About the difficult and dangerous work of a locomotive driver. Forgotten professions Mikhail Petrovich Shorokhov, steam locomotive driver
I have long wanted to clearly show how difficult it is to control a steam locomotive.
And there is a suitable book - and a superbly illustrated one, from the spring of 1953. And since today is exactly the 136th anniversary of the birth of I.V. Stalin, this is a very appropriate coincidence - after all, we are talking about railway workers of the Stalin era. The beginning of the 1950s was the peak of development of steam locomotive engineering and the highest point of dominance of steam locomotives on Soviet railways.
It must be said that the profession of a mainline locomotive driver in those years was considered elite. Very high responsibility, military discipline, strict requirements - but also security, priority allocation of housing, departmental medicine, and a high salary combined with a large number of benefits. In fact, at the end of the 1940s, an experienced 1st class driver of a mainline locomotive in terms of living standards and support was approximately at the level of an army lieutenant colonel and could easily support a family with 4-5 children and parents. It often happened that leading drivers with good experience earned more than the head of the depot and at the level of a ministry official. And the strict demand from such a specialist was balanced by the fact that he had considerable rights and authority, which he could exercise through official (formal execution of instructions), party and trade union lines.
Of course, then the profession underwent changes and was greatly leveled off - not only as a result of the massive introduction of new technology, but also as a result of the negative equalization of wages under Khrushchev, which greatly reduced the motivation of young people and the desire for high qualifications. And an electric locomotive driver under Brezhnev was not at all the same as a steam locomotive driver under Stalin.
In addition, it was objectively much simpler and easier to control an electric and diesel locomotive - there was no need to keep in mind so many interconnected and opposing factors, like a pilot in civil aviation; and unique skills were no longer in such demand. The role of the human factor as the locomotive era passed into history noticeably decreased, and selection into the profession became much less stringent. Accordingly, the requirements for the quality of specialists have also decreased.
In general, let's understand the complexity of the profession and the versatility of the requirements when driving steam locomotives.
The following will be selected illustrated excerpts from the 1953 book with my comments. The book is made in the form of an illustrated catechism with clear, visual, moderately detailed diagrams and posters that do not allow for double interpretation.
2. Let's start by preparing the locomotive for the voyage.
3. The driver arrives at the depot before the start of the route.
4. Team - three people: a driver, an assistant driver and a fireman (if there is no coal feeder).
5. Initial inspection of the locomotive before the voyage. Quite a complicated process. There are many inspection points, outside and inside; and besides this, the driver was required to receive an analysis of the boiler water.
6. Checking the instruments in the booth, controls and their serviceability.
7. For example, here is one of the check points (sandbox), and there are many of them in the book. A faulty sandbox or lack of sand means there is a risk of slipping when starting from a standstill, on a difficult route profile or with a sudden change in speed, and without adding sand you can get stuck on the climb and even start to slide down with the whole train. And with all the consequences.
8. Now prepare for departure.
9. Checking the correct coupling. By the indicated time (early 50s), the automatic coupler already occupied an overwhelming place.
10. Charging the brake line and testing the brakes. A critical part of driving a train.
11. Checking the light signals of the locomotive.
12. Non-standard options for locomotive movement (wrong path on a double-track, or following the train). The second option, which is on the right, is a military traffic schedule on front-line highways: train-by-train along the route, without the possibility of overtaking and changing traffic priority.
13. Now read 6 points on what the driver must do to get the train moving. Do you see how difficult everything is regarding the electric locomotive with its positions? So driving a steam locomotive with a heavy train behind is a kind of high art.
14. The case of double traction or following with a pusher on steep climbs like Baikal is even more difficult. The most experienced drivers, 1st and 2nd classes, were placed on the leading locomotives.
15. Signals prohibiting and permitting departure. The post-war period was marked by the massive introduction of electric traffic lights and, accordingly, the elimination of more archaic semaphores.
16. More unusual cases.
17. Please note that the forms for telephone messages, warnings and permits had different colors to clearly identify the rights to occupy the stage. There is also semaphore signaling, which was still widespread, but was quickly disappearing on the main highways.
18. Semaphore closed position.
19. Closed position of the traffic light.
20. Rod system for monitoring the passage occupation and communication nuances.
21. A red form is issued if there is a break in all types of communications on a stretch (section). Please also note how clearly the issuance of warnings is regulated in order to minimize the impact of errors and human factors.
22. Cases of emergency stops. The wording is extremely clear - “all unclear signals are an order to immediately stop the train.”
23. Driving under a prohibiting signal in Stalin's time was a criminal offense subject to the transport tribunal.
24. Various road signs - including those that are now funny to read.
25. More signs.
26. In 1942-44. steam locomotives, starting with the front-line ORKP locomotives, began to be massively equipped with personal radio communications. Lend-Lease supplies from the USA helped quite a lot with this: the most successful and compact communication devices were copied, modernized to suit local conditions and went to work on the railways.
Advertisement Look how many different things a driver must keep in mind in order to drive a train along a heavy section. Monitor the cutoff, pressure in the boiler, presence and temperature of water, make adjustments if there is scale, and so on. Moreover, driving techniques varied depending on the type of profile.
28. A simpler case: a pass with a short platform (relief).
29. But there were serious, complex cases. Here the composition must be carried out extremely carefully.
36. As you can see, driving a train, especially a heavy one, along a complex route profile is a real art. That is why the driver was required to have non-trivial experience and an extremely fast reaction to various external stimuli according to instrument readings.
37. It’s difficult for a novice driver to even move his car on a hill, but imagine what a steam locomotive with a train of 35-40 cars does this?
38. Okay, maybe that’s enough of the difficulties of driving trains. Let's go back to base :)
39. It’s already calmer, but you still can’t relax here.
40. Now you can exhale and go to the depot canteen for lunch! :)
Now do you understand what a difficult and complex profession it was, requiring unique skills?
That is why machinists were considered at one time the elite of the railways.
* * *
The entire book for those interested
Not so long ago, on the forum of falerists, I saw this album of graduates of the Kharkov Institute of Railway Engineers in 1950.
Such albums were a good tradition and a memory of the years of study at the institute. On the cover the owner's surname and initials are engineer B.V. Kovanev. Post-war graduation, all graduates in the uniform of the Ministry of Railways, teachers too. Many with military awards. This album interested me very much, and I bought it for my collection. I picked it up at the post office on Friday and started studying it yesterday.
And suddenly, something elusively familiar. Among the photographs of teachers and students
Hero of Socialist Labor N.A. Lunin is a legendary pre-war machinist and drummer in the rear of the Great Patriotic War. Wow, I’ve never heard of him working or teaching at S.M. KhIIZhT. Kirov. But everything turned out to be much more interesting... But everything is in order. An excellent opportunity to talk about a legendary person.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Lunin was born in 1915 in the city of Ryazhsk, Ryazan province. He moved with his parents to Novosibirsk. In 1932 he graduated from the FZU school. S.A. Schwartz (on the basis of the locomotive and carriage depot of the Novosibirsk station of the Tomsk Railway) for the training of qualified railway workers. After which he worked as a mechanic, then as an assistant driver. In 1935, after attending a driver course (Taiga station), he became the head of a youth locomotive brigade. The brigade was in good standing with the road management; in 1936 it received a new steam locomotive of the FD series "Felix Dzerzhinsky" No. 20-1242, working on which they improved their skills.
In January 1940 N.A. Lunin and his team proposed to their colleagues a new method of operating steam locomotives - carrying out routine repairs by the steam locomotive crew itself. This made it possible to sharply increase the time between repairs and significantly reduce downtime. On May 20, they raised the question of transferring the locomotive to self-financing before the management of the depot, refused the help of mechanics of the integrated team, and began to carry out all the repairs themselves. By November 1940, the Lunino steam locomotive was put into repair for the first time, having completed more than 62,000 km during its operation - twice as much as planned. The regional party leadership approved the new method of work; to disseminate it, the bureau of the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted on December 26, 1940 a resolution “On the method of work of the driver of the Novosibirsk locomotive depot of the Tomsk Railway, Comrade. Lunina N.A.”
According to some sources, the first Lunino steam locomotive was later, with the beginning of the war, adapted to serve as an armored train and showed itself heroically. With one of the railway military units, he arrived in Ukraine, at the Pyatikhatki station. Just at that time, an enemy armored train began to fire at the station. The Ukrainian driver on the Lunino steam locomotive rode out to meet the Nazis. Not far from the station, he, who remained unknown, repeated the feat of the pilot Gastello: he launched a steam locomotive towards an armored car, with a ramming blow he threw the enemy train down a slope and died himself.
The effective method of operating steam locomotives was named “Luninsky” and began to be actively used on the railways of the Soviet Union. Drivers from different places began to come to Novosibirsk for advanced experience: from Moscow, Transcaucasia, the Volga region, and the Urals. To better study and apply the innovations of the Siberians, special schools were created.
In 1941, by order of the People's Commissar of Railways dated January 28, No. 40, for a valuable initiative - increasing the mileage of a steam locomotive between turnings and washings and bringing the average daily mileage of a steam locomotive to 520 kilometers - N.A. Lunin was awarded the “Honorary Railway Worker” badge and a personalized silver watch. He was awarded the rank of 1st class driver and given the 3000th anniversary steam locomotive “Felix Dzerzhinsky” for operation.
The blue-blue beauty was handed over to the Novosibirsk brigade of railway workers at the Voroshilovgrad Locomotive Plant (now the Lugansk Plant). On the Internet you can find an old black and white recording in which Nikolai Lunin thanks the plant workers for their trust. “We promise to the workers of the Voroshilovgrad plant the 3,000th anniversary steam locomotive that we received from them will be kept in the same cultural condition in which we received it, and we will repair it on our own!” - said Nikolai Alexandrovich. On March 13, 1941, the blue three-thousander set off on its first, still peaceful voyage.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the requirements for the operation of enterprises, including railway transport, increased significantly. In December 1941, fulfilling the tasks of the NKPS, Lunin delivered 5,000 tons of coal (100 cars!) with two locomotives to Moscow, where there was an acute fuel crisis, with the standard for one car being 1,250 tons. He delivered such trains to the Urals, and later to Leningrad. This marked the beginning of a new movement - super-heavy trains. On January 7, 1942, an order was issued by the People's Commissariat of Railways “On the development of the Lunino movement in railway transport during the war years.” Soon, super-heavy trains traveled along all the roads of the USSR, where the track facilities allowed.
In April 1942 N.A. Lunin became a laureate of the Stalin Prize and donated it in parts to various funds: the construction of the Novosibirsk Komsomolets submarine, the orphanage fund and others. On February 12, 1943, he sent a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars, informing him that he was buying 1000 tons of Kuzbass coal with his personal savings and was ready to deliver a train with it to the residents of heroic Stalingrad. People's Commissar of Railways L. Kaganovich allowed Lunin and his brigade to lead this train to the Hero City themselves.
November 5, 1943 By decree of the PVS of the USSR N.A. Lunin, “For special services in providing transportation for the front and the national economy and outstanding achievements in restoring the railway economy in difficult wartime conditions,” was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
N. Lunin wrote, recalling this time: “It was difficult, very difficult with personnel. There were not enough drivers, and the situation with assistant drivers and stokers was very bad. And then an idea arose that could not help but be supported: each brigade (built) must serve one more locomotive. Of course, the workload on each person has increased. There was almost no time left for rest. But what could we do - war! “We’ll have a rest after the war,” driver Chirkov said for everyone. Previously, two locomotives served six crews, but now - five. The number of mechanics has also decreased. Previously, Tsarenko’s integrated brigade had 20 mechanics, but at the end of the first year of the war there were only eight left. New methods of caring for locomotives and the participation of locomotive crews in repairs made it possible to reduce them.”
And on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the armored train "Luninets" No. 704 of the OB-3 type, built by Tomsk railway workers and which went through a glorious battle path from Moscow to Silesia, fought.
After the war, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Lunin was the head of the Smorodino locomotive department of the Southern Railway, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
In 1946, a book about the legendary machinist was published.
And already in March 1947, the famous machinist, as part of a delegation of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, visited Great Britain.
In Wales, after a friendly visit to the miners, someone turned to him with the words: “Siberia is far away, and we don’t know what kind of heavy trains you drive there. Now, if only I could see it with my own eyes...” To which Lunin replied: “Well, you can see it. Let me stand on your locomotive by the right wing, and attach another train to the hook. Let the train be twice as heavy as usual.” The next day, English newspapers reported: “Soviet parliamentarian, Siberian driver Nikolai Lunin drove the heaviest train in England. The machinist is a phenomenon! And, in addition, they added that the name N. Lunin is the name of the century.
And then immediately began studying in Kharkov. In 1950, Lunin was already a graduate of the Kharkov Institute of Railway Transport Engineers. So that’s where the photo in my album comes from - he was a student! And then the Hero of Labor was sent to leadership work. He worked as the head of the Pomoshnya, Tambov, Moscow-Kyiv, Moscow-Riga railway departments, and deputy head of the Moscow-Ryazan railway.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Lunin died on October 3, 1968. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.
Among his numerous awards are two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and the Red Star, two badges of the NKPS “Honorary Railway Worker”.
There are three memorial plaques installed in Novosibirsk: on the house where the outstanding innovator lived (Saltykov-Shchedrina St., I3), on the buildings of the locomotive depot operation workshop and the N.A. College of Transport Technologies. Lunina. One of the city squares (at the intersection of Narymskaya and Chelyuskintsev streets) is called “Lunintsev Square”.
In the spring of 1985, the FD-3000 was installed on a pedestal in front of the overpass across Dimitrov Avenue on the street. Ivacheva. The car became a historical monument of regional significance “The steam locomotive, which was driven by the innovative driver N.A. Lunin", on the basis of which in 2005 the Memorial of Glory to Home Front Workers of 1941-1945 was opened.
It is inscribed on the side of the locomotive tender. “Steam locomotive of senior driver Lunin N.A. - Hero of Socialist Labor. Team composition: drivers: Lastochkin I.D.; Chirkov G.V., Pom. driver: Sheptalin V.I.; Tsibizov N.F., Galagush D.A. Stokers: Slivakov V.I., Gaivoronsky A.S. Alekseenko I.D.”
The electric train ER2-1255 was named in honor of the legendary driver
Branded electric train ER2-1255 "Nikolai Lunin" in the reversible dead ends of the Lobnya station. Early 80s. Photo by Valery Shitov from the blog of my good friend Vitaly Semiletov.
- Your documents?
“Santeri Shotman, a Finnish citizen, has the right to cross the Finnish border there and back,” the border guard read from the cardboard pass handed to him. Seal of the General Staff. Everything is as it should be.
He looked closely at the face. Long mustache. Pince-nez. I checked it with the photo attached to the pass. Exactly. He turned the cardboard over in his hands, touched it, almost smelled it. There are no things with me. Everything seems to be fine.
And in fact, the document was genuine, not fake, obtained with the help of acquaintances at the General Staff on Palace Square.
“You can go,” muttered the border guard.
- What about your papers? - he turned to Shortman’s companion.
- Surname?
- Year of birth... Passport?
Finnish citizen. The same cardboard pass. There doesn't seem to be anything suspicious.
- Come on in.
After wandering around Finnish soil for half an hour, the friends crossed back to Russia along another path, along a bridge across the border’s winding, steep-bank Sestra. The sand crumbled underfoot. But as soon as they crossed the edge of the shore, they were stopped. They interrogated them even more thoroughly: why? On what occasion? They looked around from all sides, forced one to take off his cap, another his hat, and compared the photographs on the passes with the photograph that the border guard pulled out of his pocket. They just tried it out and reluctantly, as if they didn’t believe it, returned the documents.
Having passed the skinny pine forest, the friends descended into the ravine and walked further along its sandy bottom. The evening was cool, but there was a smell of peat smoke coming from somewhere. Having walked about a kilometer and a half, we climbed the slope to cross the border again, in a new place.
And again the border guards stopped them and just as meticulously checked passes, photographs, passports, peered into their eyes, and put them in profile.
Again they wandered around the land of Finland for half an hour and, tired - no wonder, after all, they stomped all the way to the border from Sestroretsk itself! — sat down on the stumps to rest.
Santeri Shotman, a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party, a longtime acquaintance of Vladimir Ilyich, was instructed by the Central Committee to hide Lenin from Kerensky’s bloodhounds in Finland. As an assistant in this matter, Shotman took his friend, the daredevil Eino Rahja, who later became Lenin’s liaison in his last underground.
- Unreliable! They might grab you... Just like yesterday. We’ll have to try again tomorrow,” Santeri said.
“I’m an employee, I won’t ask for time off every day if you don’t explain, after all, who are we trying for?” Who needs to be transported? - Eino grumbled.
- I’ll tell you - Vladimir Ilyich. Just silence.
- Well, that's another matter. “Rakhya was immediately imbued with the seriousness of the assignment. “I promise, we’ll transport it so that not a single damn thing will be found out!”
They paused in thought.
“You know,” said Rakhya, “in the twelfth year we transported one across the border on a steam locomotive... A regular train.” Why not repeat it now? Only the driver is now in Finland.
- We need to figure out what and how. Don't worry about the driver. I have a childhood friend. A faithful man. Together we went to a Finnish school for adults on Bolshaya Konyushennaya. Hugo Yalava. You know?
- I know. Silent man! - Eino agreed.
The next day, in the morning, Santeri Shotman came to the Vyborg side, in Lomansky Lane. Lidia Germanovna, the wife of Hugo Yalava, poured fragrant coffee into cups, which was becoming an increasingly rare drink (war!). Shortman didn’t give up coffee. They chattered about this and that, and when Lydia Germanovna came out, he asked Hugo:
— Will you undertake to “float” one person across the river?
- Not for the first time!
- Just keep in mind, this time the work is the most important in our lives! And very dangerous...
- Not for the first time!
Shortman knew who he was talking to.
It was Yalawa, during the strike of students at the Technological Institute, who disguised himself as a baker and, in front of the police officers cordoning off the building, carried baskets there, where he hid weapons and proclamations under bread and rolls... It was he who, on his steam locomotive, took away the money obtained during the expropriation of the Treasury in Lantern Lane. And then, in the same manner, the money seized during the expropriation of the cash register of the New Lessner plant. After the dispersal of the State Duma of the first convocation, he transported Trudovik deputies to Vyborg, and later the Bolshevik Skvortsov-Stepanov.
Three pounds of Russian type for the publication of an underground Bolshevik newspaper intended for Russian troops in Finland was transported by Yalava from St. Petersburg abroad, also on steam locomotive No. 293. More than once he delivered weapons and literature from Suomi, dumped everything at an appointed place, near the Shuvalovo station, where the lineman was waiting for them...
“Your locomotive, of course, has great services to the revolution, but keep in mind that now the riskiest and most responsible of all your affairs lies ahead,” Shotman repeated.
- Nothing! Everything will go well! — the taciturn Finn smiled.
“Shoulder” of three thousand kilometers
In 1932 in Petrozavodsk, entering the Council of People's Commissars of Karelia, an ancient, Derzhavin-era building with a colonnade, I more than once met in the reception area an already middle-aged, fit man sitting at a desk. One day we were introduced. Stretching out his hand, the short gray-haired man said his last name:
- Yalawa? Are you a relative of that same Hugo Yalava? - I was happy.
“Yes, he is “the one,” laughed the comrade who introduced us.
It was he, the driver of the Finnish Railway, who, on steam locomotive No. 293, on the night of August 9-10, 1917, transported Lenin across the border to Finland. Lenin returned back to revolutionary St. Petersburg, also on the Yalava steam locomotive.
- Yes, it was Vladimir Ilyich who was the “stoker” for me. Although my locomotive did not have this position, there was only an assistant. - Yalava hid his smile in his mustache. - Well, I had to disrupt the staffing schedule...
While Vladimir Ilyich and I were talking, sitting on the trestles in the locomotive hut,” Yalava said, “I quietly looked at him. Medium height. Looks strong. Long, healthy-looking face. Big bald spot. Smiling. Lively eyes... It would seem nothing special. And the impression is unforgettable...
Hugo Erikovich was a modest and secretive person: only in January 1924, the day after Lenin’s death, did the depot learn that it was he, Yalava, who transported Lenin across the border twice in the seventeenth.
Yalava later said that in his apartment twenty-nine, in house No. 4-b on Lomansky Lane, on October 14, 1917, Vladimir Ilyich and his associates discussed practical issues of the uprising.
“Actually,” Hugo Jalava told me in one of the following meetings, “we, the railway workers of the Finnish Railway, were lucky.” We were closely connected with Vladimir Ilyich. Eino Rahja himself worked as an assistant on my locomotive in his youth. We have known each other since the fifth year - we were elected to the strike committee together. Because of this strike he was fired from the depot. Do you know about the railway mailman - the poet Kessi Akhmal?.. And about the driver Blomkvist?..
At that time, I still knew nothing about Kessie Akhmal or Blomkvist.
“Akhmala gave my wife mail from Lenin in Petrograd, and on holidays I myself went to the station to pick it up,” Yalava continued. — Nadezhda Konstantinovna most often came for Lenin’s letters, and sometimes Maria Ilyinichna.
From Yalava, Krupskaya received a “chemical” letter brought by Kessie, in which Lenin invited her to visit him in Helsinki and even drew up a plan on how to get to him without asking anyone. This was the path from the station to the railway workers' house No. 17 on Teelyonkatu to the apartment of the locomotive driver Blomkvist. For a long time, until 1945, few people knew that in Helsinki, Vladimir Ilyich had to move from Gustav Rovno’s apartment to Arthur Blomkvist. They were silent about this for obvious reasons: after all, for participation in the civil war in Finland, Arthur Blomkvist was sentenced to death after the victory of the Finnish counter-revolution, and then this sentence was replaced by a long-term imprisonment.
During hours of leisurely conversations in Petrozavodsk, Yalava also mentioned four trains that, during the days of the Finnish revolution, were sent to Soviet Russia to buy bread for the starving workers of Suomi. He gave me the addresses of several participants on these flights...
But, perhaps, one address was enough for me to then, as if in a chain from one to another, get acquainted with a dozen comrades who had a direct connection with the trains that were sent to Soviet Russia for bread.
Their stories filled several of my notebooks.
From them I learned that the locomotives for these trains were the newest, produced in Tammerfors in 1917, and were already running on “superheated steam”, and that the black color with which Finnish freight cars were painted attracted everyone’s attention in Russia.
Only the first train managed to return to Helsinki. The second one, it seems, only reached Vyborg; the third remained in Petrograd: the revolution in Finland was suppressed. The fourth train did not even reach Petrograd. He came to Siberia at the height of the counter-revolutionary uprising and fell into the hands of the Kolchakites.
The White Guards tried to force Finnish railway workers to serve them, but they never succeeded. And, having detained the train, Kolchak was forced to release the railway workers as foreign citizens. They made their way to their homeland along difficult paths...
When one day in Eino Rahja’s apartment in Leningrad, in a house on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, the topic of these trains came up, he said:
— My brother Yakov was the commissar of the first train. On this trip he kept a diary. He read something to me later. He could tell you a lot if he were alive... However, one document... - going up to the desk, Eino began rummaging through the drawers. Then he took one out of the pile of papers and put it on the table.
- Here! “He covered the bottom of the paper with his hand.
I read:
Certificate.
This was issued to the Chief Commissioner of the Railways of the Republic of Finland for the Traction Department, Comrade. J. Rahja is that he is entrusted by the Finnish revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Power with the acquisition of food within the Russian republics for the needs of the starving workers and peasants of Finland, and therefore is offered to all main, district and local committees, railway organizations and individuals to whom it is will concern and provide full and real assistance to comrade. Rakhya to the possible successful implementation of the task entrusted to him.
People's Commissar of Railways (signature).
Secretary of the People's Commissar of Railways (signature).
When I read the ID, Eino said:
- The most important thing is this. “He took his hand off the paper and read the note with that familiar sweeping signature:
For my part, I ask you to provide every possible assistance to Comrade Yakov Rakhya and his squad.
V. Ulyanov (Lenin).
The certificate was typed, but the postscript was made in the hand of Vladimir Ilyich...
“Jakov told me what a national holiday there was when the first train returned to Finland,” continued Eino Rahja.
Members of the revolutionary government went to meet him at the Rahimäki station.
The “grain trains” were regarded by working-class Finland as a historical event.
“Firstly,” wrote the Tuomies newspaper, an organ of the revolutionary government, “this proves that seemingly impossible measures can be realized if there is a real desire and determination. Secondly, the great importance of international workers’ solidarity has been demonstrated... what would have been beyond the capabilities of the bourgeois government turned out to be feasible for the proletariat and its government.”
The meaning of the first phrase about “that seemingly impossible events can be realized if...” was as follows: when in Helsinki, the Railway Administration learned about the proposal to send bread trains to Siberia, so that each train would be driven by one permanent brigade - with the same permanent locomotive - many considered this idea impracticable. After all, until now the locomotive had driven the train only seventy - at most one hundred kilometers. This kind of mileage is called a shoulder by railway workers.
And here they offered a shoulder of three thousand kilometers!
And the path lay in the unknown Siberia, about which they only knew that there was impassable taiga, unbearable cold, permafrost - hard labor, exile places. People's representatives Adolf Taimi, Konstantin Lundkvist, drivers Arthur Blomkvist and Yakov Rakhya especially advocated for the fastest dispatch of trains.
I met Adolf Taimi in the summer of 1940 in Petrozavodsk. And only then did I learn from him that the very idea of organizing block trains was presented to the Finnish railway workers by Vladimir Ilyich...
Taimi and his comrades came to Lenin in Smolny to ask for weapons for the Finnish Red Guard, and they talked about how the working people of Finland were starving.
“I know,” Lenin answered briefly.
This was in those days when the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, despite the fact that in Petrograd only half a pound of bread was given out per person, decided to immediately release ten wagons of grain from its reserves for the Finnish workers! In his “Radiogram to everyone, everyone,” Lenin reported: “...today, January 22, 1918, old style, Petrograd workers are giving 10 wagons of food to help the Finns.”
The fact that this gift was a generous act of selflessness and revolutionary solidarity is evidenced by another telegram from Lenin, sent on the same days to Ordzhonikidze and Antonov-Ovseenko in Kharkov: “For God’s sake, accept the most energetic and revolutionary arrangements for the parcel bread, bread and bread!!! Otherwise, Peter might die.”
“Thinking about something, Vladimir Ilyich walked around the office,” Taimi told me, “then turned to us and said:
- You see, there is bread in the depths of Russia!.. There is a lot of it in Siberia! But there is nothing to carry. Our transport system, as you know, is in chaos. Yes, we must tell the truth - devastation! There's trouble with steam locomotives! With discipline too! You Finns have your own locomotives and your own carriages. Why would you send trains to Siberia yourself? You have paper, cigarettes, it seems, are good, textiles, agricultural machines - send them in exchange to the Siberian peasants, and bring bread from there!..”
Excited by the stories of the railway workers, I then wrote the story “The Third Train”.
Hugo Yalava also told me some details of the “biography” of his famous steam locomotive No. 293... It was built in 1900 in the United States of America by order of the Finnish Railway. Painted dark green. And its pipe is not like that of other locomotives, but looks like a funnel stuck into a bottle with the bell facing up.
“In the spring of 1920,” Yalava continued, “this locomotive was found at the locomotive cemetery by a young assistant driver, Voldemar Virolainen.
Poring over the broken locomotive during free hours, he and three of his friends successfully repaired the “old man.” This was their gift to the country for the First of May! Virolainen was no longer an assistant at the lever of this locomotive, but a driver. The boy was not even nineteen. The youngest driver in the country! He worked for a whole year on the locomotive he repaired...
— Meet Virolainen. Just be careful of his handshake. Strong as a bear. For several years, Voldemar was the chief driver of one of the seven famous food trains. It was dangerous work, like on the front line...
In the autumn of 1918, Petrograd residents received eighteen pound per capita per day by ration cards—fifty grams! They brought bread to St. Petersburg with great difficulty.
And it was then that in the Finnish locomotive depot of Petrograd, keeping Lenin’s advice in mind, Finnish railway workers decided to organize the first block trains in the country to transport grain to Petrograd - first from the Volga region, and then from Siberia and Ukraine.
Seven route trains were created, and in the third of them Voldemar Matveevich Virolainen stood behind the reverse of the locomotive.
The chief commissioner of all these seven trains was Adolf Taimi.
“For a year and a half I transported wheat to Petrograd, and then, by order of the People’s Commissariat of Food, to Moscow,” Voldemar Matveevich told me. “Since I had already been expelled from the depot, and the People’s Commissariat for Food did not have such a staffing position as a locomotive driver or fireman, we, the entire locomotive crew, did not receive a penny of salary all this time. But in those years we thought little about wages, received Red Army rations and worked not out of fear, but out of conscience.
This wonderful profession is a machinist,” he continued. “I remember one summer in 1920 I was driving a train along a long climb in the Ural mountains. The pressure gauge needle is on the red line, the regulator is fully open, the reverse is on the limit tooth so that the locomotive does not slip. To the right are high mountains. Pines are on the left, a calm river flows deep below. Morning. The Sun is rising. The sky is pink. With your whole being you feel how the locomotive, straining its strength, drives the train so that the pipe, as the locomotives say, “talks to the sky.” Her sonorous voice echoes far in the mountains. And for me, a young driver, my soul sings: behind me there are thousands of pounds of bread that Muscovites and Petrograders are waiting for. And the consciousness that it depends on you so that the locomotive does not slip, so that there is no delay on the way. And a sense of responsibility... And pride... And then the mountains ring and the sun rises... Isn’t this poetry!
Through the fire - to Leningrad
Two decades have passed since then.
December forty-one, the first year of the Patriotic War. Twilight of a short winter day near the Arctic Circle at Kem station. Unusual passengers reluctantly, looking around in fear, entered the wide open door of the vehicle along the wide flooring. There were twenty-six of them, short, brown, and white-spotted reindeer. From the depths of the Karelian forests, from the legendary Kalevala region, from an enemy-occupied village, reindeer herders brought them across the front line as a gift to the children of besieged Leningrad.
The train, to which two trains with reindeer were attached, was seen off by a crowd of Kem schoolchildren. For several days in the forests and swamps approaching the city, shoveling snow, the guys collected dry grayish-green reindeer moss - food for the deer on their long journey to Leningrad.
Everything here was amazing: these deer, and this road that had just been born in an unprecedentedly short time, along which the train with deer should travel.
“The Kirov railway is out of action, the Karelian front is cut off from Russia. A few days before the fall of Murmansk,” reported reports from Hitler’s command.
Indeed, the Kirov railway was cut. The last train passed through the Murmansk Gate station on August 28, 1941. But the enemy did not know then that already on September 1, the first train arrived in Belomorsk from the east - the new Obozerskaya-Soroka railway line came into operation, firmly connecting the Karelian Front and the ice-free port of Murmansk with the entire country.
In the summer of forty-one, the deputy head of the Kirov Railway, deputy of the Supreme Council of the Union Voldemar Matveevich Virolainen received an urgent task - to put into operation the unfinished Obozerskaya - Soroka line within the tightest possible time frame. What did this new branch mean for the country then, to anyone, but to Virolainen there was no need to explain.
There weren't enough rails, and time is running out! And as the soldiers who emerged from the encirclement rushed into battle again, the rails of the Kirov Road, removed by the brave men under fire from those sections that remained with the enemy, lay down in an even formation on the new, freshly poured canvas.
How many little things, each of which could have negated the enormous work of thousands of people, had to be foreseen! How many important, urgent decisions to make at your own peril and risk. But the most important thing is that the road was put into operation, was working and was being completed at the same time. Two train cars with reindeer joined the flow of cargo pouring from Murmansk - five hundred wagons per day...
In December of the forty-first year, Voldemar Matveevich reached Leningrad, where he had a daughter and son. The suffering of his hometown shocked him. How to help?! And he began to persistently strive and achieved an appointment to Volkhovstroy - this “window” into besieged Leningrad.
From here, from the Volkhovstroy station, in those days, as if through thin capillaries with cut arteries, along the ice “Road of Life,” life-giving loads seeped into the besieged city in droplets, those same “one hundred and twenty-five blockade grams, with fire and blood in half.”
Nazi aircraft dropped 19,800 high-explosive bombs on the Volkhovstroy station. One hundred and twenty-seven kilometers of railway tracks were destroyed. Services were driven underground. And yet, for more than two hours, the operation of the hub did not stop - the movement of trains!
January forty-three. The news that Shlisselburg had been liberated swept across the country. In the continuous ring of the blockade, a “window” to the mainland opened slightly... It was necessary to open it wide!
The Volkhovstroy station more and more resembled a dam during the flood days, near which an endless stream of trains stopped and accumulated, like water in a reservoir. Many wagons with food, ammunition, fuel for the besieged city, for the troops of the Leningrad Front, for the Baltic Fleet. And this pressure of the growing flow of cars, all its weight, was felt every day by the head of the Volkhov junction, Voldemar Virolainen.
But, flowing only in a thin stream over the crest of the dam, the precious cargo continued on its way: convoys walked across Lake Ladoga to the city of Lenin.
Immediately build a railway from Volkhovstroy to Shlisselburg, connect exhausted Leningrad with at least one line to the entire railway network of the Union. To transfer the bridge from the left bank of the Neva to the right, so that in a month or two the Ladoga ice drift will not plunge the city into blockade again.
What to do if the road under construction is under fire from enemy artillery along almost its entire length?! What to do if the new Lipki crossing is only five kilometers from the enemy trenches?! We must build! And as soon as the construction of the connecting line began, the locomotive crews of the Volkhovstroy depot competed for the right to lead the first train to besieged Leningrad. Virolainen firmly decided: no matter which brigade wins, he too will work on this locomotive.
Around the clock, under fire, the left bank competed with the right - they were building a bridge across the Neva near the destroyed Shlisselburg.
On a frosty morning, immediately after the rally, the first train with food left the Volkhovstroy station on its historic journey to Leningrad, which was still surrounded on other sides. The young driver, winner of the competition, Ivan Pirozhenko, braked locomotive No. ZU708-64 at the Mezhdurechye crossing, seeing Virolainen waiting for the train. Before climbing onto the locomotive, Voldemar Matveevich made sure that a water tank was attached to the tender. Not expecting that the station water pumps would be able to uninterruptedly supply the locomotive with water, he ordered to attach a spare tank.
And then the “music” began. The top of a pine tree, cut off by a shell, fell almost onto the roadbed.
On both sides of the path stood a twisted, thinned, transparent pine forest, with its tops blown off, its branches chopped off. Like a forest of exclamation marks...
A shell exploded with a crash near the train, and they went to click through the fragments, tearing the bark off the trunks. The third shell whistled, the fourth made a loud cracking sound.
The train burst out of the pine forest. The bare, hilly snowflake looked like cheeks pitted with black crater pox. Almost all the way to Lipki, enemy artillery did not let go of the train running towards the Neva...
But not a single shell hit either the train or the rails.
A few days later the Nazis took aim. The thirty-kilometer stretch was called the “corridor of death.” But the first train, without any special incidents, reached Lipki, to the Levoberezhny crossing... However, we had to stop here. Some unexpected train was loading on the stretch. An hour has passed. Another. And as calm as the locomotive crew was under fire, people were so nervous now. They were waiting for the shelling. The mercury approached twenty-five.
Finally Virolainen stood behind the regulator. Here is the new, newly built bridge across the Neva. A bridge over which, opening the way for others, this train must pass first.
The flooring shook under the weight of the train. Large drops of resin, frozen in the frost, glittered on the fresh boards. Behind them, the carriages creaked protractedly, as if they were aware of the full responsibility of their today's flight. The first train should deliver seven hundred thousand kilograms of butter to the hero city.
From the height of the locomotive hut, Virolainen could see the endless hummocky ice of the Neva and the ice expanses of Lake Ladoga. Ahead, on the island, getting closer with each revolution of the wheel, the ruins of an ancient fortress built by the Swedes, destroyed by artillery fire, were outlined against the white sky.
A ten-minute stop - and the train, without taking on water, because you have your own behind - at least fill it up! - full tank, moved on...
Virolainen greeted Melnichny Ruchey station with intermittent beeps. Another hour or two - and the train will slow down at the platform of the Finlyandsky Station. But...
About two kilometers in front of the Rzhevka station, both injectors failed. There is no water in the tender. Where did she go?
Stop the train midway? No, Virolainen’s professional pride as an old driver does not allow this.
The water meter glass shows that the water in the boiler is less than the permitted minimum.
The brigade is in alarm.
“Ivan Pavlovich, stop the steam-air pump, turn off the heating, we must stop all flow of steam from the boiler,” Virolainen orders. — Check if there is water in the tank.
The assistant quickly returns: the tank is full. And Virolainen suddenly understands what’s going on. While the train was standing at the Levoberezhny junction in severe frost, the water from the tank was almost not consumed, and the sleeve between the tender and the tank was caught in the frost... We need to warm up the sleeve!
His comrades are nervous: will they have time to heat up the sleeve before all the water leaves the boiler... Virolainen has to give hints every now and then and keep himself so that no one notices that the cats are scratching at his soul.
And then the assistant reports in fear:
— There is no visible water in the bottom nut! Let's burn the firebox... Let me put it out!
- Under no circumstances... I drove the train, and I am responsible! — Virolainen says decisively.
And then he sees a fireman running from the locomotive and screaming at the top of his young lungs:
- The water is flowing, Voldemar Matveevich, the water is flowing!
And as soon as the meaning of these words reaches Virolainen’s consciousness, the tightly stretched string breaks. He falls unconscious. A comrade standing next to him barely manages to catch the heavy body in flight.
When the train approached the next station, Kushelevka, Virolainen was already on his feet.
In Leningrad, the train was accepted onto the first platform, the same one on which Lenin, who returned to St. Petersburg, was greeted in April 1917.
Along with the depot workers that April evening, car brake repair apprentice Voldemar Virolainen came here. Lenin appeared at the door of the station, and Voldemar’s comrades let the strong guy go ahead. And he was the first to lend his shoulder when the jubilant workers picked up Vladimir Ilyich, embarrassed by such a reception, in their arms and carried him to the armored car.
And now he knew that on the square in front of the station, on a bronze armored car, the bronze Leniv, along with thousands of Leningraders who came here, was waiting for the first train from the mainland after breaking the blockade!
And he was happy that he was standing at the regulator on the locomotive of this train.
A military guard of honor lined up on the platform. The roar of the crowd and the music of the orchestra was drowned out by the lingering whistle of the locomotive. Thick, jubilant, it lasted and lasted, as if Virolainen put all the love for his hometown into it.
He did not know that the voice of this locomotive, then recorded on tape, would become one of the evidence of the great struggle and, broadcast by Leningrad radio on the anniversary of the liberation of the city of Lenin from the siege, would be heard throughout the world.
And again two decades have passed.
I celebrated the New Year in Leningrad in the large, friendly family of Voldemar Matveevich. We remembered our friends. Virolainen laid out old photographs in front of me.
Here is Hugo Yalava, the famous driver of locomotive No. 293.
Here is the crew of the first train that arrived in Helsinki, led by Yakov Rahja.
But near the locomotive with a wide chimney funnel there are four drivers who repaired it: Rikkonen, Sikander, Hannenen and young Voldemar.
“The driver Savolainen took a photograph of us before I left for the first time on steam locomotive No. 293,” says Voldemar Matveevich and recalls how in 1947 he, then director of the Kirov Railway, was in Helsinki as part of our government delegation to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Finnish parliament .
It was then that he again found locomotive No. 293, which was returned to Finland in 1924. The “old man” was still alive - he was hauling commuter trains near Tampere.
In 1957, the Finnish government donated this locomotive to the Soviet people.
Now it stands in the city of Lenin at a special platform at the Finland Station. Another relic of our revolution.
Train driver (locomotive driver) is a railway worker who operates passenger and freight trains, electric trains for various communications and purposes.
Train driver- a railway worker who operates passenger and freight trains, electric trains for various communications and purposes. The driver drives the train by controlling the locomotive. The profession is suitable for those who are interested in physics, labor and economics (see choosing a profession based on interest in school subjects).
Features of the profession
Trains differ in the type of locomotive (diesel/electric locomotive), as well as in the distance and purpose of the routes. For example, long-distance trains can carry cargo and passengers thousands of kilometers, while a commuter train does not leave the region and makes several trips a day. Large industrial enterprises (factories, mines, mines) have their own railways and trains - the routes of such trains are even shorter.
And each type of train requires special training from the driver.
The driver must drive the train exactly on schedule, observing traffic rules, semaphore signals, etc. The train route remains virtually unchanged. However, the situation on the road is constantly changing. It may depend on the weather, how busy the train is, and other road users. For example, a truck stuck on the tracks requires immediate response.
Moving at high speed is often associated with unexpected events. The road situation, road signs, instrument readings in the cockpit - all this requires constant intense attention. Therefore, a long-distance driver always works with an assistant (an assistant driver, who can also eventually become a driver). On steam locomotives, the crew includes a fireman - he ensures the operation of the locomotive by throwing fuel. However, steam locomotives are a rarity these days. In some cases (for example, in the subway), the driver works alone.
Long-distance train routes are divided into sections. And the driver is usually an expert on one of the sections of the route. At one of the stations, one locomotive crew is replaced by another and drives the train further. The old crew rests at the hotel and takes their place again when it comes time to lead the train back.
Drivers of local lines or the metro also need proper rest. For example, in the metro, drivers have special rest rooms where they can sleep after a shift and before starting a new day, if according to the duty schedule the driver has to put the train on the line in the morning.
Workplace
Railways, subways, large factories, mines and other enterprises that use railway tracks for internal movement of goods.
Salary
Salary as of 06/05/2019
Russia 72000—100000 ₽
Moscow 80000—100000 ₽
Important qualities
Self-confidence, high sense of responsibility, quick reaction, ability to concentrate, good vision (including color vision), acute hearing. Diseases of the heart, blood vessels, central nervous system, bronchial asthma, disorders of the vestibular system, problems of the musculoskeletal system that limit movement are contraindicated for such work.
Knowledge and skills
You must be able to drive a locomotive, carry out minor plumbing work, and use radio communications. Know the structure of a locomotive and the rules of traffic on the railway.
Where to study to become a train driver (education)
Primary vocational education (PPE)
In one of the railway colleges you can get the following professions:
- "Assistant locomotive driver";
- "Assistant locomotive driver";
- "Assistant electric locomotive driver."
Secondary vocational education (SVE)
In colleges and technical schools you can obtain a specialty in “Technical operation of railway rolling stock.” Qualification "Technician".
On-the-job training
To work in the metro, you can get a job at a depot (on a metro line) and there undergo training as a driver. First, plumbing practice is carried out, then the future driver studies the equipment of the electric train and learns to operate the train. In the Moscow metro, simulators are used to speed up the process.
The railroad is an amazing place. For some it is income, for others it is just a stage in life. For still others, steel highways are shrouded in an aura of romance and mystery. And there are also those on the railway who enjoy their work, who are ready to spend much more time there than their official duties require.
Steam locomotive driver at the St. Petersburg-Finlyandsky locomotive depot Vadim Gukov- a person from this category. He can’t imagine himself without a steam locomotive (that’s what a steam locomotive is!).
Today, steam traction is a fait accompli, the very possibility of which even the bravest fans of steam locomotives did not believe. Three cars are put into operation every shift, retro trips and military-historical reconstructions are organized, one of which we talked about just recently. Behind the regulator of that same locomotive " Victory Trains"was our today's hero.
The room, which is called a cabin on other types of rolling stock, is called a booth on a steam locomotive. Ask " man from the booth» to tell why a steam locomotive, because it is hard physical work, the comfort of modern cars has never been heard of there.
“It was my calling to work on the railway; I couldn’t imagine any other job.” After vocational school, he worked in practice in the brake shop of the Leningrad-Finlyandsky depot. There was a locomotive department there. I was hooked by the unfamiliar car because everyone had a completely different attitude towards it than towards diesel and electric locomotives. Respectful, respectful. Although mud on a steam locomotive above the roof, he pulled towards himself very strongly. Since then I have been trying to be closer to steam locomotives. True, in the nineties, when the salary was “so-so,” I almost left the road - they called me to a steam tug. In any case, I wouldn’t go anywhere from the steam engine.
– Have you ever acted in a movie?
- Of course, we are used to it. You can’t even remember all the films: “White Horse”, “Anna Karenina” - both the American one, with Sophie Marceau, and ours, with Tatyana Drubich, “The Romanovs. The Crowned Family", "The Barber of Siberia", "Citadel", "The Edge". In the film about the line Shlisselburg – Polyany They were filming not so long ago, before the film came out yet. We are not in the picture, but we are the ones who set the locomotives in motion.
Our most important “artist” - O in -324 buildings 1905. It was operated in Estonia, then stored there, at the reserve base of the Valga station. In Leningrad, the car turned out to be thanks to the efforts of Lenfilm. Now it is difficult to accurately calculate how many films this locomotive “performed” in. One time in 2002, together with this locomotive we went to filming in Estonia. And we ended up just one stage from Valga! So the “artist” visited his homeland, but in a completely different country.
– Previously, the driver stood out among the railway workers; he even had white piping sewn into his cap next to the green piping. Isn't it like that now?
– During the times of active operation of steam locomotives, young workers received most of their experience from old people. From them - respect for the profession. Many traditions emphasized a special hierarchy, at the head of which is Driver. That's right, with a capital letter. The entire structure of the railway revolved around him. As the driver said, so it will be. He came to the locomotive wearing white gloves and climbed into the booth from the right. But the fireman and assistant could only rise from the left! Now the driver is often to blame for everything in advance; there is no former respect for him.
Probably, not all readers know that it is not the fireman who drowns the locomotive. His concern is to deliver coal from the tender to the booth, to the tray. Next is the driver's assistant, he is the one throws coal into the firebox. Vadim Gukov admits that he likes to work more as an assistant. Why?
– One of the most important points in steam traction is how to heat a steam locomotive. This is a whole science! It is learned over the years and is not given to everyone. The old people said: “The driver drives the locomotive, the assistant drives the firebox!” The coal should lie evenly on the grate without covering the flame. The most difficult thing is the far right corner of the firebox (for left-handers - the left). The shovel has to be cunning twist at the end of the throw so that the coal lies in this corner.
Navigating a heavy train now is the art of the driver. And on a steam locomotive, the credit goes to the assistant who provides the car with steam.
I was taught to fire with a “fan”, that is, with a ricochet from the wall of the firebox. The coal hits the wall and flies back, while small pieces fly further, closer to the center of the firebox, and large pieces remain near the walls, where the draft is greater. For competent assistants for drivers there were fights. Navigating a heavy train now is the art of the driver. And on a steam locomotive, the credit goes to the assistant who provides the car with steam.
– Surely there are tricks in dealing with a fire-breathing machine?
- A lot of them. Here, for example, “ loan from the boiler" It is used when pulling trains on long climbs. The boiler contains both water and steam at the same time. More water means less steam, and vice versa. So, the water level is specially lowered in order to increase the volume of steam. After overcoming the rise, the “debt” must be returned to the boiler, and this must be done in such a way as not to cause an explosion of the boiler: the upper roof of the boiler without steam becomes very hot and the ingress of cold water can create a dangerous temperature drop. Very dangerous operation, but sometimes the only one possible to overcome the climb.
– Have there been any funny incidents at work?
- Once I ran after a locomotive. They dragged us from Predportovaya to Ligovo by diesel locomotive, but the locomotive was “hot”, that is, in working condition. Due to a malfunction of the injector, it was impossible to supply water to the boiler. When this succeeded, the water level was no longer reflected in the control device. In this situation, the boiler could explode at any moment and, out of harm’s way, I jumped to the ground and ran after the locomotive. Then everything worked out.
Several years ago, the narrow-gauge steam locomotive Kp4-447 was restored on the Oktyabrskaya Road for work on the children's railway. The driver, of course, is Vadim Gukov. Every free minute he either takes a wrench and checks the reliability of the fasteners, or with an oil can “pleasers” the crew, or rubs the already sparkling car with rags.
“If you don’t love the locomotive, then it won’t work,” the mechanic explains his actions. - It’s alive, there’s no electronics on it, the levers are warm, they’re shaking!
It’s impossible to drag the students of the children’s road away from Vadim: although training in the profession of “Locomotive Driver” is not provided (this is due to harmful production factors), there are more than enough people who want to get acquainted with at least the structure of the machine.
There are few people like Vadim Gukov. Some are dissatisfied with their salaries, others with impossible instructions, which are countless on the road. Vadim Leonidovich does not like to talk about these topics - he loves the locomotive. He's in the right place.
Sergey Vershinin, St. Petersburg
Photo by the author
