Alexey Zakvasin
The railway across the Kerch Strait will be seamless and will be able to withstand a magnitude nine earthquake. Leonid Ryzhenkin, deputy general director for infrastructure projects of the company - the general contractor for the construction of the Crimean Bridge, spoke about this in an interview with RT. According to him, when designing the transport crossing, engineers took into account the complex geology and difficult natural and climatic conditions of the region. Work on the railway track of the bridge will be completed in 2019, but within a few months the builders will connect the spans from the sides of Tuzla and Kerch.
- Panorama of the Crimean Bridge
- most.life
— At what stage is the implementation of the project for the railway part of the Crimean Bridge?
— This year we brought the construction of the railway part of the Crimean Bridge to peak capacity. Work is underway along the entire length of the road - all 19 km, in eight sea and land sections. The railway across the Kerch Strait began to be built simultaneously with the road, in February 2016, but according to the schedule it will be commissioned later - in 2019.
In almost 30 months, we loaded all the piles, formed 295 of 307 railway supports with a height of five to 35 meters, and assembled over 110 thousand tons of 160 thousand tons of metal span structures. They are heavier and more complex than road ones.
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Last winter, they began to construct railway spans over the waters of the Kerch Strait using the longitudinal sliding method. This is a multi-step process. The structures are assembled from factory blocks at a stand on the shore and are one by one moved along sliding devices over the water area onto ready-made supports using jacks at a speed of about 6 m/h.
Thus, we are pulling strings of spans towards the arch from both sides - from the side of Tuzla Island and from the side of Kerch. The bridge deck will close in this area in a few months. The railway arch itself, installed on supports last year, is now being filled with everything necessary for future operation.
Inside and outside this structure there are already inspection passages, stairs, and platforms for personnel who will monitor the condition of the operating railway in the future. Under the arch arches, a trolley will move along its tracks, from which employees will be able to monitor the operation of the tracks. In addition, architectural lighting is mounted on the arch.
After the launch of the railway, the fairway section of the Crimean Bridge will be painted in the colors of the tricolor.
— What rails are used for the railway part of the Crimean Bridge? Are natural and climatic conditions and terrain taken into account when laying tracks?
— Since July of this year, the construction of the superstructure of the track has been underway on those sections of the bridge deck of the Crimean Bridge that are currently ready. Currently, this is the first construction site, the beginning of the Tuzlinskaya Spit. Two tracks are being formed for the movement of passenger and freight trains from Kuban to Crimea and in the opposite direction.
The upper structure of the path is formed from one bank to the other: from Taman to Kerch. If on a highway we could lay asphalt in several sections at once, then railway tracks are built linearly, sequentially.
- Deputy General Director for Infrastructure Projects at Stroygazmontazh Leonid Ryzhenkin
- Alexander Polegenko / RIA Novosti
We work with Russian-made rails, which are rolled at a Russian rail site. These are standard heat-strengthened rails of the P65 type, which have already proven themselves and are widely used in our country. They were chosen by the designers taking into account the operating mode of the bridge.
The road is designed for the movement of trains weighing up to 7,100 tons with a design speed of up to 120 km/h for passenger trains and up to 80 km/h for freight trains in the temperature range from -27 to +57 °C. Capacity is up to 47 pairs of trains per day.
— How are the rails delivered to the bridge?
— Rails are delivered from the manufacturing plant by rail to the link assembly base deployed on the Taman Peninsula. Here the so-called rail and sleeper gratings are formed. Service trains transport them to the bridge, to the laying site, along the finished section of the railway - the approach.
— It is known that Russian metallurgical companies are capable of producing rails tens and even hundreds of meters long. What will be the average length of the Crimean Bridge rails? And will the route through the Kerch Strait be continuous?
— A continuous, or, as the railway workers say, a “velvet track” is being built over the Kerch Strait. It consists of long rail strands. Each strand is a long rail welded from several standard rails. The longer the rails, the fewer joints, along which the wheels of the trains pass a characteristic knock.
The length of one rail line of the Crimean Bridge is 440 meters.
So-called equalizing joints will be formed between such strands, which compensate for the thermal expansion of the metal.
— Can we say that Russia is building the longest railway bridge in its history? How difficult is this task from an engineering point of view?
— The bridge across the Kerch Strait is the longest in Russia and Europe. Its length is 19 km. The natural conditions in the construction region are difficult and change along the long route from difficult to very difficult. Each site has its own conditions and requires certain design solutions.
For example, geology. In one area, strong layers of soil in which the pile feels confident are located closer to the surface. Here we used prismatic or bored piles with a driving depth of up to 45 meters. In another area, strong layers lie deep. Above them is a layer of muddy soil. And the pile must go through this thickness and go deeper into the hard rock.
Here, powerful tubular piles with a diameter of almost 1.5 meters and a wall thickness of up to 40 mm were needed. They dived to a record depth - up to 105 meters. Each such pile was gradually built up from sections by welding annular joints, set at the required degree and driven to the design mark. We have loaded several thousand of these piles.
The weather in the strait is not resort-like at all. We are building at the crossroads of two seas, where a prolonged storm and surge are the norm. Last winter, almost 800 storm hours were counted. Wind gusts reached 23 meters per second. In such conditions it was necessary to build pile foundations. We drove the first pile in 25 days instead of the three planned. Then we worked through this process and achieved the result of the pile in 24 hours, without sacrificing quality.
— What technological innovations are used in the construction of the railway across the Kerch Strait?
— The Crimean Bridge project, like any other extracurricular bridge project, was developed for certain natural conditions. The Kerch Strait has high seismicity, a difficult climate, and complex geology. Based on the characteristics of the region, engineers created the project. Both standard solutions tested at other construction sites and new working methods were selected.
The Crimean Bridge project is a combination of a variety of solutions; such a project can be called unique. They decided to expand the construction site along its entire length at once: the Crimean Bridge does not grow from shore to shore, but from the ground or water upward. To achieve this, dozens of technological processes had to be implemented in parallel.
- Laying the railway tracks of the Crimean Bridge
- most.life
If we talk specifically about the railway part of the bridge, then its most complex element - the navigation arch - was transported and installed on supports in a unique way. A most complex naval operation was carried out - the first of its kind in the history of domestic bridge construction. A floating system was developed and created specifically for this purpose, as well as a monitoring system with a combination of hundreds of sensors. This is new experience, new knowledge and skills that will allow us to develop bridge construction.
— How securely is the railway part of the bridge reinforced? What load is it designed for? It is known that a road crossing can withstand a magnitude nine earthquake.
— The Crimean Bridge is being built and operates taking into account the seismic characteristics of the region. According to scientists, once every five thousand years, earthquakes with a force of up to nine points can occur in the Kerch Strait. The likelihood of this happening is small, but the designers took this point into account.
Even before construction began, an analysis of all natural conditions in the strait was carried out. This involves months of research, laboratory research, and work with archives. All natural features of the region were taken into account when designing the facility. Taking these features into account, the design was developed and construction technologies were selected. Leading Russian organizations were involved in the work, including the Institute of Earth Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Comprehensive anti-seismic protection was developed for the road and railway parts of the bridge. To increase the seismic stability of the facility, the designers increased the number of supports - 288 for the road and 307 for the railway part. Accordingly, if the step between the supports is minimal, the spans are short. The length of the Crimean Bridge spans, excluding navigation ones, is up to 63 meters.
Another solution is inclined piles. The tubular piles of the bridge are immersed in the ground both vertically and at a certain degree. It turns out that a bunch or bush of piles is formed under each support. Support on such piles is more stable during seismic vibrations.
For reliable operation, the road part of the bridge was equipped with special hydraulic devices - shock transmitters. 760 such anti-seismic devices were installed between the supports and spans of the existing highway.
On the railway, anti-seismic securing of spans is different. Here, fixed and linearly movable supporting parts are used between spans and supports. On the one hand, the combination of these structures will allow the bridge to breathe in the event of thermal expansion of the metal, and on the other hand, in case of sudden and strong shocks in the event of an earthquake, on the contrary, they will reliably fix the main railway structures and ensure their integrity.
— Which enterprises are participating in the cooperation on the construction of the Crimean Bridge?
— The best bridge teams in the country — almost 30 organizations — were involved in the construction of the Crimean Bridge. Some of them, for example Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov and Cheboksary, were created on the basis of bridge military recovery trains during the Great Patriotic War.
- The railway part of the transport crossing across the Kerch Strait under construction
- most.life
Specialized domestic enterprises are responsible for the production and supply of building materials, including Voronezhstalmost and the Borisov Bridge Metal Structures Plant named after V.A. Sklyarenko. The main cooperation of the construction is 180 companies from all over Russia. Several thousand more small and medium-sized businesses, including Crimean and Kuban ones, are indirectly involved in providing construction.
One of the largest orders for bridge builders in Crimea was carried out by Sevmorzavod. The shipbuilders of the oldest city-forming enterprise in Sevastopol completed a floating system that delivered the arches of the Crimean Bridge from the Kerch technological site to the installation site - to the fairway supports in the Kerch Strait. Of course, the significance of the construction of the Crimean Bridge for the country is great: our enterprises received large orders, the project helped solve employment issues.
Kerch Bridge... The topic of a significant percentage of news, both from the Russian and Ukrainian sides, since the annexation of the peninsula to the first. The subject of hidden hopes and joyful anticipations of the Crimeans, who never tire of believing that this umbilical cord can connect them with mother Russia. And, of course, perhaps the most ambitious and expensive Russian project for the construction of large federal facilities.
How much budget money has already been spent on it, and how much more will have to be spent - the latter cannot be estimated. After all, it would seem that everything has taken up arms against Russian designers and builders: both nature and economic realities.
It didn’t work out to do everything quickly, in the best communist traditions - impudently. And now, it seems, despite the cheerful assurances of the authorities, and the issuance of reports from those responsible, the complete completion of the entire project threatens to become the most expensive long-term construction project in the history of Russia.
Well, let's try to understand why everything is not so simple with the Crimean Bridge, evaluate its real prospects and predict what awaits the residents of the peninsula and neighboring Russian federal districts in the future.
Historical reference
So, once upon a time, Crimea was quite sufficient to provide everything it needed, thanks to its connection with the world through the territory of Ukraine, of which, in fact, it was a part for very long decades, incl. good road and railway line.
But the eternal Crimean problem has always been that the peninsula was connected to the “mainland” only by a narrow isthmus - only 7 km at the narrowest point. Along which, by the way, since ancient times there was the Chumatsky Way - a trade route that connected the Crimean khanates with the lands of the free grassroots Cossacks.
Nestor Makhno was once able to appreciate all the fortification delights of Perekop; subsequently, bloody battles between the Soviet army and the Nazi invaders took place here twice. After the annexation, Crimea realized that it was separated from Mother Russia by the waters of the unkind Kerch Strait, while the Ukrainian side sent the peninsula into transport isolation for re-education and reflection on its behavior.
Therefore, in March 2014, the Russian authorities hastily decided to begin construction of a large bridge that would connect the Taman Peninsula of the Krasnodar Territory and the Kerch Peninsula (an agreement with Yanukovych back in 2013 on the hypothetical possibility of such construction, of course, no one at the time of their signing, nor after, did not seriously consider). Although the idea of building it in this place, as it turns out, is far from new, even if we do not recall theoretical thoughts on this matter even under tsarism, which Nicholas II then recognized as economically unjustified.
It turns out that even during the Second World War, the Nazis were going to build road communications here to ensure unhindered crossing to the similarly occupied Kuban. All materials for construction were prepared, but by that time the war had reached its turning point and the invaders were expelled from Crimea. The Union decided that the good was not worth wasting, and completed what the Germans had started - they built a bridge across the strait, but not a road one, but a railway one. Its length was only four kilometers, since construction was moved to the narrowest point of the strait. By the way, it was through this bridge that the Stalinist delegation got to the Yalta Conference.
Soon after this, a powerful meltdown of ice in the waters of the strait damaged the structure, since no one had thought of securing it with a sufficient number of ice cutters at that time. By that time, the bridge had lost its strategic importance, and the authorities did not want to repair it, being entirely occupied with the arrangement of routes through Ukraine, as a result of which it happily rotted and rested in the waters of the strait.
It is interesting that during the years of perestroika, when Soviet-Japanese friendship became extremely intensified, the USSR turned to specialists from the Land of the Rising Sun with a request to work together on reviving the project to build a connecting bridge.
The Japanese carried out all the geological surveys, made preliminary calculations and abandoned the project. Because even with all their technologies, which later allowed them to build extremely large-scale bridges for tens of kilometers in the open sea and even open an airport on an entirely artificial island, they did not see the opportunity to curb the mobility of the soil here, the extremely active storm climate and other problems.
The fact is that a large tectonic fault runs along the bottom of the Kerch Strait, and the thickness of silt deposits in this zone exceeds all permissible standards. The situation is also complicated by the fact that there are many bottom active mud volcanoes. Finally, in order to build a bridge along the most convenient route, it was necessary to demolish an ancient monument - the Kerch Fortress, protected by UNESCO, which, of course, no one would ever do.
As you know, several decades later, Russia finally took up the Crimean Bridge, and at the moment even managed to complete some work on it.
New bridge
According to the project, the average height of the Crimean Bridge should be about five tens of meters. Where shipping zones are planned, it will be about 35m. Instead of an economical 4 kilometers, they decided to build along the longest of all possible trajectories, thanks to which the length of the track reached 19 km.
The bridge should consist of two parts: a road (separate lanes for cars and trucks - one of each type in both directions) and a railway with two tracks. The Russian authorities decided to hurry up the start of work as quickly as possible - they started in March 2014, despite many obstacles, and at the beginning of 2016, despite the unkind winter, they loaded the first piles into the waters of the strait.
The situation was complicated by the fact that, in addition to the problems with the construction of the Kerch Bridge itself, it was necessary to work on bringing railway tracks and a highway to the area where it exits onto solid ground. Twice the competitions to select a contractor for the construction of the railway line were disrupted, since all those involved in the process were afraid of falling under the sanctions to which everyone associated with the Crimean history, including its aspects related to the bridge, were automatically subjected.
The choice of contractor was also complicated by its budget cost, which was too low for such a project - only 16.9 billion rubles. But, in the end, everything seemed to have been resolved successfully for the current fate of the bridge and the Rottenberg company entered into an agreement with Roszheldor.
In total, the entire construction budget was initially estimated at 150 billion rubles, of which 86 billion were to go directly to the structure itself, and about 51 billion to the construction of railway tracks and roads to it.
The business structure of one of the most privileged Russian oligarchs automatically became the general contractor for the project, after which its cost was revised upward to 212.5 billion. And although Rottenberg and all persons and companies involved in the project were subject to the norms of the sanctions packages, all their costs and financial problems, Russia, represented by President Putin, promised to compensate without problems.
In May 2018, the President of the Russian Federation himself solemnly opened the first stage of the new Kerch bridge, which has one lane in each direction and can withstand the passage of no more than 3.5 tons of light vehicles.
Those responsible for the construction hope that nothing will prevent them from opening the cargo part in the middle of this fall, and for some reasons the launch of the railway line was postponed until the end of 2019. True, there are some reasons to doubt the precise fulfillment of the deadlines, since Uprdor “Taman” (the state customer for the construction of highway connections to the bridge) requested compensation in the amount of 22.5 million rubles. from the Ministry of Transport for delaying the execution of a contract worth 4.5 billion rubles. And until this scandal receives at least some closure, construction will obviously not continue.
Features of the railway part of the Crimean Bridge
As for the railway segment of the structure, the first parts of the railway spans were laid in January-February 2018. To install each branch, heavy-duty jacks were used, resisting a weight of 500-1000 tons and pushing them towards the finished supports.
For construction, span parts are delivered to Tuzla Island by sea and assembled on site at a special stand. Work on their installation is currently progressing at 4.5 cm/min, according to contractors. In total, exactly thirty such spans will be installed on the water section.
The total weight of the bridge should be about 60 thousand tons, each span of which weighs about 580 tons. And in addition to these assembled structures, there will be about ten more key elements on a bolted and welded connection. The supports were driven into the bottom of the strait at a distance of no more than 65 m and a total of 64 of them were installed. The total length of the railway structures is 6 km. By the time of opening, the Crimean Bridge will be one of the longest in Russia.
Video
The article was written specifically for the website “2019 Year of the Pig”: https://site/
On this topic we finish with the road part of the Crimean Bridge. Let's start the operation.
As a kind of smooth transition to the upcoming most interesting part of the project, after the installation of the arched spans, I propose to enjoy a trip along the Crimean Bridge together with my Evpatoria comrade Captain Crimea. His celebratory video of today's historic passage across the bridge is posted at the end of the post.
Let's look frame by frame from one part of the bridge, the road, to the other - the railway -
The railway arch was the first to finally change the appearance of the Kerch Strait. She will take part in the final stage of installation of railway spans. It is towards it that the last spans will be moved, forming the completed silhouette of the great Russian bridge.
Let's spit three times on support No. 256Zh! So that later some non-British people won’t be bullied because of her.
"Go!" - twice (s).
Let's start the journey with the Captain from the future new park of the Kerch-Yuzhnaya station. On the right, they are now building an inspection complex for trucks and the initial elements of the future city interchange for the exit from the Crimean Bridge to the Hero City of Kerch -
It was precisely because this inspection complex was not built in time for the early opening of the road part of the Crimean Bridge that the movement of trucks could not begin ahead of schedule. This is a security problem. And not that some idiots are broadcasting about the imaginary unsafety of the bridge structures themselves.
On the right, under it, the railway tracks of the new electrified double-track highway "Krasnodar - Taman-Pasazhirskaya - Kerch-Yuzhnaya - Bagerovo" will also pass.
It seems to me possible that under the overpass it is quite possible to lay some local dead-end tracks from the Kerch-Yuzhnaya station, with its future development -
There is enough space under the overpass spans for a couple of these.
We are accompanied by guys with respected flags -
In the company of admirers of the USSR Navy, we approach the exit point to the Crimean Bridge. Please note: to the right of the highway you can already see the lower structure of the future railway track being constructed -
As time goes on, the picture will become more man-made: ballast, sleepers, rails, overhead contact line supports and traffic lights will appear. The view will be amazing.
The railway spans of the Crimean Bridge are visible from behind the noise barriers -
Now imagine electrification poles on them, tenderly blinking traffic lights and a train gliding along them. Flying into Crimea, a two-story train under EP20 is coming towards us!
You can finish! I guarantee those who have not seen anything like this in reality, if you see something like this on the Crimean Bridge, a level significantly higher than the highway, you will go nuts -
And if he also buzzes. You can splash boiling water into your underpants out of complete happiness.
Made in Russia!
The railway spans have already been assembled on a significant part of the Crimean Bridge. There are still small gaps. They won't last long -
Today, the road bridge is already open. And people work on the railway. In the video you can see how the workers wave warmly to passing motorists from above. The whole of Crimea is delighted. Not everyone was able to take part in the first drive, but the joy from it was no less.
In the video you can clearly see how the railway bridge gradually climbs uphill -
I have already explained why this is so. There are no fools among regular readers here. They have long understood everything about the slopes of the bridge, even without me. Just in case, I’ll repeat it for those who haven’t paid attention to this before.
The railway must have gentler slopes than the road. This is why the road bridge turned out to be more hunchbacked. Against its background, the smoothness of the railway is very well emphasized. The two silhouettes, although different, harmoniously complement each other.
We reached the first slipway for sliding spans on the Crimean side -
Not all spans are assembled on land and then lifted by cranes. Or they are assembled directly above the supports, lifting parts of the spans with cranes. The spans are moved over the sea, having previously been assembled on a special slipway. The technology is very simple: they assembled the span, moved it along the axis of the bridge, assembled a new one in the vacant space, moved it too, pushing the previous one with it. And so on, all the way to the desired point.
This particular one won’t hit the arch -
This one will rest against the same span, in the place of the next sliding slipway. It would be stupid to move large trains from spans. They are divided into sections. Pay attention to the foreback of the railway span. Just above him you can see the joyful workers. The heroes of the construction site are waving to us. It's their doing! This whole bridge. And this is not a figure of speech. It was their hands. Even with a high level of mechanization, manual labor still plays an important role. And the mechanisms aren’t controlled by assholes either.
So: the avant-back is much shorter than those used on the road bridge. This is because railway spans are more rigid in the longitudinal plane. Their cross sections are higher than those of road spans, and their width is narrower. Because of this, they do not bend so much under their own weight. Consequently, when sliding, being in the role of a console, they do not lower as much as road ones.
If anyone is interested in testing this in practice, take a simple ruler and try to bend it in different planes: flat and vertical. Be sure to write about the results in the comments, as is now fashionable in pursuit of ratings!)
The spans from it will already rest against the arch itself. That is why the outermost span differs from the rest in its shape on one side -
And the forward under him is a little different.
As we see further: there are only a few supports left to be added to the arched span. The piles have been driven there a long time ago, the grillages are ready. We can’t see this, because the highway has risen and we are moving away from the sea. Only the crane booms stick out. All that remains is to pour out the bodies, columns, and crossbars. We should be able to do it safely before the fall.
We pass the legendary stronghold - support No. 256A -
The pinnacle of pleasure -
On Tuzla we are greeted by a palisade of spatial reinforced frames of columns and the finished columns of railway supports themselves -
From the direction of Taman, an oncoming flying snake is confidently crawling towards them -
Fuck you, Russophobes!
Counter Tuzla slipway -
What's there? Leonid Kuchma is not visible with binoculars and a shovel? Isn’t this guardian of Tuzla digging up something there?
Bikers -
"Night Wolves" - they're great. You can treat them differently. There are no perfect people. But for the fact that, back in 2009, they gave hope to the Russians of Crimea, they helped them understand: Russia will not abandon them - honor and respect.
What were those years with Bandera’s pimply face Yuscha and the oppression of Sevastopol. With all sorts of signs on the Grafskaya pier in honor of some mythical 100th anniversary of the Ukrainian fleet, with the ugly Saiga Dachny, with their attempts to help the Georgian aggressors in 2008, banning the ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from entering their home - the bays of Sevastopol, and other nonsense.
But on the part of Sevastopol there was one thing - massive support of its residents for any actions of Russia. And contempt for any bander lies. "Night Wolves" did not come to a foreign city with something of their own. They came to their Russian city of Sevastopol, and to their Russian Crimea, to support their own.
Further in the video it is clearly visible: the railway bridge already has a significantly high percentage of readiness. It couldn't be any other way.
At the end of the video there is no fixation on the Taman railway approach. It's OK. There will be a surprise for the next reviews soon. The rails are already very close.
November 12, 2018 Bridge builders have completed work on the construction of supports for the railway part of the Crimean Bridge. 307 structures have been completed, which are now gradually taking over the spans.
The final one was railway support No. 254 in the Kerch Strait in the area between the fairway and the Crimean coast. It consists of a foundation on 16 tubular piles, immersed at different angles to a depth of up to 70 meters, and a body of steel reinforcement and hydraulic concrete.
The support is brought to the design level - 33 meters from the water level, almost the height of a 12-story building. The final stage was the concreting of its upper elements, on which special devices are subsequently installed - supporting parts (spans are placed on them), a kind of balancers, which will provide the necessary angular and linear movements of the spans, invisible to the naked eye, in the event of thermal expansion of the metal or possible seismic vibrations.
The main stage of construction of the railway part of the Crimean Bridge today is the installation of spans. This complex technological process takes place at all offshore and onshore construction sites. In total, at 8 construction sites, more than 15 kilometers of transport passage between Crimea and Taman have already been blocked by spans.
The spans assembled on stands are placed on land supports by cranes, and on sea supports they are moved along sliding devices over the water area onto ready-made supports using jacks at a speed of about 6 m/h.
On the finished spans, successively from the side of the Taman coast, the upper structure of the railway track is formed: at the moment, more than 9 out of 38 km of rail and sleeper grating have been laid.
Completion of the installation of spans on land and at sea is planned for the first quarter of 2019. In the fall of next year, the construction of the upper track structure on the bridge will be completed. Train traffic on the Crimean Bridge will begin in December 2019.
Let us remind you that a continuous, or, as the railway workers say, “velvet track” is being built over the Kerch Strait. It consists of long rail strands. Each strand is a long rail welded from several standard rails. The longer the rails, the fewer joints, along which the wheels of the trains pass a characteristic knock.
The length of one rail track of the Crimean Bridge is 440 meters.
So-called equalizing joints will be formed between such strands, which compensate for the thermal expansion of the metal.
The railway part of the Crimean Bridge meets the requirements of category II railway lines and includes two tracks. According to calculated data, the road is designed for the movement of trains weighing up to 7,100 tons with a design speed of up to 120 km/h for passenger trains and up to 80 km/h for freight trains in the temperature range from -27 to +57°C. Capacity - up to 47 pairs of trains per day.
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The construction project of the Crimean Bridge provides that its automobile component will go into operation in December 2018. The launch of traffic on the railway part of the bridge is scheduled for December 2019.
The start of the bridge's operation should open a new page in the life of the Crimean Railway, which is currently undergoing a period of large-scale modernization.
Kyiv left Crimea, taking wagons and locomotives
The railway came to Crimea in 1874, when train traffic from Melitopol to Simferopol was opened.
All the main branches connecting the peninsula with other regions of the country went through Ukraine. This most logical option turned into a problem after the Crimean spring and the return of the peninsula to Russia, when official Kyiv headed for a transport blockade of Crimea.
To begin with, the Ukrainian authorities tried to remove all movable property. Analysts at the Kyiv Center for Transport Strategies reported in March 2014 that the new Ukrainian authorities tried to remove everything newer, including ChS7 passenger locomotives, track machines and new series of cars.
The Gudok newspaper, citing its sources, reported that former head of the Simferopol locomotive depot Viktor Mandyk Even on the eve of the referendum, he drove the newest locomotives 2TE116 and ChS7 to Melitopol, quit his job and left for Dnepropetrovsk. As a result, in the spring of 2014, Crimean railway workers had to use ChS2 locomotives produced in the early 1960s to provide passenger traffic.
The difficult legacy of the Ukrainian period
In Ukraine, for more than three years they have been fond of talking about “colossal losses incurred as a result of the annexation of Crimea.” In fact, the situation is the opposite - throughout the entire period of independent Ukraine, the infrastructure of the peninsula, created during the Soviet period, was destroyed with the complete indifference of the Kyiv authorities.
The Crimean Railway is no exception. Russian specialists received the farm in a terrible state.
In October 2014, specialists from Russian Railways and Goszheldornadzor, who assessed the Crimean railway, concluded that the KZD infrastructure, namely the superstructure of the tracks and turnouts, was in an unsuitable condition. On many sections of the railway, experts from the supervisory agency recommended reducing the speed of trains to 40, 25 and even 10 kilometers per hour. Only at this speed limit was it possible to ensure safe movement.
It was necessary to almost completely change the rolling stock, modernize existing lines and build new ones.
Transport blockade
From that moment on, messages “There is no more railway in Crimea!” began to appear regularly in the Ukrainian media. or “The transport blockade made the Crimean train stations empty.”
The cessation of the movement of passenger and freight trains through Ukraine, of course, had a negative impact on the life of the Crimean railways.
But, on the other hand, every cloud has a silver lining. The reduction in traffic made it possible to prepare in freer conditions for a new stage in the life of the Crimean Railway. A stage that will begin in December 2019.
Back in 2014, the Moscow-Simferopol passenger train was launched, which went to the peninsula via a ferry crossing. This practice is not new - some trains from the eastern regions of the RSFSR in the Soviet years moved to Crimea through the ferry crossing. However, now, after several months of working according to this scheme, it was decided to abandon this practice. Transporting tourists with a single ticket on buses from the railway stations of Anapa and Krasnodar turned out to be faster and easier than using a ferry to transport passenger trains.
Large construction site
Therefore, the restoration of the movement of freight and passenger trains to Crimea will occur after the launch of the Crimean railway bridge.
In addition to the work being carried out in Crimea, as well as the construction of the bridge itself, no less significant tasks are being solved by railway builders in Taman.
From Vyshesteblievskaya station, construction is underway on a 42-kilometer section that will lead directly to the bridge. The Kerch section from Bagerovo station to the bridge will be 17.8 km.
The construction of the section on the Taman Peninsula was envisaged during the construction of the Taman port and included the construction of a new Portovaya station 8 km from the transport crossing. A Taman-passenger station is planned near the village of Taman. On the Kerch section, passing through Cementnaya Slobodka, a branch to the Kerch-Yuzhnaya station and the creation of a new park are provided. Also on this site it is planned to build four overpasses, two bridges and a tunnel.
24 hours from Moscow to Simferopol
Until recently, skeptics expressed doubts about whether the intentions of the Russian authorities are realistic? But the pace of construction of the Crimean Bridge, the successful implementation of the most complex operation of transportation and installation of railway and automobile arches, indicate: when people work and do not reason, almost everything is doable.
Summer 2017 General Director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Crimean Railway" Alexey Gladilin stated that for the trains that will go to Crimea after the opening of the bridge, it is planned to purchase 800 cars, most of them are double-decker sleeping cars in a compartment design.
Speaking in Alushta at the IV Crimean Transport Forum, Gladilin said: “It is planned to purchase 15 pairs of passenger trains. Moreover, they will be distributed as follows: two trains each to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Feodosia, the rest to Simferopol.” The approximate train travel time between Simferopol and Moscow will be from 24 to 28 hours.
In the future, it is planned to make the railway route to Crimea a high-speed one, reducing travel time from the capital to Simferopol to 18 hours.
The launch of passenger trains to Crimea is only the first stage of the new life of the peninsula’s railways. But, probably, it will make sense to talk about the future later, as plans turn into real actions.
