8th November 2022: Railways of the former USSR
The Beatles had a song entitled, ‘Back in the USSR’, and that’s where Jeremy Harrison took us at our meeting on the 8th November, with a presentation – all on slides – based on tours he made in the 1990s.
We first went back to 1991 – the last year of the USSR – on a tour Jeremy was on, that after flying to Moscow (and evening meal from McDonalds – then the new highlight of Soviet cuisine!), for an overnight train to Kiev, toured around Ukraine by special train. Obviously, names now familiar to us now were new to the tour at the time: in one town, tour participants were told they were first foreigners there since the Germans had left in a hurry in 1944. Steam haulage was to the forefront for this expedition, with many pictures of run pasts in various places, and of the area. Back in Kiev there was a long queue at a petrol station even though cars were not so common there then. The Pioneer Children’s Railway - a narrow gauge railway designed to be run by young people, who would generally go on to a railway career on railway cwork on the railways - was also visited. A ride on it is usually a must.
The LCGB tour in 1992 followed. After flying to Moscow, and visit to the Shcherbinka Railway Railway Research Institute, it was on to Minsk, for a steam hauled tour train around Belarus. There were large lines of steam locos stored in ‘strategic reserves’, and again run pasts for the participants and their cameras. At Minsk we saw an L Class 2-10-0.
A second LCGB tour that year went from Moscow to Archangel, 704 miles north from Moscow. On the way, proper roads are rare, seeing a variety of electric locos and dmu’s. The tour train had steam for its motive power, double headed at times. The journey back seemed like a return to normality.
The final tour Jeremy took us on was the 1996 LCGB to Ukraine. Steam was dumped or plinthed in places. Another steam tour, which included also a steam hauled freight with run pasts by both at various places for the cameras. (Rob Burridge)