of shells, cartridges and boats.
After the end of the Civil War, the station facilities needed repairs. In the first half of the 1920s, major work was carried out to restore and complete the Murmansk railway line. The station had already been restored by 1929 and handled up to 5.5 million tons of freight, rising to 11 million tons in 1932 and more than 17 million in 1937.
In January 1935, the Murmansk Mainline was renamed the Kirov Railway in honour of the statesman Sergei Mironovich Kirov (1886-1934).
Between 1930 and 1933, relatively close to the station village, the White Sea-Baltic Canal was built, which connected Lake Onega with the White Sea. In 1938, the village received the status of a town which became known as Medvezhyegorsk and since then Bear Mountain has become an important transport hub.
During the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 1944, Medvezhyegorsk, including Medvezhya Gora station, was occupied by the Finnish army and was used for the supply of weapons. On 23 June 1944, the town was liberated due to the rapid advance of Soviet troops and traffic through the station was resumed on 16 July.
In peacetime, Bear Mountain underwent considerable reconstruction work and technical upgrades. The electrification of the Idel – Svir section in 2005 improved and revitalised the station. The oldest enterprise of the railway junction is the Medvezhyegorsk locomotive depot, which is still the town’s main employer.
WHAT TO SEE
One of Medvezhyegorsk’s attractions is the railway station, which was built in the style of Russian wooden architecture in 1916 according to a design by the architect Rufin Mikhailovich Gabe. It consists of a station building and several houses for station employees. Nowadays, considerable effort goes into preserving the station’s original appearance.
The railway station has become a place of memory for the town and houses historical artefacts that are important to the townspeople, including a restored Er 791-70 steam locomotive, a specially equipped museum carriage that displays historical exhibits, and a two-axle “heater” with a screw coupling, which was built in 1898 in Kolomna near Moscow.
Next to the carriage there is a station double-wing semaphore using an electric rod system which was made in the 1940s and a locomotive hydraulic pump for delivering water into the locomotive’s tender.
There is also a memorial to the teachers and students of the town’s Railway School No. 11 who died during the Great Patriotic War.
Viktor Fedorovich Grishin (1949–2023), a local native, initiated the museum’s foundation and became its first director. Grishin worked at the locomotive depot at the Medvezhya Gora station from 1965 and worked his way up from assistant driver to deputy head of the depot.
Viktor Fedorovich is also known as a local historian who has written the books Station at Bear Mountain (2011), Town at Bear Mountain (2013) and The Hundred Years-Long Railway: Maselgskaya – Bear Mountain (2018).
The museum exhibition relates the history of the construction of the Murmansk Railway, Medvezhya Gora and Maselgskaya stations and the work of the enterprises at the railway junction both during and after the Great Patriotic War. The museum has many photographs of railway workers who worked at different times and displays over 700 exhibits and items.
HOW TO GET THERE
Train services between St. Petersburg – Murmansk and Moscow – Murmansk and the commuter trains Petrozavodsk – Medvezhya Gora.