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Russia’s First Railway Sixteen-year-old John Wesley Hackworth brought a locomotive over to St Petersburg, and Russia’s railway revolution was ready for the off.

In two parts

1836
King William IV 1830-1837 to Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Music: Mikhail Glinka and Johann Strauss (Jr)

From Grace’s Guide. Licence: None stated (public domain assumed). Source

About this picture …

A drawing of the steam locomotive built by Timothy Hackworth of Shildon, for the St Petersburg to Pavlovsk Railway in the Russian Empire in 1836. Hackworth’s 16-year-old son John Wesley Hackworth accompanied the engine, and followed in his father’s footsteps as an accomplished inventor and railway engineer.

Russia’s First Railway

Part 1 of 2

British engineers and a sixteen-year-old boy played a key part in helping Imperial Russia begin her own railway revolution. In one respect, however, Russia failed to learn from the example the United Kingdom set for her: private enterprise.

IN 1836, sixteen-year-old John Wesley Hackworth arrived in the Russian capital, St Petersburg, bearing the heavy responsibility of delivering a steam locomotive, built by his father Timothy at Shildon in County Durham, to the Russian Empire’s first railway line.*

The locomotive’s destination was a 6ft-gauge, 17-mile demonstration track from St Petersburg to Pavlovsk, via Tsarskoye Selo and the famous Catherine Palace. The line’s purpose was to prove to Tsar Nicholas I, who personally attended the tests and who held the purse-strings, that Russia could build her own railways, and maintain them through a Russian winter.

Several of the line’s engineers brought experience from England, and a locomotive by the Cherepanov brothers was supplemented by the Shildon engine. The affable Tsar confided to young John his amazement at how far technology had come since 1816, when on a visit to England he had seen with his own eyes John Blenkinsopp’s rack-and-pinion locomotives at work on the Middleton Railway near Leeds.*

Jump to Part 2

See our post Timothy Hackworth.

The Middleton Railway remains in operation today as a preserved industrial railway.

Précis

The first railway in Russia was an experimental line from St Petersburg to Pavlovsk, 17 miles away, designed to test whether railways were practicable in Russia. Both the engineering know-how and the first locomotive came from England, the latter brought over by the teenage son of Timothy Hackworth, a pioneer of steam power on the railways. (55 / 60 words)

Part Two

Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source

About this picture …

The original railway station at Pavlovsk doubled as an entertainment venue, all part of an English formal gardens and park conceived by Scottish architect Charles Cameron for the Empress Catherine. It was dubbed the Pavlovsk ‘Vauxhall’ after the theatre and entertainment area of London, and from 1856 to 1865 Johann Strauss gave concerts here for the railway. This picture shows the Vauxhall in 1914; it was damaged by fire in 1930, and subsequently destroyed by the German army of occupation during the Second World War, which vandalised the Park and plundered its museums.

THE pioneering St Petersburg to Pavlovsk railway officially opened on October 30th, 1837. Timothy Hackworth’s steam locomotive whisked a train of eight carriages thirteen miles from St Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo in just 35 minutes, where it was welcomed by the Tsar himself. Regular steam-hauled trains began the following May.

A second line connecting Warsaw in modern-day Poland to the Austrian border began service on April 1st, 1848, and once again British engineering was in demand: the first five steam locomotives were supplied by Lancashire-born engineer John Cockerill from his foundry in Belgium.

At last, a railway linking St Petersburg and Moscow 400 miles away opened on November 1st, 1851.* Unlike the railways in Britain, it was a Goverment initiative and built using forced labour, and travel passes were strictly reserved for the elite. Their 22-hour journey, however, looked quaintly rustic beside that of working-class Britons, who had been dashing between London and Glasgow in 12½ hours since the summer of 1848.*

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Owing to political and financial intrigue, it took ten years to complete, and it was grievously negligent in terms of human life. Nikolai Nekrasov composed a poetical lament in 1864 taken today as ‘anti-capitalist’, even though the project was jealously state controlled. On a similar theme, see Samuel Smiles in A Monument to Liberty.

Direct trains between Euston and Glasgow began on March 1st, 1848, leaving at 9am and arriving at 10pm, a 13-hour trip for 405 miles. However, the time was cut to 12 hours 10 minutes that summer. From October 1849, the timing was eased back to 12½ hours, which remained the standard for some years. Today, the journey takes 4½ hours.

Précis

Following the success of the St Petersburg to Pavlovsk line, the Russian Empire opened a railway from St Petersburg to Moscow in 1851. However, despite all the advantages of twenty years of technological progress, trains were much slower than those on the London to Glasgow route, and the king of social progress brought by Britain’s railways was strenuously resisted. (58 / 60 words)

Source

With acknowledgements to ‘Durham: Over 1,000 Years of History and Legend’ by Martin Dufferwiel, and ‘Railstaff: History of Russian Railways’.

Suggested Music

1 2

‘A Life for the Tsar’

Finale: “Glory to you, holy Rus’!” (Chorus)

Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857)

Performed by the Mikhailovsky Theatre orchestra and choir, at the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.

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The ‘Emperor’ Waltz

Johann Strauss (Jr) (1825-1899)

Performed by the Berlin Philharminic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

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