The Children's Railway Sakhalin (

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

: Южно-Сахалинская детская железная дорога) is a

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

miniature railway A ridable miniature railway (US: riding railroad or grand scale railroad) is a large scale, usually ground-level railway that hauls passengers using locomotives that are often models of full-sized railway locomotives (powered by Diesel engine, ...

in the

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (, , ) is a city and the administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It is located on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, north of Japan. Gas and oil extraction as well as processing are amongst the main industries on ...

Sakhalin Oblast Sakhalin Oblast ( rus, Сахали́нская о́бласть, r=Sakhalinskaya oblastʹ, p=səxɐˈlʲinskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) comprising the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the Russian ...

. The 2.0 km circular track with a 200 m long branch into the depot was opened on 6 June 1954 as one of the many pioneer railways in the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. It is still in use.

Track

Levelling the track required some efforts due to the steep hills. The track crosses a river twice over two steel bridges with large spans of 9 and 15 metres. The station ''Komsomolskaja'' (станция Комсомольская) in the east and the halt ''Pioneer'' (остановочный пункт Пионер) in the west have wooden station buildings and the halt has even a wooden platform Along Komsomolskaja Road the track follows a lake only a few metres from its shore. A 1.73 m high concrete wall was built 1½ to 2 metres away from the rails in the mid 1970s, to mitigate the risk of erosion.

History

The planning began in 1953. The idea was supported by the regional party and the

Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it w ...

, but it was only implemented very slowly. Volunteers refurbished a steam locomotive and some waggons and prepared the signalling and paraphernalia. Members of the Komsomol supported the project, which was also reviewed with great interest by the General Director of the South Sakhalin Railways Michail Olona. The track in the park for culture and relaxation, which is named after the

cosmonaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

Yuri Gagarin Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin; Gagarin's first name is sometimes transliterated as ''Yuriy'', ''Youri'', or ''Yury''. (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, aboard the first successful Human spaceflight, crewed sp ...

, was inaugurated on 6 June 1954.

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

reacted adversely about its construction, which he saw as a waste of public resources, as it became known only 40 years later. In the first year the track was used in counter-clockwise direction. In the subsequent year, 1955, the steam locomotive was turned around on a temporary turning wye. Initially the steam locomotive UK-159-238 was used, until it was taken out of use in 1959. Originally an electric token system was used, which was replaced by half automatic signal locking and finally, as the country's first children's railroad, with automatic signal locking. The diesel locomotive TU2-029 was used since 1971 and the TU2-127 since 1982. In 2009 the diesel locomotive TU7A-3351 and several new carriages were acquired and in 2011 the diesel locomotive TU10-005.Южно-Сахалинская детская (Малая Сахалинская) железная дорога
(Russian).

References

{{Coord, 46.965992, 142.753741, display=title Children's railways in Russia Rail transport in the Russian Far East 750 mm gauge railways in Russia Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk

Track

History

See also

References