Varshavsky station (, ''Varshavsky vokzal''), or Warsaw station, is a former passenger

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

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 ...

. It is located to the south of the city centre, and was in operation from 1853 to 2001 From 2001 to 2017, it served as the home of the Russian Railway Museum (also known as the Russian Federation Central Museum of Railway Transport).

History

The station was originally built in 1851 for a rail line, completed in 1858, from the city to the Tsar's residence in Gatchina. The line was extended in 1859 to

Pskov Pskov ( rus, Псков, a=Ru-Псков.oga, p=psˈkof; see also Names of Pskov in different languages, names in other languages) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in northwestern Russia and the administrative center of Pskov O ...

and in 1862 to

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

, which at that time was a part of

Congress Poland Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...

and the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. A branch from the main line that ran to the

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

n border at Virbalis (now

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

) connected Saint Petersburg to other capitals of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. The current building was designed by Piotr Salmanovich in a mixture of historical styles. It was constructed between 1857 and 1860. A church was built in front of the station in 1908; it was later demolished and a Lenin statue by Soviet sculptor Nikolai Tomsky appeared in 1949. In 2001, the station was closed, with long distance rail service diverted to Vitebsky railway station and commuter service to Baltiysky Rail Terminal, and the depiction of Lenin removed. The trade center ''Warsaw Express'' has occupied the building since 2005. On the tracks, a railway museum used to display 80 exhibits of steam engines, electric and diesel locomotives. The Museum is closed, and the exhibits have been relocated to the Russian Railway Museum adjacent to Baltiysky railway station, which opened on 1 November 2017.

Future

The train depot of the Ladozhsky station is now proposed at the former Varshavsky station track area.

Sources

*
Reconstruction of the Warsaw Railway Station

External links

Paveletsky Rail station Official site
at Rizhsky railway station,

156 photos of the Varshavsky Station Railway Museum
{{authority control Railway stations in the Russian Empire opened in 1860 Railway stations in Saint Petersburg Railway stations in Russia closed in 2001 1851 establishments in the Russian Empire Cultural heritage monuments in Saint Petersburg

History

Future

See also

Sources

External links