The Southwestern Railway is one of the major thoroughfares of Ukraine and it has the second highest volume of traffic among other railways. The road mainly serves northern and northwestern regions of the country, stretching through them for 4,500 km. The name “Southwestern” remained from pre-revolutionary times. The road construction was begun in the 60s of the XIX century, when it became necessary to connect the port of Odessa and the Russian southwestern borders with central regions. 1870 is considered to be the date of birth of the Southwestern Railway. Now there are 315 railway stations, more than 90% of the traffic are made by use of the electric traction.
Entering the museum, a visitor gets into a corridor that looks like a passage of a compartment car – there are handrails and windows with landscapes.
This corridor goes to a cabin with a remote control panel of the electric locomotive ChS4.
The museum is divided into several rooms, each of them describes a certain period of the railway life.
Here, for example, you can learn something about the beginning of the road history.
The arrival of the first train at the station Kiev-Passenger is depicted on a big picture on the wall . The station building then was quite different.
Photographs, drawings and diagrams could be found at various stands. This is the office of the railway, which is still located on Lysenko street.
Uniforms of various employees.
Cockades and buckles
The next room. Among other things here are old equipment, tools, and parts of railway vehicles.
One of the most attractive model – the locomotive Su 216-04.
An old coupling used in coaches.
A bogie model of the end of the XIX century.
Signal lanterns.
This how coaches looked before.
A snowplough.
The process of driving of coaches on another railroad track.
The third room is dedicated to the XX century.
Different tools and equipment for control of road parameters.
The modern automatic coupling CA-3.
A little diorama of the war times.
A fragment of the train service.
A model of the locomotive TE3.
The Ministry of Railways, USSR. The Southwestern railroad.
Location:Kiev
via tov_tob
Ex-Soviet states have facinations with rail and subway transport
Railway in the former USSR was a major mode of transportation, especially for a country the size of Russia.
I’m surprised the museaum doesn’t have a display of the different gauge systems and how Russia has a bigger gauge than everyone else in the world.
The snow plough is actually a snow blower, designed by a dentist named Leslie. Powered by steam when built, some are still in use under diesel power.
LAst
I loved the pictures of Railway uniforms. I am a collector in the US and wonder if the author has any more pictures he could share.