The Поезд. Из жизни одной семафорной линии... #Железнодорожное

A trip along the most famous in Russia low-activity railway line Torzhok-Soblago, on which at that time the most real semaphores were still operating. In the hinterland of the Tver region in the upper Volga from the settlement Shuvaevo to the Kuvshinovo station. Through semaphore stations Skakulino, Selizharovo and Rantsevo. https://tinyurl.com/ych43s8l The Torzhok-Soblago railway line runs through the Torzhok, Kuvshinovsky, Selizharovsky and Penovsky districts of the Tver region. The length of the railway line is 165 kilometers. As of 2008, the line belongs to the Moscow branch of the Oktyabrskaya Railway. The railway line is single-track throughout, and is not electrified anywhere. Since 2015, the long-distance train "Moscow-Ostashkov" has been canceled, and also, as of this year, the suburban train "Ostashkov - Torzhok" has been shortened and follows from Ostashkov to Kuvshinovo. The Torzhok - Soblago line is one of the most famous low-traffic sections of the Russian railways. The history of the Torzhok - Soblago line began with the construction of the Kuvshinovsky approach road (the dead-end line Torzhok - Kuvshinovo, 58 kilometers long). The Kuvshinovsky access road was built primarily for the purpose of servicing the Kamenskaya paper mill, located in the village of Kamennoye (Kamenskoye) (now the city of Kuvshinovo). The access road was private, built at the expense of the owner of the factory, Yu. M. Kuvshinova. Temporary traffic on the Torzhok - Kuvshinovo line opened in 1911, in 1912 the line was accepted for permanent operation. In 1917, the Kuvshinovo - Selizharovo section (54 km) was opened. At the time of opening, the line was private, it was a continuation of the Kuvshinovsky access road, after the 1917 revolution it was nationalized. In 1928, the Selizharovo - Soblago section was opened with a length of 53 kilometers. Soblago station is located on the Bologoye-Polotsk railway - thus, the line has turned from a dead-end to a transit line. The plans of that time assumed that Soblago station would become a junction of five directions (at Bologoye, Velikiye Luki, Torzhok, Novgorod - Leningrad, Zemtsy - Smolensk), but in reality it remained a junction of three directions. The Torzhok - Soblogo line, thanks to a happy coincidence, for a long time remained aloof from the reconstruction processes, which led to the disappearance of hand switches, sand ballast on most public railways, and the almost complete disappearance of semaphores. As of 2008, sand ballast lies practically along the entire length of the line, semaphores remained at three stations (Rantsevo, Selizharovo and Skakulino), hand switches remained at all stations, except for Torzhok and Torzhok-Yuzhny stations. Previously, the line was in a state of "retro-section" only due to the fact that the turn of its reconstruction did not reach, recently its preservation in this form should be recognized as the merit of the All-Russian Society of Railway Lovers. However, the Torzhok - Soblago section does not have a formal status of a museum line. For the first five kilometers, the Torzhok - Soblago railway line runs next to the Torzhok - Rzhev railway line, on one embankment. The differences between the two parallel tracks are visible to the “naked eye”: the line to Soblago has wooden sleepers and sand ballast, the line to Rzhev has reinforced concrete sleepers and crushed stone ballast. After two parallel bridges across the Tvertsa River, the railway lines diverge. There is no track development in this place. Kuvshinovo (58 km) is a large station located in the city of the same name - the center of the Kuvshinovsky district. The station receives and dispatches cargo. There is a high platform, extremely unusual for this line, a wooden station building of pre-revolutionary construction, outstanding in its architecture. Rantsevo (72 km) is an operating station. Has two paths (previously there were three paths). There is no cargo work, in fact the station is a siding. The first station with preserved semaphores. O. p. (post) 76 km (formally refers to the Rantsevo station) - a stopping point and a turnout, not serviced by any permanent personnel. The current short access road to the lower warehouse of the Pylinsky logging point of the Kamensky timber industry enterprise (Sokolniki village) departs at the arrow. To the west there are two more operating stations: Selizharovo and Skakulino. Semaphores have been preserved at these stations. The end point of the line is the Soblago junction station, located on the Bologoye-Polotsk line. As of 2019, the only passenger train Kuvshinovo - Ostashkov operated on the line. The long-distance train Moscow - Ostashkov was canceled in 2015, and the suburban train Ostashkov - Torzhok was shortened to Kuvshinovo in 2018.