The Nizhny Novgorod Railway Museum

This is the fourth part of James Waite's visit to Russia in early August 2009. The other parts are:

• The Nizhny Novgorod Children's Railway

• The Pereslavl Narrow Gauge Railway Museum

• Three Russian Narrow Gauge Peat Railways

For some (Russian language) information see http://nnov.livejournal.com/918249.html (readily translated by 'Google Translate', I found I had to copy and paste the text to get it done. RD)

Harvey Smith adds that there is an armoured class O at the depot here too.

In Nizhny Novgorod, L-3095 hauls a train around the city during the summer; this is Ivan Malakhovsky's picture from 4th August 2011:

The museum is located on the north western side of the main railway line heading westwards from Nizhny Novgorod main station, about 7kms out from the main station and about 1km west of Gorky Sormyrovoivly suburban station. There's an extensive collection of many of the more modern Soviet steam types here including no fewer than seven examples of some of the variants of the huge E class of 0-10-0's. Two of them come from the batches of these locos built for the USSR in the early 1920's by foreign constructors as a part of the young communist regime's drive to expand the country's railway system very rapidly and before the domestic loco building plants had developed sufficiently to be able to meet the large demand for new locos.

Most of the exhibits formerly belonged to the Intertrack organisation. There are no diesels or electrics in the display. The museum is unattended and the entrance is through an ungated gap in the northern side of the perimeter fence so presumably access is available at any time of the day or night. We visited around 5.30pm at the end of a very hot day. Several families were leaving and others were finishing picnics in the shade of some of the locos and looked as though they had been there for some considerable time.

The locos face in several directions so it's hard to say when is the best time for photography but when we were there the huge P36 class 4-8-4 was very well lit. It was the first time I've seen one of these magnificent locos built very shortly before the country hastily abandoned steam construction after 1956 for political reasons.

Nizhny Novgorod's main loco depot is on the opposite side of the tracks from the museum. We could hear the sounds of a steam loco being put to bed here after operating an excursion earlier in the day but couldn't see it. We did catch a glimpse of an dumped steam loco behind the depot which looked as though it was probably an L class 2-10-0.

0-10-0 E^N1 (Nevskii 2219:3424/1916, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka, built for Moskovsko-Kurskaya Rly.); 
0-10-0 E-1112 (= El 1112, Lugansk 1914?, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka, rescued from a Moscow power station in 1992); 
0-10-0 E^Sh-4452 (Nohab 1637/1924, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka) 
0-10-0 E^G-5239 (Henschel 18748/1921, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka) 
0-10-0 E^U-684-52 (Lugansk 1929?, ex-Intertrack, Sergach) 
0-10-0 E^M-720-07 (Lugansk 3945/1932, ex-Intertrack, Sergach) 
0-10-0 E^R-761-96 (Resita 969/1949, ex-Intertrack, Sergach) 
2-10-0 L- 0818 (Kolomna 1949-50 ?) 
2-10-2 LV-0225 (Lugansk 16358/1956, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka) 
4-8-4 P36-0071 (Kolomna 10238/1955, ex-Intertrack & Steam Traction Ltd., Zlatoust) 
2-10-0 S017-2956 (UIU. 0375?/1948, ex-Intertrack, Rtishchevo) 
2-6-2 S^U253-33 (Sormovskii 3737/1950, ex-Intertrack, Rtishchevo) 
2-10-0 TE-622 (1943, an ex-DR broad gauge Kriegslok, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka) 
0-6-0ST bvn 9773 (Nevskii 1900, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka)
0-6-0T 9P-18430 (Muromski 18430/1954, ex-Intertrack, Shcherbinka)

All the locos were in good external condition and there was no graffiti in evidence despite the museum being unsupervised and close to a large residential district.

A general view of the museum with the main line in the background:

TE-622

LV-0225

9P-18430

S^U253-33

0-6-0ST bvn-9773