St. Petersburg – Moscow railway opens
The October of 1837 was nearing its end. On October 30, at half past noon, the station bell rang twice, the "Provorny" ("agile" or "nimble" in Russian) steam locomotive produced a long whistle and set off along the public railway St. Petersburg – Tsarskoye Selo. To be fair, it should be noted that the first steam railway in Russia emerged back in 1834. It was built by serf craftsmen, engineering talents Efim Cherepanov and his son Miron at the Ural Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Plant. They also built two steam locomotives for this line.
And even earlier, on November 20, 1809, the imperial proclamation declared that: "The spread of agriculture and industry, the growing population of the capital and the traffic of domestic and foreign trade have gone beyond the boundaries of the conventional means of communications." This gave impetus to new structures. The Department of Water Communications and the Expedition of Road Arrangements, was superseded by the Main Directorate of Water and Land Communications, the Corps and the Institute of the Corps of Railway Engineers, the latter being located in the former Yusupov’s Palace. The Corps was entrusted with the construction and operation of all means of communication, and the Institute with the training of specialists necessary for these purposes. It was the prominent Spanish-born scientist, mechanic and constructor Agustín de Betancourt who was the establisher and first head of the institute.
Many outstanding constructors, scientists and technologists in the field of railway engineering were its graduates: M.S. Volkov, S.V. Kerbedz, N.O. Kraft, P.P. Melnikov, D.I. Zhuravsky and many others. It is through their efforts and perseverance that the railway tracks stretched all over Russia.
February 1, 1842 became a milestone. Following the report by Pavel Melnikov and Nikolay Kraft, Emperor Nicholas I signed the decree on the construction of the St. Petersburg – Moscow railway. Works got underway on August 1. The project was divided between two directorates: the Northern, headed by Melnikov, and the Southern, headed by Kraft. The venture involved 27 newly qualified specialists, graduates of the Institute of the Railway Engineer Corps.
The project was elaborated on grounds of engineering surveys and feasibility studies, and the throughput was estimated with an eye to prospective growth. The designers calculated optimal slopes, curve radii and other characteristics. The earthworks for roadbed were done for two tracks at once. The newly-introduced flat-bottom rails were used. At Melnikov's insistence, the track gauge was set at 5 feet, or 1524 millimeters, which from then on became a standard for all railways in Russia. Water obstacles required the construction of 8 viaducts and 182 bridges and culverts.
34 stations were built along the line. The famous architect Konstantin Ton designed two major termini in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Both termini remain visually pleasing constructions to this day.
On November 1, 1851, the longest back then double-track railway was opened, with the first train departing from St. Petersburg to Moscow at 11:15 am. At 9 o'clock next morning, that is in 21 hours 45 minutes, the train arrived in Moscow. The Russia’s first trunk line, which is now part of the October railway, began scheduled services. Trains were pulled by steam locomotives built at the Alexandrovsky plant in St. Petersburg. In 1,852, ridership amounted to 719 thousand passengers, freight traffic added up to 164 thousand tonnes of cargo, which was a real boom. Express trains covered the 650-km distance between St. Petersburg and Moscow in 12 hours.