A Most Uncommon Gathering

A visit to the Oktyabrskaya Railway Museum, predecessor of today’s magnificent Russian Railway Museum in St. Petersburg, revealed in steel the history of Russian and Soviet railroading

Written by Gary Dolzall

Photographs by Thomas Dolzall

In January 2011 our son, Thomas, boarded a Finnair Airbus A330 at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to begin a journey to Russia for a semester of college study at St. Petersburg University. Along with the usual fatherly advice of study well, have fun, and be safe, my requests included “take some train photos!”

And thus it was on April 8, 2011, a snow-dressed and gray day when Russia’s long winter had not yet given way to spring weather, Thomas ventured to the Oktyabrskaya Railway Museum in St. Petersburg. There, he found a most uncommon and entirely captivating gathering of locomotives and equipment that recalled in steel Russian and Soviet railroading history.

Today, some nine years after Thomas’ visit, the museum and its collection have morphed into the stunningly impressive Russian Railway Museum, located near St. Petersburg’s Baltiysky metro station. The museum utilizes the historic locomotive shed of the Peterhof Railway to showcase its beautifully restored and expanded collection in a grand indoor setting. Indeed, last year the museum was nominated by the European Museum Forum for “European Museum of the Year.” Now often called the “Russian version” of the National Railway Museum of York, England, the new St. Petersburg museum (which opened in 2017) features 118 railroad exhibits – and yes, offers a full-size diesel locomotive cab simulator experience. After a temporary closure during the COVID-19 crisis, the museum has recently reopened to the public.

But for the moment, let us return to April 2011. While the poor weather and the rather tight confines of the equipment, then huddled along platform tracks, was limiting, neither could hide the simply extraordinary, and exotic, gathering of locomotives and equipment.

Ranging from pre-revolution Russian steam to Finnish wood-burners, from husky Soviet-era 2-10-2s to the classic and magnificent Russian Class P36 4-8-4, from an American-built Alco diesel to an early Soviet high-speed electric, the collection was (and is) simply mesmerizing.

As I look at Thomas’ accompanying photographs and contemplate the experience of visiting the present day museum and its expansive and magnificent locomotives and equipment, I find myself hoping that I, too – 4,300 miles of distance to travel notwithstanding – will have a chance in the future to visit this most uncommon railroad gathering.

Resting outside at the Oktyabrskaya Railway Museum in St. Petersburg in 2011, Russian SO17-2413 was built by Krasnoiarsk Works in 1948 and was festooned with slogans and numerals to commemorate the “30th anniversary of the youth communist organization.” Today, the steam locomotive is beautifully restored and stands on a turntable inside St. Petersburg’s extraordinary Russian Railway Museum.

One of only two known pre-Russian Revolution locomotives extant, black, red, and green 2-6-2 C.68 was constructed in 1917 by Nevsky Shipbuilding as WWI waged and the revolution took form. In the background is visible what is surely one of the most unusual exhibits in any railroad museum in the world – a Soviet-era Scalpel (SS-24) rail-mounted missile system.

In the 1940s, the railways of Finland still called upon “wood burners,” and Finnish Class Tk3 1105 was constructed by Tampere in 1943. The balloon-stacked 2-8-0 came to Russia as war reparations and was used, remarkably, into the 1950s.

The Cold War-era SS-24 missile train is not the only military rail equipment to be discovered at the museum. Railway artillery carriage TM-3-12 was constructed in 1938 by Nikolayev Ship Works. Over its career, which included World War II service, the massive carriage was equipped with 305mm cannons from two retired battleships.

A profoundly eclectic line-up of locomotives discovered at the museum included diesel DA-20-09, an American-built Alco RSD1 diesel delivered to Russia in support of the WWII war effort; magnificent passenger-service P-36 class 4-8-4 n36-0251 built by Kolomna Locomotive Works in 1956; and a powerful LV-18 class 2-10-2 built in 1953 for freight service.

Shadows of the Soviet era are found in the red-star surrounding a silhouette of Joseph Stalin which rests above the headlight of diesel TE1-20-135 (above) and the “hammer-and-sickle” symbol adorning the smokebox door of a Class SV Soviet 2-6-2 passenger locomotive built in 1950 (below). The TE1-20-135 diesel was a Soviet-built near-clone of Alco’s RSD1 diesel road-switcher.

Producing 4,000-horsepower in its two-unit configuration, diesel T37-013 was constructed by Kharkov Malyshev Transport Engineering Works in 1960 for express and passenger train duties on the Oktyabrskaya Railway (October Railway), serving railroad lines in the northwestern portion of Russia.

Looking a bit grimy and down-trodden among the receding snowbanks of 2011 was early high-speed electric 3P200-1, built by Riga Carriage Works (RVR) in 1973. The electric was used on the Moscow-Leningrad (St. Petersburg) route and today, in much spiffier condition, is part of the Russian Railway Museum’s large collection of modern locomotives and equipment.