4rail.net - Russia Main

Train Recognition Guide Super High Speed Main European Countries Austria Belgium Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Russia	General information on Railways in Russia Welcome to the Russia Main Page on 4rail.net! Russia is definitely one of the worlds greatest railroading nations with its wast size of country and its past with railroading transporting huge amounts of resources and half finished goods. Lets see some figures: The rail network is one of the largest in the world, almost 90'000 km of tracks is covering the area! About 45'000 km of this is electricified, mostly with the old 3000V DC system. However this will give way to the modern European 25kV 50Hz systems, giving chance to utillize power more effectively from the overhead wire. An incredible number of 1,3 million people work for the Russian railways RZD! Russia is building high speed networks in a number of locations sometimes as a shared track for passenger and freight traffic, sometimes as a passenger only high speed track. Russian originating rolling stock is still used widely in a couple dozen countries. While not state of the art, numerous operators find the locomotives like 2TE116, ER3, TEM2, TEM3 or TEP70 good enough for their purposes. And on the other hand Russians themselves are using and have used numerous types built outside the current Russia.	Created for 4rail.net by Stanislav Voronin and John McKey. Pictures by Stanislav Voronin, Ilkka Siissalo, Hannu Peltola and John McKey.
	Russian High Speed Efforts Russia is also building an determinately high speed rail on the western half of the vast country. Very interesting new trains like the Sapsan / Velaro-Rus and Allegro Pendolino traffic those lines. Sapsan is designed to withstand the extreme cold of harsh winters with temperatures down to minus 50 centigrade in the real life everyday use! Read more on the Russian High Speed Page...
	Russian Rolling Stock Types Russian Rolling Stock Page... Russian 2Te116 Locomotives Page... Russian Tep70 Locomotives Page... Russian Picture Gallery...
	Modernizing the Railroads Since Russia's economy has gained momentum, the modernization of the RZD (generally known as "the Russian Railways") has finally started, first slowly, but we expect it to gain more speed given a few years. To modernize the rolling stock the RZD has created cooperation in various forms with major western builders like Bombardier, Siemens and Alstom. The mighty RZD alone invested in 2009 for about 1000 new locomotives out of shops. The production keeps ramping up with more production lines being built and more experience on building high tech rolling stock in volumes achieved. The investments of the numerous private operators on the RZD networks still add to the number of the new locomotives. Siemens apperars to be the strong number one partner for the Russian manufacturers in all railroad rolling stock segments. More...






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Modernizing Russian Railways

Er2 number 1291 witha Russain skyline of new housing

Since Russia's economy has gained momentum, the modernization of the RZD (generally known as "the Russian Railways") has finally started, first slowly, but we expect it to gain more speed given a few years.

To modernize the rolling stock the RZD has created cooperation in various forms with major western builders like Bombardier, Siemens and Alstom. The mighty RZD alone invested in 2007 for 760 new locomotives! For the year 2008 the target was to have a respectable 940 new locomotives out of shops. Although this was not achieved, the numbers being the same as years before, the production is ramping up with more production lines being built. The investments of the numerous private operators on the RZD networks still add to the number of new locomotives. Siemens seems to be the number one partner also for the Russian manufacturers in all railroad rolling stock segments.

An important segment on modernizing is the high speed EMUs where Russian is moving forward with determination, starting with 7 units of Velaro-RUS built by Siemens and maintained by the RzD and lately 4 Pendolino units of Karelian Trains (owned by RzD and Finnish VR-Yhtyma) maintained by VR-Yhtyma. In addition to these one older rebuilt ER200 unit adds to capacity.

Since Russia is a wast country rich with natural resources, we have now just seen the beginning of the railroad expansion. In the coming years there will be numerous ugrades for the system, including high speed lines, new lines added and we will see more and better connections to the neigboring countries railnetworks. There will also be additions to the Transsiberian raillinks and even the constant topic that has been discussed for over a century, the Bering strait tunnel, might pop up again to the discussions, if Americans see they might have use for the Siberian resources. The tunnel has been planned ever since the 19th century. For now the rail link is being built fro Vladivostok towards Bering strait area.

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Miscellaneuous
	One of the train terminals in St Petersburg, the "Baltian Voksal" is a busy transfer point between different modes of people transportaton. Picture by Hannu Peltola.

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