Rail transport in Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  Rail transport in Russia accounts for 2.5% of the national economy and employs 800,000 people. In 2007, the network moved 1.3 billion passengers and 1.3 billion tons of freight. By both measures, Russia ranks second only to China. The network has been described as one of the economic wonders of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. How did this system take shape across the world's largest country? And how did scattered 19th-century companies become the colossus that operates today?

• 2. Geography and the Long Haul

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  Russia is larger in total land area than both the United States and China. Because the country is so vast, its rail density (track length per unit of territory) is actually lower than those two rivals. Russia's network is the third-longest in the world, and the largest in Europe, ahead of Germany and France. Population is also thinly spread across Siberia and the Far East, so trains must cover extraordinary distances to connect industries and communities.

  The active network spans 92,000 kilometers. Of those, 48,000 km (or 53.48%) are electrified, and that portion carries the bulk of traffic. Railroads are frequently the only reliable way to move supplies into remote parts of the country where no other infrastructure exists.

  The network divides into seventeen regional railways. From the October Railway in the St. Petersburg region to the Far Eastern Railway serving Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, these divisions span a continent. The Kaliningrad and Sakhalin Railways stand apart as geographically isolated systems at either end.

• 3. The Weight of Freight

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  Coal and coke together make up almost one-third of all freight carried on Russian railways. Each shipment travels an average of around 1,500 km. Ferrous metals account for another 10% of freight and average over 1,900 km per journey.

  In the ratio of freight ton-kilometers to passenger-kilometers, Russia ranks behind only Canada, the United States, and Estonia. That places it among the most freight-intensive rail systems on earth. By 2013, railways carried nearly 90% of Russia's freight, when pipeline transport is excluded.

  Per head of population, Russians travel by long-distance train far more often than Americans. The United States holds the lowest rate of long-distance passenger rail use in the developed world, making the comparison stark.

  In 2007, there were 270,000 privately owned freight cars running on Russian tracks, separate from Russian Railways' own rolling stock.

• 4. From Tsars to Soviets

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  The Tsarskoye Selo Railway, which opened in 1837, covered just 27 km. It was among the earliest lines in what would grow into a continental system. Through most of the 19th century, Russia's railways were mostly privately owned. Many lines were built with heavy government financing nonetheless.

  By 1851, the Nikolaevskaya railway stretched 645 km. By 1862, the Saint Petersburg-Warsaw Railway covered 1,116 km. By 1916, the historical portion of the Trans-Siberian Railway was complete, along with the Amur Railway and the Moscow-Kazan railway.

  As World War I approached, the tsarist government began nationalizing those private lines. The communist government completed the process after the revolution. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the Russian Federation inherited three-fifths of the total Soviet railway track. It also received nine-tenths of Soviet highway mileage, but only two-fifths of Soviet port capacity. Rail was, by far, the dominant piece of that inheritance.

  The 1930 Turkestan-Siberian Railway opened new corridors into Central Asia. The Baikal-Amur Mainline, completed in 2003, extended rail access into territory that had long been difficult to reach. In 2007, Russian Railways owned 19,700 locomotives and more than 526,900 freight cars, a fleet assembled across decades of Soviet industrialization.

• 5. From Monopoly to Market

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  Decree No. 384, issued on the 18th of May 2001 by the Russian government, set a formal agenda for structural reform. Its goal was to move the railways from a government monopoly toward competitive private operation. Seven years later, Order No. 877 of the 17th of June 2008 added a second objective. That document called for equipment modernization and network expansion extending through to 2030.

  JSC Russian Railways emerged as the system's dominant operator, holding a 98.6% market share in long-distance travel by 2017. A handful of independent carriers occupy the remainder. These include Grand Service Express TC, Tverskoy Express, TransClassService, the Sakhalin Passenger Company, Kuzbass Suburb, and the Yakutian Railway.

  The regional railways that form the system pool and redistribute revenues under Russian Railways' coordination. That arrangement funds two long-standing cross-subsidies. Passenger services draw from freight revenues, and coal shipments are sustained by income from other freight categories.

  In 2007, Russian Railways operated 24,200 passenger cars, a hint at the scale of modernization the 2030 strategy would need to address.

• 6. Infrastructure and Technology

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  The SA3 coupler, officially designated the Soviet Automatic coupler model 3, links cars across the Russian network. Engineers designed it with several advantages over the Janney coupler used in the United States. Problems have persisted nonetheless. Lower-quality steel in manufacturing and inconsistent maintenance have caused recurring difficulties. Coupling cars at speeds above the permitted limit has added to those operating challenges.

  Most of the network runs on 1,520 mm Russian gauge. That standard is shared by metro systems and the majority of tram networks across the country. The Sakhalin Railway, built under Japanese administration, originally used a 1,067 mm Cape gauge. It ran on that narrower track until 2019, when conversion to 1,520 mm was completed. In Kaliningrad, a line running from the Polish border uses 1,435 mm standard gauge but carries only freight. Kaliningrad's trams and the Pyatigorsk network in Stavropol krai both operate on metre gauge at 1,000 mm.

  Since 2010, Russian Railways has been replacing its command and control computing infrastructure. The machines being retired are Soviet-built clones of IBM Cold War computers, known as ES EVM. ES EVM stands for 'unified system of electronic computing machines' in Russian. Their replacements are designed to centralize data management and integrate automation tools across the entire network.

  In 1981, private industrial railways had a total track length nearly equal to the entire common-carrier network. By 2008, they had shrunk to roughly half that length. In 1980, about two-thirds of their freight flowed to and from the common-carrier railways; the remaining third circulated entirely within industrial systems.

  The 1,520 mm gauge that defines Russia's main network is also standard across much of the post-Soviet space. That shared infrastructure forms the technical foundation for the international rail operations Russian Railways has pursued.

• 7. Connections Beyond Russia

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  Russian Railways operates the Armenian Railway under a concession running until 2038. Over that period, at least 570 million euro will be invested in the system, with 90% directed toward infrastructure improvements. A joint venture has also established a port at Rasŏn in North Korea. Rail links connect that port to the Russian network at the Khasan-Tumangang border crossing.

  Trans-Eurasia Logistics, a joint venture involving Russian Railways, runs container freight trains between Germany and China through Russian territory. Russia's 1,520 mm gauge is shared by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. That compatibility enables direct rail connections across a broad stretch of Eurasia. Finland uses a slightly different gauge, but the difference falls within operating tolerance. The same rolling stock can cross the Finnish-Russian border at speeds up to 200 km/h.

  Russia's rail connection with Georgia currently reaches only the breakaway Republic of Abkhazia, and the line to Georgia proper remains closed for political reasons.