Kaliningradskaya zheleznaya doroga

Kaliningrad Oblast railway route map

The Kaliningradskaja schelesnaja doroga ( Russian Калининградская железная дорога , in German "Kaliningrad Railway") is an independent branch of the Russian State Railways (RŽD). It operates the rail network in to Russia belonging to the Kaliningrad Oblast .

history

Before the Second World War , the territory of today's Kaliningrad Oblast , which was then part of the German Empire as northern East Prussia, had a railroad network of just over 1,820 km in length. After Königsberg was transferred to the Soviet Union in 1945 and the Kaliningrad Oblast was formed, the area's railway infrastructure was placed under the administration of the Soviet Railways . After a restructuring of the latter in 1953, the branch called Baltic Railways was formed, which from then on operated the entire rail network of the Kaliningrad Oblast as well as the Soviet republics of Lithuania , Latvia and Estonia .

The south or passenger station of Kaliningrad , formerly Königsberg Hbf., Belongs to the network of the Kaliningrad Railway

Since a considerable part of the East Prussian rail infrastructure was badly damaged or destroyed as a result of the war, the Soviet railways shut down around half of the Kaliningrad Oblast and immediately dismantled a large number of smaller narrow-gauge railways that were only of local importance. In addition, material was needed to rebuild the railway infrastructure in the Soviet Union that had been destroyed by the war. From the preserved standard gauge -Strecken, in contrast to the Soviet and Russian Standard, a gauge of 1435 mm were held in 1524, most were rebuilt mm in the postwar period to the 1524th The only exception were some of the former East Prussian (main) routes in the direction of Poland that were not dismantled ; on their (usually) second tracks, the standard gauge used in Europe was retained, so that no gauging had to be carried out on cross-border train journeys . In return, in the case of Poland, the Russian broad-gauge tracks led to the next larger train station. B. on the former Prussian Eastern Railway from Mamonovo / Heiligenbeil across the border to Braniewo / Braunsberg or on the former Eastern Prussian Southern Railway across the border at Bagrationowsk / Preußisch Eylau to Bartoszyce / Bartenstein.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the division of the Soviet railways among the railway companies of the former Soviet republics, the Kaliningrad Railway was spun off from the former Baltic Railways in 1992. Since then it has exclusively operated the rail network in the Kaliningrad Oblast.

business

Since the Kaliningrad Oblast has been a Russian exclave outside of the mother country since the end of the Soviet Union , the route network of the Kaliningrad branch of the Russian Railway has no limits to the networks of other RŽD branches. The neighboring railway companies are the Polish Polskie Koleje Państwowe and the Lithuanian Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai . A special feature of the Kaliningrad Railway is the relatively small route network with a total length of 963 km compared to other branches. In 2008, the Kaliningradskaya zhelesnaja doroga carried 637,000 long-distance passengers and 5.578 million local traffic. In addition, 18.542 million tons of cargo were transported in the same year.

Web links

• Official website of the Kaliningrad Railway (Russian)
• Route diagram with stations (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Statistics on the Kaliningrad Railway on RZD.ru  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.