Museum Stations

EXHIBITION

On 28 October 2016, a historical and cultural complex dedicated to Leo Tolstoy and the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812 was officially opened at Shchekino station.

The complex includes a stylised stopping point at Yasenki station replete with a ticket office and a passenger carriage from the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries.

The station’s waiting room, with its grand piano, has become the centre of attraction not only for tourists visiting the places associated with Leo Tolstoy, but also a venue for graduation balls and concerts for students at local schools and other special events.

The exhibits at the new historical and cultural complex at Shchekino station also include an unusual sapling – a descendant of the oaks planted by Leo Tolstoy himself!

HOW TO GET THERE

On the following trains: St. Petersburg – Moscow – Orel. Moscow – Kursk and Tula – Shchekino.

THE HISTORY OF THE STATION

In 1868, services began on the Tula – Orel section, where the Yasenki railway station was built and which, like the Kozlova Zaseka station, is located just a few kilometres from Leo Tolstoy’s family estate Yasnaya Polyana. By that time, there was already a settlement for the rail construction workers and rail staff on both sides of Yasenki station.

In 1903, the station was renamed Shchekino. The simplest explanation for the appearance of such a name is that the village of Shchekino is located near the railway station. The village later acquired the status of a town.

Leo Tolstoy often visited this station to receive and send his correspondence. On 28 October 1910 (10 November according to the New Style calendar), the great writer, together with his close friends, left his Yasnaya Polyana estate for good at the Shchekino station on the Moscow – Kursk railway line. Here he boarded a train and departed on his last journey.

It was also at this station that the tragic events took place that shook Tolstoy to the depths of his soul and which the writer later incorporated into his great novel Anna Karenina – the suicide of a woman under the wheels of a train who had been driven to the depths of despair by the torments of love.

The modern two-story station building was built in 1956. Around the same time, a monument to the great writer was erected nearby. A major overhaul of the station was carried out in 1990, during which the station’s electrical centralisation post was placed on the building’s second floor. In 2006, the station was converted from water heating using a coal boiler to gas heating.