There is a remarkable inactive railway on the outskirts of the Moscow region. Why remarkable? Even after the main purpose of the road - transportation of peat - is a thing of the past, a passenger train continues to run daily on a single-track non-electrified line, consisting of a CHMEZ shunting diesel locomotive and one reserved seat car.
The length of the railway line Krivandino - Ryazanovka is 53 kilometers. The railway line runs through the territory of the Shatursky and Yegoryevsky districts of the Moscow region.
The line Krivandino - Ryazanovka was put into permanent operation in 1944. The railway was built in the shortest possible time - in a few months. During the construction, the labor of prisoners of war was used, their cemeteries are located near the railway line.
In the first few years of operation of the railway line Krivandino - Ryazanovka, its length was about 5 km longer - the section from the current Ryazanovka station to the village of Radovitsy operated. On the southern outskirts of Radowitz, according to the original project, it was planned to build a central settlement of a large peat enterprise. The construction of the village began, but then it was decided to move it 5 kilometers to the north. A central settlement was built on this site, now known as Ryazanovka (the official name is Ryazanovskiy).
The main cargo on the railway line Krivandino - Ryazanovka from the moment of its opening and until 2009 was peat. In the 1990s, the Krivandino - Ryazanovka line was named among the few inactive sections of the Moscow Railway that worked profitably. The volume of peat transportation has always been large. Every day the line passed several freight trains with peat. Freight trains (as well as passenger trains) were driven exclusively by ChME3 diesel locomotives.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, passenger traffic on the Krivandino - Ryazanovka line has increased dramatically due to the fact that a giant array of garden plots appeared in the vicinity of the Ryazanovka station. The territory of the peat mass between the villages of Radovitsy and Alferovo was allocated for the placement of garden plots (peat extraction on it ceased in the 1980s). The number of garden plots soon reached several thousand. The train Krivandino - Ryazanovka, which at that time consisted of three cars, was often overcrowded during the summer season.
In 2008, due to the refusal of Shaturskaya GRES (the main consumer of peat) to use peat fuel, transportation of peat was stopped. The volume of "country" passenger traffic also decreased, due to the fact that many summer residents switched to cars. The existing minimum volume of freight traffic is not sufficient to cover a significant part of the cost of maintaining the 53 km line. Passenger traffic is a likely candidate for cancellation. Now the "miracle train" consists of one car, the number of passengers is minimal - on the Sazonovo - Ryazanovka section, the car is often empty. Seeing this "miracle train", walking through the picturesque places of the Meshcherskaya lowland, where the railway runs - this was our goal this past weekend. Our path lay from the Sazonovo station to the square 47 km.
We got to the Sazonovo station by car. In the village of Serednikovo, near the Church of St. Nicholas, we turn off the paved road to the right (if you are coming from Moscow). Further, we have an unpaved road in front of us, but it is quite passable even for a city car, but keep in mind: if the clearance of your car is not more than 15 cm, then you will inevitably cling to the bottom of the grass. We go to the railway tracks, but do not turn to the crossing, but take it to the left, at the next fork we turn right (despite the fact that the road will seem more well-groomed straight ahead - this is a dead end that will lead you to the sawmill barrier).
When we reached the station, we saw two parked cars with license plates near Moscow: whether they were geocachers or hunters (there are a lot of hunting grounds in the Shatursky and Egoryevsky districts) - it is not known, but rather new cars did not fit into the color of the half-abandoned village, so they were unlikely to be local residents. We left our car nearby and went to the railroad tracks.
On the tracks of the Sazonovo station there are quite a lot of old, rotten cars and platforms. Everything valuable has already been removed from them, some platforms are still linked by "brake sleeves", and some are already standing "by themselves" on rusty rails overgrown with grass.
The traffic lights no longer have a signal value, the arrow to the branch to Pilevo has been dismantled. The Sazonovo-Pilevo line, 33 km long, has been operating since 1976. This railway line was built mainly for the export of peat mined by the Meshchersky peat enterprise (located in the village of Bolon, near the Pilevo station), as well as to service a woodworking plant and other enterprises in the village of Radovitsky Mokh.
During the construction of the Sazonovo - Pilevo line, it was assumed that there would be passenger traffic on it. However, the plans did not materialize, and there was never any regular passenger traffic on the line. The railway line Sazonovo - Pilevo worked until the fall of 2008.
Now the railway line Sazonovo - Pilevo is mothballed. The rails still lie along the entire length, but the turnouts at the Sazonovo station have been dismantled, the path is overgrown with grass.
Our way along a more "live line" - in the direction of the Ryazanovka station. The railroad runs along an embankment among swampy areas of the forest, so at first we were simply "swarmed" by mosquitoes and gadflies, and then ... Then we got used to not paying attention to them and moving on.
Despite the fact that the movement of trains continues on this railway line, the track is in a deplorable state. The concrete sleepers are broken in places, and the wooden ones are rotten. Apparently, there were no track workers on this branch for a long time: the bolts connecting the sleepers and the rails have not been tightened for a long time, the rails vibrate quite strongly when the train moves.
After a couple of kilometers, the road goes uphill, changes surrounding nature: instead of swamps, we see already a "dry" forest with a predominance of birches.
We walked about 5 km from the Sazonovo station and saw the next platform on the way to Ryazanovka - 47 km. The fact that there is a platform here is only indicated by a rather fresh sign "Stop of the first carriage", this place is no different from the rest of the way. However, the "miracle train" makes a stop here.
Why stop in the deep forest? Probably, there was once a settlement here: this is also evidenced by the old lamppost, "hidden" in the branches of an oak tree. Seeing a barely noticeable path, we moved along it, and soon stumbled upon the remains of a fence with a gate! On the gate in large letters is written: "Caution, angry dog." And then we saw an abandoned village house. Some utensils remained in the house in one of the rooms, in the second - the ceiling fell through. Nearby we found several more similar houses - an abandoned settlement, in view of its remoteness from settlements, preserved in the form in which it was thrown. Furniture, clothes remained in the houses, even a TV was found in one of the houses! But even if the object is hidden from marauders, then time takes its toll: roofs break through in houses and wooden floors fail.
On the outskirts of the "settlement" we found cellars for potatoes, made in the "classical Soviet style".
The buildings are surrounded by nettles "to the waist", but you should not be afraid of nettles: you should be afraid of the snakes that live here.
This settlement is not marked on the maps, only on some maps a road is drawn that crosses this railway line twice. The first one is a little higher (to the north) of the village of the Sazonovo station, the second one is just in the area of the 47 km platform and the abandoned village. This road is on some maps, but in reality, near the 47 km platform, instead of the road, you will see only a narrow, barely noticeable path, so you should not try to drive along it even in an SUV!
Do not try to get to this place without a bicycle: riding a bicycle along the sleepers will hardly seem pleasant to you, there are no paths near the railway line.
Having examined the settlement, we moved back. We had only slightly moved away from the platform 47 km, as a locomotive was noticed in the distance, heading to Ryazanovka! Here it is - the "miracle train"! One wagon was attached to the diesel locomotive; passengers were not seen in it.
When we approached the Sazonovo station, we again saw the "miracle train": now it was traveling from Ryazanovka in the direction of Krivandino, made a stop in Sazonovo, stood there for about a minute and moved on.
After watching the train, we moved to our car: then we had to go home ...
The following materials were used as historical reference:
The current schedule of electric trains Krivandino - Ryazanovka includes 3 electric trains (suburban trains, diesel engines) that connect these stations, among which there are morning, afternoon, evening. The fastest electric train (suburban train) is recommended, which leaves at 21:05 from Krivandino station and arrives at Ryazanovka station at 22:53. Ryazanovka, in this case the trip will take 1 hour 48 m. Between the stations of Krivandino and Ryazanovka, this electric train passes 7 stops. Among them are Osanovo (21.25), Pozhoga (21.41), Barmino (22.15), 47 Km Stop Point (22.38), where it is possible to transfer to electric trains of other directions. On this page you can always find the timetable for the Krivandino - Ryazanovka trains, including the seasonal one, which is valid in summer and winter. Before planning a trip on the Krivandino Ryazanovka route, first check the timetable on our website, and also check this timetable at the nearest station, as some operational changes are possible.
Tickets for the Krivandino - Ryazanovka train can be purchased at the ticket office of the nearest station.
About the train on the Zemtsy - Zharkovsky line, which is commonly called the slowest train in Russia. But in the Moscow region there is its analogue. Only he walks more often: not twice a week, but three times a day. But also very slow.
So, we arrive in Krivandino. The train goes further, to Cherusti:
Old station building built in 1912:
And next to the house on duty at the station of the late 30s. The same, for example, is on the BMO in Nerskaya:
On the adjacent track there is a shunting train with the composition:
And behind it hid the second, low platform of the station, where almost everyone who got off the train to Krivandino turned off. "All" is five people. And I am one of them. At the platform, a rail bus RA1-0019 was waiting for us:
Don't ask me what the person on the right side of the frame is doing :) By the way, I've never driven a RA1 before. The salon is the same as that of friends RA2:
The seats are wider apart than in the train, and the windows are wider. On the other hand, you won’t fall asleep on them very much, like in the reserved seat car that ran here fifteen years ago. Yes, and the sensations are completely different: the diesel engine rattled under the floor, the luggage racks rattled, the beep - and we drove off:
At first, the suburbs of Krivandino, warehouses and suburban areas stretched outside the windows. And then a dense pine forest began:
Occasionally cut by streams:
The speed of the train is not more than thirty kilometers per hour. Sometimes it drops even lower. Of course, you have to shoot through the glass - but the windows are quite clean. There are six or seven passengers in the car, no more. Cottages run out of the forest:
Although behind the trees and two-story buildings you can see:
This is the first stop - Osanovo. Here, not only half of the passengers get off, but two sit down. It seems that all the passengers of this train are familiar with each other - they say hello, ask how you are:
Previously, the forest approached directly to the tracks, but then, according to the notorious order of the Russian Railways, it was cut down along the line about fifteen meters. Therefore, from the car it became possible to see the curves into which our caravan is slowly screwed:
Next stop - Pozhoga. The station village is small:
But here the station building has been preserved, possibly from the time of the construction of this line - 1944:
Below I will add another photo of him. And on the outskirts of the village - a snow-covered football and volleyball field, in the middle of which there is God knows, like a Volga that drove into these snowdrifts:
But it's beautiful:
Likes places like this ed4mk_0024 ;)
We brake near the platform 29 km. A man gets out of the car:
And he leaves along a barely noticeable path right into the dense forest:
Well, here's the truth! Right into the woods! Where did he go?
Then I looked at the map - there, half a kilometer away, is the village of Maleikha. As in the taiga ... But this is the Moscow region. It would seem that less than one hundred and fifty kilometers from Moscow - but Megafon does not catch at all, and MTS shows only two "sticks".
There was only one passenger in the car besides me. Initially, I did not plan to go to the final one - there is a parking lot for only ten minutes, what will you have time for this time? Take a couple of shots, yes, sorry, recover :) Therefore, I planned to get to Sazonovo - the former junction station, from where the line to Radovitsky - Pilevo departed. But, then, I decided that you still wouldn’t see much under the snow, and decided to get off, like fifteen years ago, at the Barmino station. There is at least some kind of civilization nearby. And so, I got down on a narrow platform, and PA1 rolled further:
Very slowly:
To quote myself ten years ago: Barmino station is something fantastic. Rails covered with snow, a platform made of a pair of reinforced concrete slabs laid on an embankment, a small dispatcher's panel house with a subdued light streaming from one of the windows through thick curtains - and an endless snow-covered field around ... A few hundred meters from the station - destroyed and abandoned a brick factory, behind it begins a dense, almost black forest in the advancing twilight ... Nothing changed:
Only, perhaps, the duty officers who were sitting there fifteen years ago disappeared from the chipboard house:
View towards Krivandino:
I had a little more than an hour to walk to the village of Serednikovo located near the station. I took a walk, but I was almost late back to the train. But still, he made it. There was only one passenger in the cabin from Ryazanovka, no one got on with me either:
Again, the unhurried movement of the car, the measured rumbling of a diesel engine, occasionally gaining momentum, a loud clatter of wheels at the joints, and the rattle of luggage racks. And - the dense forest of the Meshchersky region outside the windows:
Personally, I strongly associate this line with another railway that also passed through the forests of Meshchera - the narrow-gauge line Tumskaya - Ryazan. The very one that Paustovsky and Yesenin once wrote about. But that line was not far from the line to Ryazanovka - only some thirty kilometers, and they even had a connection through the Sazonovo - Pilevo branch. But alas, it's all in the distant past. At stops, passengers sat in the car one at a time, two at a time. Here we go again former station Burn.
Original taken from kirillfedorov4 to Railway line Krivandino - Ryazanovka
East of the Moscow region - Meshchera - the land of forests and swamps rich in peat. Not so long ago, peat extraction was carried out here, an extensive network of railways operated. To date, only one inactive line has survived. Passenger trains run along it, but if it were not for the location in the prosperous Moscow region, the Krivandino-Ryazanovka line would probably also be closed. 
The decision to build a line between the Krivandino station on the Moscow-Kazan highway and the Radovitsky Mokh peat massif was made in the midst of the Great Patriotic War- in 1943. Construction was unplanned and carried out in an emergency manner. The importance and urgency is indicated by the fact that rails from another railway (Verbilki - Dubna), which was restored after the war, were used for the construction of this line. The construction of the line to the Sazonovo station was completed in an incredible time - less than a year. The Sazonovo - Ryazanovka section was put into operation after the war (but it is possible that the construction was completed simultaneously with the Krivandino - Sazonovo section). In the village of Ryazanovka (on the maps - Ryazanovsky), after the war, a large peat enterprise and the main station of a large narrow-gauge railway arose, an overload was operated from a narrow gauge to a wide one.
In the 1960s, the line "acquired" a side branch to the village of Radovitsky Mokh, which was subsequently extended to the village of Pilevo. A peat-carrying narrow-gauge railway, part of the famous Meshcherskaya highway, also operated in Pilev.
Until 2008, the main and practically the only cargo was peat supplied to Shaturskaya GRES. Traffic volumes were colossal and the line was profitable even into the 1990s (although from 1995 intermediate stations gradually closed). But in 2008, the power plant abandoned the "local" fuel and switched to using gas. Perhaps this step was economically justified, but the fact is that residents of many villages in the Shatursky and Yegoryevsky districts found themselves without work. Two large networks of narrow-gauge peat-carrying railways were destroyed. The Krivandino-Ryazanovka line exists only because the Moscow Region has decided not to abandon passenger traffic and is compensating for huge losses. The cancellation of the train will mean the conservation and subsequent destruction of the line. There is not a single intermediate station left on it (all are closed), the line is a continuous 53-kilometer stretch, on which it is impossible to pass oncoming trains.
We made a trip along the line Krivandino - Ryazanovka on August 24, 2014. We get to Krivandino by train from the Lyubertsy-1 station.
After Shatura, a third, abandoned, appears along two main routes. When many trains with peat arrived at Shaturskaya GRES every day, a special track was built between the Krivandino station and the power plant so as not to load a short section of overloaded main lines. It's amazing that he's still intact. In the photo - the Botino platform. 
At first, the path stretches to the left, then crosses the main passage along the overpass, after which it turns to the right. 
There is no station at Krivandino station, tickets are purchased at the box office on the platform. 
Not everyone knows that the former Krivandino railway station has been preserved nearby, moreover, it was built before the revolution, however, now it is used as a residential building. (Photo taken in March 2013).
Here's what it looked like 100 years ago:
At a low platform, away from the main tracks, a "rail bus" was already waiting for us - a lone car RA1. Until May 2012, there were trains consisting of a diesel locomotive ChME3 and one reserved seat car, which gave this road a unique flavor. In the people such trains are called "cuckoo" and "foundling". However, RA1 has already managed to become the same attribute of deaf, inactive railway lines. 
There were very few passengers in the car, six people, despite the summer season and Sunday. I was very surprised by the absence in the car ... of the cashier! We bought a ticket to Ryazanovka at the ticket office on the platform, but there are no ticket offices at the stops along the line, that is, the train is actually free. It is possible that on that day we were the only ones who "sponsored" the Ryazanov branch.
Departure at 14:40. The main roads remain on the left. 
And warehouses. 
"Civilized area" is gradually ending. 
And the delightful Meshchera landscapes begin. 
At the end of the summer of 2014, the track was being repaired on the Krivandino - Ryazanovka line. The fresh rails had not yet been rolled up, so in places you could hear an unusual sound called "rail singing". It is typical for lightly loaded branches and only in the first months after repair, that is, the phenomenon is quite rare. Some, hearing this "singing" for the first time, perceived as broadcasting Wagner music :-)
Particularly beautiful views open on the curves, which are very numerous here due to the hilly terrain. 
The village of Osanovo near the station of the same name, closed in 2004. 
The station building, alas, has not been preserved, but concrete sleepers can be found in the grass. 
Meshchera is one of those lands where you want to return again and again... 
notch: 
Soon the village of Pozhoga is shown. 
The wooden house of the station duty officer has been preserved here, although the station was the first to be closed on the line, in 1995. Before closing, there was a terminus for one of the passenger routes. The sleepers of the second track are also noticeable. 
After Pozhoga, swamps begin. As you can see in the photo, the forests along the road were badly damaged during the 2010 fires. 
Sanitary deforestation along the road is underway. 
Forest stopping point 29 km. 
At the Barmino station, the second track is still preserved (although it is cut off from the main one, there are no arrows). Year of closure - 2009. In the vicinity, in addition to the station settlement of Barmino, there are large villages of Terekhovo, Serednikovo and Samoilikh. 
The boarded-up station building with the door ajar looks very ominous. 
Traces of past improvement: 
One can imagine what the drivers think about a wagon carrying less than a dozen people. 
Periodically, rowan bushes come across along the line. 
Equipment left for the weekend in the forest, apparently clearing space along the tracks. 
Picturesque crossing near the village of Sazonovo. 
By the standards of the Moscow region, this place is a rare wilderness. The permanent population is less than 10 people. Here is the last and at the same time, oddly enough, the largest intermediate station on our way, which operated the longest. Also rusty rails, cut off from the main track. 
Water tower. It probably has nothing to do with the railroad. 
And the boarded up station building is exactly the same as we have already seen at Barmino station. 
Passenger platform for half a car. 
Once there was a busy cargo work. 
To the left are traces of a dismantled side branch - the Sazonovo - Pilevo railway line. The line has not been operating since 2009, and gradually the rails were stolen by local residents, as is now happening with the Valdai-Krestsy line in the Novgorod region. In 2012, the rails still remained in the area of the village of Prudy and between the stations of Sorokova Bor and Pilevo. In August 2014, they were no longer anywhere. I plan to write a separate photo report about this line. 
Only half an hour left to go to Ryazanovka. The last section looks the most deaf. 
This is how the stop point 47 km, located at a distance from settlements, looks like. Not even a platform. The location is determined by the sign with the schedule. Actually, passengers here are a very rare occurrence, the train does not always stop. 
It is difficult to see a small abandoned hut. 
And finally, after almost two hours of travel, the train arrives at Ryazanovka, which we already know. Station tracks: 
The station looks very well maintained. 
A rare phenomenon now - the tracks are occupied by trains. True, not wagons with peat, but repair equipment. 
The driver of the diesel locomotive once again reminded me that "it is forbidden to remove the railway", although, of course, I did not violate any laws.
We have already been to Ryazanovka in 2013, although the goal then was to visit the Nikolo-Radovitsky Monastery. We were able to take photos of the move. Right before, the path went to peat reloading, now - only to the boiler house and the local cold storage facility. Movement is very rare. 
And here's what's left of the huge network of narrow-gauge railways. Rails at the crossing south of Ryazanovka. By the way, double-track sections are a very rare occurrence for narrow-gauge railways. 
Thank you for your attention. I would like to hope that the Krivandino - Ryazanovka line will work and attract travelers with its wonderful landscapes, and will not repeat the fate of the Sazonovo - Pilevo line.