Privolzhskaya Railway

Priwolschskaja schelesnaja doroga (Russian Приволжская железная дорога, "Volga Railway " ) is a ground operationally independent regional directorate of the Russian State Railways ( RŽD ) based in Saratov.

General

The Volga Railway is one of the 17 regional offices (including branches called ) of the Russian Railways dar. Its route network, which, as in Russia and other former Soviet Union common is executed in Russian broad gauge of 1524 mm, mainly covers the oblasts of the lower Volga (Saratov, Volgograd and Astrakhan) from where a small part of the routes is also sufficient to in Rostov and Samara oblasts and Kazakhstan. Within Russia, there are direct connections to the networks of regional offices Southeast, Northern Caucasus, Kuibyshev and South Urals.

The Directorate consists of four departments, which in addition to regional governments, Saratov, Volgograd and Astrakhan also a miniature railway in Volgograd (Russian Волгоградская детская железная дорога ) belongs.

With the level of 2008, the route network of the Volga railway was 4237 km long. The annual passenger volume was some 11 million in long-distance and 13.7 million in transport; also 39.63 million tons of goods were transported over the same period.

History

The emergence of today's route network of the Volga Railway began with the commissioning of the railway from Saratov after Atkarsk in July 1871 was that of the newly formed corporation of the Ryazan -Ural Railway ( Рязано - Уральская железная дорога ) financed and operated. End of the 19th century, this railway company was already one of the greatest of the Russian Empire and had routes in twelve provinces of the European part of Russia that linked among other Moscow Astrakhan.

After the October Revolution of 1917, the company was nationalized and in 1930 under the Directorates Moscow - Kursk ( Московско - Курская железная дорога ) and Moscow -Kazan ( Московско - Казанская железная дорога ) divided. In the 1930s, the route network in the Volga lower reaches was particularly intense expanded, so that the local traffic exceeded the corresponding value of 1913 beginning of the 1940s by four times. In the years of the Second World War, the Volga Railroad had a high strategic importance for the Red Army, especially during the Battle of Stalingrad.

In 1953, the Volga Railroad was formed in its current structure by a merger of the former Ryazan -Ural railway with the Stalingrad Regional Directorate. Since 2003, the Volga Railway has the status of a branch of the corporation RŽD.