Liden & Denz organizes an excursion to the Russian Railway Museum

Liden & Denz organizes an excursion to the Russian Railway Museum in Saint Petersburg. But why should we care about it, why is it interesting for us?

Russia is an enormous country, that needs to be connected, so it’s railway system is of key importance even to this day. Lot of us just takes trains for granted, because in our lifetime, they have always been there, furthermore, in the age of air transportation, we even regard trains as obsolete. But actually, it’s been a long way from carts pulled by horses to Сапсан (Sapsan), a train that can take the 704 kilometers distance between Saint Petersburg and Moscow in less than 4 hours.

 

You can find out everything about the development of the Russian railway system during our excursion in the Russian Railway Museum. The museum itself is Russia’s most important railway museum complex, and one of the biggest railway museums in the world.

The museum complex is spread over a 50000 square-meters area. It has two buildings — an old locomotive depot and a fascinating new building. As the official website of the museum claims:

“Museum tours include visiting a collection of rare and legendary steam trains, locomotives, electric locomotives, railcars and other rolling stock.

Historical artifacts rub shoulders with current operating models, interactive installations and temporary exhibition halls, building an unusual and engaging museum space.”

 

The excursion organized by Liden & Denz will be led by a professional guide and it will be translated to English by the teachers of the school. Of course, after the guided excursion, that will take around an hour, all the participants will have a chance to spend as much time in the museum, as they want to.

The planned duration of the excursion is 2 hours, and the participation fee is 800 Rubles.

The price includes the entrance fee and the guided excursion.

The gathering point is at the school, and the group will go to the museum by metro. The metro tickets are not included in the price.

This excursion if a fantastic chance to find out more about the past and present of Russia’s rail transportation.

Did you know for example, that the first Russian railway line was built between Saint Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo in 1837 by the order of Nikolay I. So there is a chance, that you’ve already travelled on Russia’s first railway line. Or there is a famous anecdote about the railway line between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, that has been opened in 1851.

The urban legend holds that when the path of the railway line was planned in 1842, the Tsar supposedly demanded the shortest path be used despite major obstacles in the way. The story says he tried to use a ruler to draw the railroad in a perfectly straight line. By the Msta River the tsar’s pencil hit an awkwardly placed finger which he was using to hold down the ruler, creating a bend in the road. The legend says that the engineers wanted to execute the tsar’s order exactly, and the result was a perfectly straight road with a single bend. This story turned out to be false, but still, it became popular in Russia and Britain as an explanation of how poorly the country was governed.

If you want to find out more interesting stories and facts about the history of the Russian railway, definitely come to the excursion!