The Pechora Railway (29 photos) The Pechora Railway is one of the four Great Northern Railways of Russia, along with the older Murmansk Railway (built before the revolution) and the later Yugorskaya and Baikal-Amur Railways. It was built in the very Stalinist era, partly during the Great Patriotic War, and since 1942 supplied Moscow and Leningrad with Vorkuta coal. Unlike the old and habitable, mostly sawmill South Komi, the Middle Komi is a remote taiga region where oil is extracted. Here, the darkest page of Komi history - camps and prisons - is best preserved. The center of the region is the second largest city of Ukhta in the republic. We will travel by train Knyazhpogost, Ukhta, Sosnogorsk and stop at the taiga station Irael. An hour from Mikun, the train reaches the Knyazhpogost station, behind which the town of Yemva (14 thousand inhabitants) is hidden: Yemva is the Komi name of the Vym River, at the mouth of which stands the ancient village of Ust-Vym. The village of Knyazhpogost up the river has been known since 1490, and probably the residence of the Zyrian prince was here. In 1941, the village of Zheleznodorozhny was founded on the other side, by 1985 it had grown so much that it received the status of a city. Local architectural landmark - vocational school in the style of wooden constructivism: Abandoned sawmill. Pay attention to the graffiti - remember, was there such a party in the 1990s? People on the platform: Due to warming, the snow has turned gray and shrunken from the rain. Hence the endless gloom. The picture was supplemented by a paddy wagon: Transfer of prisoners in Knyazhpogost from train to van: Sindor station is an hour and a half away from Knyazhpogost - many stations on the Pechora main line are made in a similar style: Most of the Stalinist stations on the Pechora main line are wooden (Tobys station): From Mikun to Ukhta - almost 7 hour journey. Half an hour before the last, a black slag heap suddenly grows out of the taiga: This is Yarega - a place much more interesting than it seems. Here is the only OIL MINE in the world. The super-heavy oil of the Yaregskoye field is more like bitumen; it is very difficult to pump it from a well with a pump. True, it lies shallow - only 200 meters. It is even more interesting that the deposit is not just oil, but petrotitanium - that is, titanium ore is also mined along with viscous oil. At the station - one of the few authentic Stalinist stations that have been preserved at the small stations of the Pechora Mainline. The train enters Ukhta, which stretches along the river of the same name (in the Komi language - Ukva) at the foot of the Timan Ridge: In modern Komi, Ukhta is the second largest (117 thousand sq. residents), over the past 20 years, almost twice ahead of the deserted Vorkuta. Founded in 1929 as the village of Chibyu, since 1933 it became the center of Ukhtpechlag (Ukhta-Pechora camp), which was especially gloomy for the "Kashketian shootings" - in 1937-38, during the suppression of unrest among the convicts, more than 2500 people were shot . The head of the camp, Yefim Kashketin, used a very effective method: the suicide bombers were led through the taiga, allegedly to another camp, and in a certain place they were shot from a machine gun without warning - while those who remained in the camp did not even know about it ... However, time passed, located in the center Republic, the village grew, and in 1938 it was withdrawn from the Gulag, receiving the status of an urban-type settlement and the name Ukhta. In 1939-41, there were plans to move the capital of the Komi ASSR there (due to a much more adequate location). The station at the Ukhta station is almost the same in Inta and Vorkuta: The station is located in a deep lowland, about a kilometer from the city center - but the way there lies through the industrial zone and the bridge, so it's better to go by minibus. Behind the railway there are high and very steep hills of the Timan Ridge: One of them, Mount Vetlasyan, is crowned by Electric Lenin ... more precisely, it has long been no longer electric, but remains one of the symbols of Ukhta: The Ukhta Oil Plant is perfectly visible from the trains - by all-Russian standards it is small , but in the Komi Republic - the only one. Oil has been known here since the 15th century, but then people simply did not know what to do with this muck. In 1745-67, the explorer Fyodor Pryadunov was mining it - oil seeped from the springs, and he somehow collected it from the water film. Already 3.5 tons were mined! From Ukhta, oil was sent to Moscow, where it was processed. The next well was drilled a hundred years later (1868), and at the end of the 19th century, Ukhta oil was used to refuel ships on the Barents Sea, going down the Pechora. And the first oil refinery on this site operated in 1914-24. The highway runs parallel to the Ukhta River. Vetlasyan station, again within the city: Half an hour by train from Ukhta - and here is the Sosnogorsk station: A suburb of Ukhta (27 thousand inhabitants) is already on Izhma, at the mouth of the Ukhta River. Actually, it grew out of the Izhma station founded in 1939. From here the mustache branches off to Troitsko-Pechorsk, but this is not the main thing: for highway Sosnogorsk is the End of the Earth. Then there is a winter road to Pechora, and ...

What does Russia look like from the train window? It is this question that I reveal for you in this photo project. On its pages we travel to the most interesting and picturesque corners our Motherland.

The roads are far from mainline, there is no velvety road, the car sways measuredly to the good old "tyn-dynts, tyn-dynts", the diesel locomotive sets the atmosphere with smoke, hot tea with a park in the cup holder freezes on the table, a spoon tinkles in a glass to the beat of wheel rattles, and Russia floats outside the window!

Today we travel along the Northern Railway and the Komi Republic from Mikun station to Vorkuta. Let's go to the Arctic! Are we on the way? Take a seat by the windows and...

Pechorskaya Railway was built from 1937 to 1941 mainly by prisoners of the Gulag for new storerooms natural resources: timber, coal, oil and played a big role during the Great Patriotic War, supplying the country with Vorkuta coal.

3. Junction station Mikun-1 for 4 directions: Vorkuta, Syktyvkar, Koslan and Kotlas.

4. Honorary steam worker.

5. On the road arctic circle!

6.

7. Ukhta after the rain.

8. Station Ukhta and Mount Vetlosyan.

9. Orange metal structures are visible on the mountain, first you think about their technical purpose, but when you get closer you see nothing more than the outline of Lenin's head.

10. And next to the railway, the Ukhta River.

12. Sunset catches us on the way next to the Ukhta-Pechora-Naryan-Mar highway. Chikshinka river

13. Pechora-Great northern river, stretching from Northern Urals almost 1,800 km!

14. And in the morning, landscapes beyond the windows acquire a harsh northern character.

Surprisingly, the 21st century, Moscow is building tens of kilometers underground tunnels metro, most high skyscrapers in Europe, but there is still no road to Vorkuta! It would seem that at least there should be a gravel road, but no ... There is no road to Vorkuta ... You can look at road atlases, maps, but you will not find the road to Vorkuta ... There are only two ways to get to Vorkuta - by air: by airplanes and helicopters or by rail, which is the most important link between the city and the country.

What about people who want to come by car to Vorkuta or go on a trip from Vorkuta? It's possible! From Sosnogorsk to Vorkuta, a train with auto platforms periodically runs, but sometimes not everything is going smoothly there. At the time of the trip, the lessee of the wagons and the carrier did not share something, and the Vorkuta residents got stuck in Sosnogorsk for several days without any conditions ...

It is precisely because of the lack of a highway that Vorkuta is a godsend for cinema. There are a lot of old Soviet cars in the city. The car, once having got to Vorkuta, most likely will remain there forever ...

15. It seems that the excavators, which in a fantastic way ended up in the tundra, move through the impassable mud to Vorkuta, leaning on buckets ...

16.

17. Periodically, shift camps flash past the window ...

18. Some settlements there is not here for many tens and even hundreds of kilometers ... Only the forest-tundra ...

19. Shapes appear in the haze on the horizon Polar Urals.

20. Small and quiet Shore station waiting for rare passenger trains...

21. The outlines of the mountains of the Polar Urals become clearer, but the mountains remain aloof...

22. The weather here can change in just 15 minutes...

23. Silence... Silent rare silence...

24.

25.

26. The driver's face is reflected in the mirror of the diesel locomotive, the locomotive, occasionally puffing in smoke, pulls us along the tundra.

27.

28.

29. The Arctic Circle behind and outside the window is the endless tundra and cold ...

30.

31. Arrow Seyda and Mustache.

32. There is an unpleasant drizzle outside the window, it's time to warm up with a glass of hot tea in a shiny glass holder ^__^

33. The deserted station of Khanovei, consonant with Khanyme on Yamal on the Sverdlovsk Railway ... Not much to Vorkuta ...

34. A rare house near the station will flash past the window... All along the way, among the living souls, there are only railroad workers...

35. Our TEP70-0448 pulled us with the fast train No. 90/89 Nizhny Novgorod-Vorkuta to the far north all our journey.

36. Here is Vorkuta. The train won't move on...


Here we end our journey to the land of the endless tundra along the Pechora road :)

Photos taken from train No. 89/90 Nizhny Novgorod-Vorkuta

previous parts :)

The Pechora Railway is one of the four Great Northern Railways of Russia, along with the older Murmansk Railway (built before the revolution) and the later Yugorskaya and Baikal-Amur Railways. It was built in the very Stalinist era, partly during the Great Patriotic War, and since 1942 supplied Moscow and Leningrad with Vorkuta coal.

Unlike the old and settled, mostly sawmill South Komi, the Middle Komi is a remote taiga region where oil is extracted. Here, the darkest page of Komi history, camps and prisons, is best preserved. The center of the region is the second largest city of Ukhta in the republic. We will travel by train Knyazhpogost, Ukhta, Sosnogorsk and stop at the taiga station Irael.

An hour from Mikuni, the train reaches the Knyazhpogost station, behind which the town of Yemva (14,000 inhabitants) is hidden:

Yemva is the Komi name of the Vym River, at the mouth of which stands the ancient village of Ust-Vym. The village of Knyazhpogost up the river has been known since 1490, and probably the residence of the Zyrian prince was here. In 1941, the village of Zheleznodorozhny was founded on the other side, by 1985 it had grown so much that it received the status of a city.

Local architectural landmark - vocational school in the style of wooden constructivism:

Abandoned sawmill. Pay attention to the graffiti - remember, was there such a party in the 1990s?

People on the platform:

Due to warming, the snow turned gray and shrank from the rain. Hence the endless gloom. The picture was supplemented by a paddy wagon:

Transfer of prisoners in Knyazhpogost from train to van:

Sindor station is an hour and a half from Knyazhpogost - many stations on the Pechora highway are made in a similar style:

Most of the Stalinist stations of the Pechora Mainline are wooden (Tobys station):

From Mikun to Ukhta - almost 7 hours. Half an hour before the last one, a black waste heap suddenly grows out of the taiga:

This is Yarega - a place much more interesting than it seems. Here is the only OIL MINE in the world. The super-heavy oil of the Yaregskoye field is more like bitumen; it is very difficult to pump it from a well with a pump. True, it lies shallow - only 200 meters. It is even more interesting that the deposit is not just oil, but petrotitanium - that is, titanium ore is also mined along with viscous oil.

At the station - one of the few authentic Stalinist stations that have been preserved at the small stations of the Pechora Mainline.

The train enters Ukhta, which stretches along the river of the same name (in the Komi language - Ukva) at the foot of the Timan Ridge:

In modern Komi, Ukhta is the second largest (117 thousand inhabitants), over the past 20 years it has almost doubled the deserted Vorkuta. It was founded in 1929 as the village of Chibyu, which since 1933 became the center of Ukhtpechlag (Ukhta-Pechora camp), which was especially gloomy for the “Kashketian executions” - in 1937-38, during the suppression of unrest among the convicts, more than 2500 people were shot . The head of the camp, Yefim Kashketin, used a very effective method: the suicide bombers were led through the taiga, allegedly to another camp, and in a certain place, without warning, they were shot from a machine gun - while those who remained in the camp did not even know about it ...

However, as time went on, the village located in the center of the republic grew, and in 1938 it was withdrawn from the Gulag, receiving the status of an urban-type settlement and the name Ukhta. In 1939-41, there were plans to move the capital of the Komi ASSR there (due to a much more adequate location).

The train station at Ukhta station is almost the same in Inta and Vorkuta:

The station is located in a deep lowland, about a kilometer from the city center - but the way there lies through the industrial zone and the bridge, so it's better to take a minibus. Behind the railway there are high and very steep hills of the Timan Ridge:

One of them, Mount Vetlasyan, is crowned by Electric Lenin ... more precisely, it has long been no longer electric, but remains one of the symbols of Ukhta:

The Ukhta oil refinery is perfectly visible from the trains - small by all-Russian standards, but the only one in the Komi Republic. Oil has been known here since the 15th century, but then people simply did not know what to do with this muck. In 1745-67, the explorer Fyodor Pryadunov was mining it - oil was leaking from the springs, and he somehow collected it from the water film. Already 3.5 tons were mined! From Ukhta, oil was sent to Moscow, where it was processed. The next well was drilled a hundred years later (1868), and at the end of the 19th century, Ukhta oil was used to refuel ships on the Barents Sea, going down the Pechora. And the first oil refinery on this site operated in 1914-24.

The highway runs parallel to the Ukhta River. Vetlasyan station, again within the city:

Half an hour by train from Ukhta - and here is the Sosnogorsk station:

The suburb of Ukhta (27 thousand inhabitants) is already on Izhma, at the mouth of the Ukhta River. Actually, it grew out of the Izhma station founded in 1939. From here, the mustache branches off to Troitsko-Pechorsk, but this is not the main thing: for the Sosnogorsk highway, this is the End of the Earth. Then there is a winter road to Pechora, and in the summer it is a dead end. Cargoes are reloaded from cars to trains, and the cars themselves are transported on railway platforms. In general, this is probably why Sosnogorsk is perhaps the largest station in Komi:

The city of Sosnogorsk itself is quite distinctive:

The private sector of the Soviet era:

Tint the house and the fence - and you get a picture for a New Year's card.

And one of the strangest features of the Middle Komi is the fences with barbed wire. Most likely - this is protection from animals, and most likely not only dogs.

Wooden churches of Sosnogorsk:

The Sosnogorsk gas processing plant, founded in the late 1940s as a technical carbon black plant, impresses with its harsh post-apocalyptic nature:

Between Izhma and Pechora there is a remote taiga region, where you can’t see large villages along the railway, only small station settlements. Therefore, we will finish the trip at the Irael station, 2.5 hours from Ukhta.

The fact is that Irael is the “gate” of two distant taiga regions at once. Closer is Izhma, inhabited by the most unusual and close-knit Komi subethnos. Away - Pomeranian Old Believer Ust-Tsilma, which is considered to be one of the last strongholds of the reserved Russian North. From the Irael station to Izhma, for all 100 kilometers along the road there are no signs of habitation - only a deaf taiga.

Such a harsh and brutally beautiful region can be observed from the train window. It is interesting, of course, to get to know the North better. After all, the most interesting begins there, away from the highway.

The road was formed in June 1942, until 1947 it was called North Pechora Railway. The total length of the road in 1954 was 1953 km. The road administration was located in the city of Kotlas.

The road included the lines Konosha - Kotlas - Vorkuta and the section Girsovo - Kotlas.

Oddly enough, life in our camp became easier by the end of 1942.

Famine raged in the country. The camp stopped receiving both rye flour and even oats. But Vorkuta coal became more and more necessary. Therefore, as soon as American Lend-Lease products began to arrive, they flowed to Vorkuta. There were periods when, due to the lack of black bread, the entire camp was fed with sumptuous American white bread. There was so much famous American stew that all the metal utensils for the camp - bowls, mugs, all lighting fixtures, and in some places even roofs began to be made from cans. Entire wagonloads of beautifully packaged, albeit rancid, stale American butter were brought in. Ascorbic acid was imported in tons and scurvy almost survived. The prisoners were dressed up in some kind of American sports suits and yellow shoes with soles two fingers thick.

Life in our camp became, perhaps, better than in the wild. At the end of 1942 or at the beginning of 1943, a train of Leningrad children was brought to us. Only here we saw with our own eyes what was happening in the country

p.129

The main cargo carried by road: coal, oil, timber, mineral building materials.

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An excerpt characterizing the Pechora railway

- No, it seems that the sale will take place one of these days, - someone said. – Although now it’s crazy to buy anything in Moscow.
- From what? Julie said. – Do you really think that there is a danger to Moscow?
- Why are you going?
- I? That's strange. I'm going because ... well, because everyone is going, and then I'm not John d "Arc and not an Amazon.
- Well, yes, yes, give me more rags.
- If he manages to conduct business, he can pay all the debts, - the militia went on about Rostov.
– Kind old man, but very pauvre sire [bad]. And why do they live here for so long? They have long wanted to go to the village. Natalie seems to be well now? Julie asked Pierre with a sly smile.
“They are waiting for a younger son,” said Pierre. - He entered the Obolensky Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov. A regiment is formed there. And now they have transferred him to my regiment and are waiting every day. The count has long wanted to go, but the countess will never agree to leave Moscow until her son arrives.
- I saw them the third day at the Arkharovs. Natalie got prettier and happier again. She sang one romance. How easy it is for some people!
- What's going on? Pierre asked indignantly. Julie smiled.
“You know, Count, that knights like you only exist in the novels of Madame Suza.
What knight? From what? – blushing, asked Pierre.
- Well, come on, dear count, c "est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous admire, ma parole d" honneur. [All Moscow knows this. Really, I'm surprised at you.]
- Fine! Fine! the militiaman said.
- OK then. You can't say how boring!
- Qu "est ce qui est la fable de tout Moscou? [What does all of Moscow know?] - Pierre said angrily, getting up.
- Come on, Count. You know!
“I don’t know anything,” said Pierre.
- I know that you were friendly with Natalie, and therefore ... No, I am always friendly with Vera. Cette chere Vera! [That sweet Vera!]
- Non, madame, [No, madam.] - Pierre continued in an unhappy tone. - I did not take on the role of the knight of Rostov at all, and I have not been with them for almost a month. But I don't understand cruelty...
- Qui s "excuse - s" accuse, [Whoever apologizes, he blames himself.] - Julie said smiling and waving lint, and in order for her to have the last word, she immediately changed the conversation. - What is it like, I found out today: poor Marie Volkonskaya arrived in Moscow yesterday. Did you hear she lost her father?
- Really! Where is she? I would very much like to see her,” said Pierre.
“I spent the evening with her last night. Today or tomorrow morning she is going to the suburbs with her nephew.
- Well, how is she? Pierre said.
Nothing, sad. But do you know who saved her? It's a whole novel. Nicholas Rostov. She was surrounded, they wanted to kill her, her people were wounded. He rushed and saved her...
“Another novel,” said the militiaman. - Decisively, this general flight is made so that all the old brides get married. Catiche is one, Princess Bolkonskaya is another.
“You know that I really think she is un petit peu amoureuse du jeune homme. [slightly in love with the young man.]
- Fine! Fine! Fine!
- But how can I say it in Russian? ..

When Pierre returned home, he was served two posters of Rostopchin brought that day.
The first said that the rumor that Count Rastopchin was forbidden to leave Moscow was unfair and that, on the contrary, Count Rostopchin was glad that ladies and merchant wives were leaving Moscow. “Less fear, less news,” the poster said, “but I answer with my life that there will be no villain in Moscow.” These words for the first time clearly showed Pierre that the French would be in Moscow. The second poster said that our main apartment is in Vyazma, that Count Wittgsstein defeated the French, but that since many residents want to arm themselves, there are weapons prepared in the arsenal for them: sabers, pistols, guns, which residents can get at a cheap price. The tone of the posters was no longer as playful as in Chigirin's previous conversations. Pierre thought about these posters. Obviously, that terrible thundercloud, which he called upon with all the forces of his soul, and which at the same time aroused involuntary horror in him, - obviously, this cloud was approaching.
“To enter the military service and go to the army or wait? - Pierre asked himself this question for the hundredth time. He took a deck of cards lying on his table and began to play solitaire.
“If this solitaire comes out,” he said to himself, mixing the deck, holding it in his hand and looking up, “if it comes out, then it means ... what does it mean? .. - He did not have time to decide what it means, when a voice the eldest princess, asking if it is possible to enter.
“Then it will mean that I have to go to the army,” Pierre finished to himself. “Come in, come in,” he added, turning to the princes.

If you go by train, the Komi Republic begins long before its official border - after all, the Pechora Mainline serves as an integral part of it. The locomotive line, 1953 kilometers long, built in 1937-47 mainly by prisoners, is the backbone of the republic. If Komi itself is Little Siberia, then the Pechora Mainline, respectively, is the Small Trans-Siberian. And in combination - one of the most colorful railways in Russia with a unique atmosphere and a unique history.
Therefore, the first part of my story will be devoted to the near part of this railway: from the Konosha station on the Moscow-Arkhangelsk line to the Mikun station - the main "gate" of the republic.

The Pechora Railway is one of the four Great Northern Railways of Russia, along with the older Murmansk Railway (built before the revolution) and the later Yugorskaya and Baikal-Amur Railways. It was built in the very Stalinist era, partly during the Great Patriotic War, and since 1942 supplied Moscow and Leningrad with Vorkuta coal. The road was built on the bones of prisoners - but without it there would be no Victory. The history of the highway is quite confusing: the first station on it was Kotlas, where in 1895 the railway from Perm was brought - here passengers changed from trains to river boats along the Dvina, Sukhona and Vychegda. The Kotlas-Vorkuta line was built in 1937-42, and was one of the most terrible construction sites of the Gulag. Timber branches Kotlas-Girsovo (1897-99) and Konosha-Velsk (1929-34) were built a little earlier, and most of the section, which I will talk about in this part, was launched in 1947 - the Konosha-Kotlas line on the border of Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions. In 1948, the northern branch of Chum-Labytnanga was built - part of the failed Transpolar Highway, and in the 1950s and 70s in the Komi Republic the line acquired a "mustache" to Syktyvkar, Usogorsk, Usinsk, Troitsko-Pechorsk ... But that's another story.
The first half a day of the journey to Vorkuta, the train goes along the Arkhangelsk railway - through Sergiev Posad, Alexandrov, Rostov the Great, Yaroslavl, Vologda ... The road was stretched to Vologda back in 1872, to Arkhangelsk - in 1898, and before the First World War it was a narrow gauge .
In the very south Arkhangelsk region the train reaches Konosha station:

This is where the Pechora highway begins. The gloomy Stalinist railway station, already reminiscent of the Far North, is adjacent to a romantic-looking water tower:

And obviously pre-revolutionary wooden houses:

Konosha itself is a rather large (11 thousand inhabitants) urban-type settlement, built up mainly with barracks:

And from the overpass, the fork is clearly visible - the Pechora highway departs from the Arkhangelsk almost at a right angle:

A diesel locomotive is hooked up to the train here - there will be no further electrification. And this is what the Arkhangelsk highway looks like from the first hundreds of meters of the Pechora:

Somewhere around here there is a miniature Konosha-2 station, which I did not have time to photograph. The train now goes not to the north, but to the east, and the landscapes along the line are the usual Russian North with villages on the rivers:

And countless sawmills:

But in general, here everything becomes somehow different. The train goes slower and more evenly, there are almost no wires flickering outside the window, but now and then blue smoke from the diesel locomotive flies. Two hours from Konosha - Velsk, the most Old city on the Pechora highway. As a collection point for tribute from the Chud tribes, it has been known since 1147, since 1397 it has been a volost center, since 1560 it has been a settlement, and since 1780 it has been a county town.

It seems that in Velsk the merchant center has been well preserved, and in the surrounding villages there are very unusual wooden churches with huge pear-shaped domes. But the railway runs along the outskirts (and it was brought here back in 1934), and the most impressive thing is the huge and very modern station for such a small station. None of the major stations on the line - Kotlas, Mikun, Ukhta, Vorkuta - can boast of anything like this. And the architecture is very pleasant - one of the best examples of modern station building in Russia.

Where he came from and even more so why is a mystery. Train stops are short, the city is small (24 thousand inhabitants), major cities, which Velsk could serve as the nearest station, is also not.

Literally in half an hour - Kuloy stations in a small village:

This part of the line was built already in 1942-47, which is reminiscent of the characteristic Stalinist train station:

Just a view of the Kuloi platform. It should be noted that in the much poorer Arkhangelsk region, the stations are much neater than in the oil and gas Republic of Komi.

For the next four hours, the road goes through a rather remote area - in general, it is clear why it was built only after the war. Part of the stations in the Arkhangelsk region, part in the Vologda region. On some (for example, Lomovatka) traces of narrow-gauge railways have been preserved. And until recently, the Yadrikha station was the main "gate" of Veliky Ustyug - one of most beautiful cities Russian North.
Behind Yadrikha, the floodplain of the Northern Dvina begins, and on the horizon, as medieval castle the elevator of Kotlas rises:

The Trinity Church (1795-1806) in the village of Vondokure in the style of "Ustyug baroque" is clearly visible:

In 2008, she looked like this.

And then the train enters the bridge across the Northern Dvina. Its size, especially in winter, when the channel is indistinguishable from the floodplain, shocks an unprepared person - it is much wider than the Volga, Dnieper and Ob, despite the fact that it is several times inferior to them all in full flow:

In the distance there is a road bridge, built in 1997-2001 and which made it possible to "settle" Father Frost in Ustyug - before that, the city was too inaccessible for mass tourism.

The first stop is Kotlas-Uzlovoi, or Kotlas-Uzel:

As already mentioned, Kotlas - oldest station Pechora Mainline: The Perm-Kotlas railway was put into operation in 1895, and became something like the never-realized Belkomur (Belomorye-Komi-Ural highway) - it connected the basins of the Kama and the Northern Dvina. The terminal station Kotlas-Yuzhny is located in a small appendix, while Kotlas-Uzlovoi is on the main route of the Pechora highway. Most trains stop at both stations, and at each for half an hour. Kotlas-Uzel is known for its trade - for example, the residents of Vorkuta here are consistently stocked with potatoes.

Kotlas itself is now quite large by the standards of the North (68 thousand inhabitants), but an exceptionally dull city. Actually, it received city status only in 1917, between two revolutions. But it is difficult to find another city that is so tightly tied to the railway. For example, on the approaches to Kotlas-Yuzhny, the city theater is clearly visible almost at the very tracks:

Station Kotlas-Yuzhny (1957) - by a clear margin, the largest on the Pechora highway. This time I didn’t take a picture of it, so I put a frame from the summer of 2008, when . The station has hardly changed since then - huge, shabby, dark and in a state of endless repair.

Between the station and the Northern Dvina there is a huge asphalt space, where there is a bus station and an almost non-functioning River Station. In the past, it was here that there was an overload from trains to steamships, one of which, the wheeled Nikolai Gogol, still runs along the Northern Dvina as a cruise ship. On the banks of the Dvina is the Church of Stefan of Perm, built in 1825-29, when Kotlas was still a village.

But her presence and dedication are by no means accidental. Since 1379, the Zyryansk village of Pyras has been known at this place, mentioned in connection with the fact that Stepan Khrap landed here, later better known as Stefan of Perm. A missionary from Veliky Ustyug, the son of a Russian clerk and a Zyryansk peasant woman, in 1379-80 he converted Little Perm (as the land of Komi was then called) to Orthodoxy and single-handedly, almost bloodlessly, annexed it to Russia. He created the unique Komi alphabet "anbur" (which went out of circulation in the 17th century), and to this day is considered the heavenly patron of this people. And the village on this place has stood since those times, only in the 17th century it was quietly renamed from Pyras to Kodlas.

In 2008, after spending several hours in Kotlas, I never thought to go behind the railway, where the historical Center. I had to catch up now, for half an hour running on ice.

But this race was necessary - half a kilometer from the station there is a building, without which the story of the Pechora Mainline cannot be considered complete. The Stalinka, grandiose against the background of the surrounding dullness, is nothing more than the administration of the North Pechora Railway:

The stern and impregnable appearance is very appropriate - this building shows that the road leads to the remote taiga and the Arctic, and that it was built by prisoners. However, the building was not used for its intended purpose for long: in 1958, the Pechora Railway as a separate unit was abolished and included in the Northern Railway. What exactly is here now - I did not have time to look. But the inscription on the facade is preserved:

In general, Kotlas is the real "capital" of the Pechora railway. Both in the past and now - it is no coincidence that most trains spend more than an hour on it (two stops and a crossing).
Further, the railway turns to the northeast, and runs parallel to Vychegda, although quite far from the river.

KOMI-2011
"...". Trip review.
South Komi.
Pechora highway. Konoshi - Mikun.
. ancient capital Little Perm.
Sytkyvkar. General.
Syktyvkar. Miscellaneous.
Yb and Vylgort. Neighborhood of Sytkyvkar.
Middle Komi.
Pechora highway. Mikun - Israel.
Ukhta. The oil capital of Komi.
Troitsko-Pechorsk. Gate of the Northern Urals.
Izhma and its inhabitants.
Izhma villages.
Izhma in Syktyvkar.
Northern Komi.
Pechora highway. Inta - Vorkuta.
Inta.
Vorkuta. General.
Vorkuta. Particulars.
Vorkuta. Mine.
Vorkuta ring.

P.S.
Still, I decided to upload the series now, but not too quickly. I'll post what I can, and the rest (most likely the entire North Komi) - upon my return from Odessa.