Ukrainian railways are reaching their last years

Blogger Andrey Selezov, who left Ukraine in 2014, on your social network published evidence of the impending infrastructural collapse in Ukraine associated with the catastrophic state of the railways in the country, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

In his blog, the author provides a number of photographs that were taken in the last few weeks.

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So, in the first photo the reader is presented with an electric locomotive VL80K produced in 1968, which pulls an electric train of approximately the same vintage, ER9P, from western Ukraine, and specifically from the Lviv region.

“Thanks to the efforts of the Kozatin repairmen, the electric locomotive is still somehow kept in service, but the electric train has already turned into just a train of cars. I can imagine the speed of movement, so to speak, of a commuter train, which is pulled by a heavy electric freight locomotive, completely unsuited to making frequent and short stops. When these powerful locomotives were being designed, no one in the USSR ever thought that this equipment would one day have to perform such specific functions,” the blogger writes.

Another photo was taken at the Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky station.

From Eastern Ukraine, from the Kharkov depot, to Western Ukraine, where there are direct current lines in the Carpathians, ancient, but still working, Czech electric locomotives ChS2, which are popularly called “Cheburashkas,” are transferred as part of a passenger train.

The blogger writes that due to Ukraine’s railway blockade of Crimea and the war in Donbass, a significant part of passenger locomotives were freed.

“Now the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Melitopol ChS2 and ChS7 have been transferred to the Carpathians to “patch” the infrastructure holes that formed on the Lviv road. By the way, the Lviv railway has long been famous for its worst condition of the locomotive fleet in the entire Ukrzaliznytsia,” he writes.

Despite everything, Ukraine still has a fairly dense network of railways, however, according to forecasts, soon some railways will begin to be decommissioned and mothballed

“Then such cities as Cherkassy, ​​Chernivtsi, Romny, Uman, Pryluky, Starokonstantinov, Kamenets-Podolsky, Snovsk (Shchors) may be left without railway connections at all. During the impending degradation, only the main trunk lines will survive. And if everything continues like this, then in 10 years they will start to stop,” the blogger predicts.

The third photograph takes the reader to the Dnepropetrovsk railway, where an emergency occurred - the theft of the upper structure of the track.

“Gathering near Dnepropetrovsk. The line is mainline and electrified. June 19, 2018. The reason is very eloquent - theft of the upper structure of the track. Happened near Nizhnedneprovsk station. On the electric locomotive VL11, made in Georgia, (2008) there is a mocking inscription - “Safety above all.” “Safety is above everything.” Well, at least it’s not Ukraine…” the author of the article sneers.

The blogger also says that the Grebenka commuter train named after. Taras Shevchenko in the Cherkasy region also lost the ability to move independently.

The Kirovograd region generally amazed the author of the article with its “creativity”.

“The old Soviet dinosaur VL60 is in operation. Truly a working railway museum! It’s just dangerous to go and see,” he writes ironically.

Unlike Ukraine, where the railway industry is simply decomposing into its component parts, in Russia they do not stand still, and over the years they have achieved certain successes. Thus, in a photograph taken in the Kaluga region on June 11, new 2TE25KM diesel locomotives produced in Bryansk are going to the Volga region to replace old equipment.

In the Urals in the Sverdlovsk region the situation is approximately the same.

“New DC electric locomotives Sinara 2ES6 are rolling out from the Ural Locomotives plant. These will go to the Kuibyshev road, to Ufa and Kinel, to replace the decommissioned Soviet VL10. The numbers of the new cars are 780, 781, which says a lot,” writes the author.