Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Moscow's oldest train station


Constructed between 1844 and 1851 as the terminus of the Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway, a pet project of Czar Nicholas I, this station was initially known as Peterburgsky (St Petersburg station) but after Nicholas's death in 1855 it was named Nikolayevsky, and the railway Nikolayevskaya.  Surprisingly this name wasn't changed by the Communists until 1924, when it was renamed Oktyabrsky (and the railway Oktyabrskaya) to glorify the 1917 October Revolution.

The present name of Leningradsky was given it a year later when the city of St Petersburg, renamed by the Communists as Petrograd, became Leningrad. Although Leningrad has since been changed back to St Petersburg, the station name remains.  It is situated on Komsomolskaya Square and serves north-western directions; apart from Saint Petersburg, international trains to Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland. It has 6 platforms with 10 tracks.

Postcards from circa 1910 and 1960.

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