Beware the railroad. narrow gauge railway

To overcome long distances, we resort to transport long distance: these are planes, and trains, and watercraft. The plane will always save our time, sea travel will inspire a romantic mood, but we are residents of the post-Soviet state who remember the times when a train ticket was the only available means to leave hometown when we were left without contact with the outside world for several days, resting on a shelf under the peaceful sound of wheels ...

As the People's Composer of the USSR Georgy Sviridov said: “... An electric train ran past the fence, whistled merrily, wheels pierced loudly. I like the sound of the train, its whistle. What is Russia without railroads?! The great space of Russia is inconceivable without them - the main arteries of life in big country". Until now, rail transport is in great demand among our fellow citizens.

This once most popular (and safest) way to move around the country would not have been possible without the development and construction of railways, which will be discussed in this article.

Disclosure of the concept of "railway"

Railway- this is an artificial building from a complex complex of elements that form a road with a guide rail track. This complex can be divided into the upper structure of the track and the lower structure of the track, and the types of railways should also be determined.

Superstructure of the track

The main components that make up a rail track are rails, sleepers, fastening elements, as well as a sub-rail base or ballast layers - an embankment under the rails, usually consisting of crushed stone and gravel, less often sand. The under-rail base can be monolithic, slab, block and frame, made of reinforced concrete.

Turnouts, road signs, strengthening and drainage devices are also part of the track, but they cannot be classified as the top structure of the track.

Understructure of the track

The lower structure of the track includes a specially prepared subgrade and artificial structures (overpasses, bridges, pipes, etc.)

Types of railroad tracks

There are 3 main types of paths:

Main (connect stations)
Station (ways used within the station for receiving / sending rolling stock, sorting, loading or unloading, and so on)
Special purpose tracks (industrial access roads, safety and catching dead ends)

The history of the emergence and development of the railway in Russia

The father of the railroad

Also in Ancient Greece people realized that dragging or transporting heavy loads on bare ground is not the easiest and most reasonable thing to do, because the large (and, moreover, uneven) surface of the earth contributes to excessive friction with the load being moved. It was decided to reduce the area of contact with the load, using greased wooden skids, which were installed in diolki - stone-paved road lanes.

Later, the same principle was applied in the 16th century to the movement of mining carts, the rails used at that time were wooden beams. The wheels were already equipped with flanges that prevented the trolleys from leaving the track. Soon this technology began to be used for land routes, mainly for transporting coal from mines to locality. On such a road, the horse could carry 4 times the weight of the load than usual.

The use of metal in the manufacture of rails

As it turned out, wooden beams quickly fell into disrepair, trolleys and wagons went off the rails, and even supporting the beams with metal strips was only a short-term measure. Due to the high cost of iron, they decided to make rails from cast iron. One of the first cast-iron roads was built in Petrozavodsk for the needs of the Alexander Plant. Both the rails and the wheels then were of a different shape than they are now, but already along this path it was 12 times easier to move.

In 1804, the steam locomotive was invented in Great Britain, which quickly began to gain popularity around the world as a faster and more convenient mode of transport, allowing the transport of goods without the use of horses. But the locomotive had too much weight, and at speeds exceeding 50 km / h, the dynamic load on the rails increased. Therefore, to ensure the operation of the rails in bending, they began to be made in the form of the letter “H” turned on its side (the shape of an I-beam). Also, in order to avoid clogging the flat contact surface of the rails (and, as a result, high rolling resistance), it was decided to produce convex rails, and cast iron was soon replaced by steel for greater strength. Steel rails, as soon became generally accepted, were additionally hardened thermally.

The first full-fledged railways in Russia

Between April 1836 and October 1837 the first Railway public use, connecting St. Petersburg with Tsarskoye Selo(now the city of Pushkin). To carry out the work, the first in Russia joint-stock transport company "Tsarskoye Selo Railway" was organized. The board of the society consisted of four people: St. Petersburg banker Stieglitz, Count Vorontsov, Count Guryev and Prince Menshikov. The joint-stock company was not subject to taxes and state fees, the construction was carried out on the rights of the state, it had the opportunity to decide how many shares to issue and at what price, as well as to set fares and luggage. In turn, the organization undertook to monitor the quality of the laying of tracks, the maintenance of the road and ensure the efficient and transparent work of the board. Subsequently, the state entrusted the construction of railways to such joint-stock companies, and the roads built at public expense, entrusted them to manage (the rights to operate the roads could be withdrawn if the JSC did not properly monitor the tracks, or there were large delays in their construction).

Almost the entire Tsarskoye Selo road ran along an artificial embankment, all the main elements were present: two-headed rails, sleepers, fasteners, ballast from a layer of cobblestone and a layer of crushed stone, bridges - the presence of the upper and lower structure of the track is observed. The track width at that time was 1829 mm.

The road between St. Petersburg and Moscow (651 km) was built between 1842 and 1851, it was the first to use wide-base rails for greater stability, and a standard gauge (1524 mm) was established, which lasted in the country until the end of the 1960s.

The length of the Russian railway network in 1913 was about 72 thousand kilometers. But the unevenness of their placement ( most of lay in the western part of the country), light rails used in laying, unimpregnated sleepers and sandy ballast required improvement of the track structure. Until 1941, crushed stone ballast was introduced, existing roads were strengthened, and new lines were laid. Since 1924, diesel locomotives began to operate in the USSR instead of slow and uneconomical steam locomotives.

Martial law and post-war construction

During the Great Patriotic War railroad tracks were used to transfer troops and deliver provisions to the front. During the fighting, many railway lines were damaged. In wartime, they built, basically, only a narrow-gauge railway - the consumption of materials was less (which made it possible to save on construction), and there was no need to build roads for the transport of heavy and bulky goods. Narrow gauge tracks were used to deliver weapons over short distances, and they were also laid inside fortifications to transport bulky ammunition. We will talk about narrow gauge roads in more detail towards the end of the article.

In the first post-war five-year plan, the purpose of which was to restore the country after the war, 85,000 km of the main tracks were reconstructed, and work was carried out to strengthen the Soviet railways. Soon, rails of the P65 type (weighted), jointless laying of rails and reinforced concrete sleepers appeared.

To this day, the railway remains an effective and popular method of transportation and movement, therefore it is constantly being improved, striving to achieve the golden ratio of the economy of materials and their strength, reliability and durability. So, rails of the P65, P75 types were introduced, hardened and alloyed rails began to be used, the sleepers were first impregnated with creosote (an oily liquid, hardly soluble in water, obtained from tar and used to prevent rotting of wooden sleepers), and, subsequently, with an antiseptic (which increases the durability of sleepers in 2-3 times), reinforced concrete sleepers appeared. The track gauge from the beginning of the 1970s began to be 1520 mm, which remains in Russia to this day.

List of railways in Russia

Russia has one of the longest railway networks, today there are 17 main branches:

East Siberian Railway
Gorky railway
Far Eastern Railway
Transbaikal railway
West Siberian Railway
Kaliningrad railway
Krasnoyarsk railway
Kuibyshev railway
Moscow railway
Volga railway
Sakhalin Railway
Sverdlovsk Railway
northern railway
North Caucasian Railway
South Eastern Railway
South Ural Railway

Construction and maintenance of railways in our time

Most of the railway lines are owned by the state. The roads are operated by a state company known to every Russian - the open joint-stock company Russian Railways, or JSC Russian Railways. And if earlier a company using tracks for commercial purposes had to build them first and then maintain them, now such private and state organizations they only operate the railways and make a profit from transportation. Of course, their duty is to monitor the condition of the roads assigned to them, but the examination and Maintenance, laying new tracks and repairing old ones, they order other companies specializing in these services.

Now there are many companies on the service market that perform design, construction, professional examination of railway tracks for damage and flaws, as well as subsequent repair services if necessary. They must have appropriate SRO permits to carry out their activities, high-class professionals in the state and access to the necessary resources - then it is possible to cooperate with such a railway construction company for a long and productive time. Organizations that meet all the above requirements can build and lease new sections of roads, including to the structures of Russian Railways, and, in addition, lay railway (including narrow gauge) and crane tracks on the territories of private industrial facilities.

narrow gauge railway

A narrow gauge railway is considered to be a track with a gauge less than the standard gauge adopted in the country (usually varies from 600 to 1200 mm). Roads with a gauge less than 600 mm are called micro gauges, and a gauge of 500 mm is called the Dekavilevskaya gauge (dekavilka).

Narrow-gauge roads are cheaper to build and maintain, tunnels for them can be made narrower, lightweight materials can be used in the construction of bridges - rolling stock running on a narrow-gauge railway is smaller, therefore lighter. The disadvantages of narrow gauge railways are:

less weight of transported goods;
lower stability of the rolling stock;
lower permissible train speed.

Therefore, narrow gauge railways do not form a single network either in Russia or in any other country (with very rare exceptions). Many old-fashioned narrow-gauge roads were subsequently converted to standard gauge due to their inefficient use.

Why then do narrow gauge railways exist? In addition to the obvious cost savings when laying this type of track, narrow gauge roads are built in small areas (islands, small regions, commercial and industrial enterprises), that is, where it is impractical to build a road with a standard gauge. In some countries, narrow-gauge railways are still used for the movement of electric trains (cars of such electric trains are similar in capacity to buses), a narrow-gauge road can meet at railway stations- there it serves as a service transport road. But narrow-gauge railways are no longer used on public roads.

Also, the narrow gauge railway is the main type of children's railway tracks.

Toy railway

Few are familiar with the term "children's railway". Most of these words will present a scale model of the railway with rolling stock in the size of, say, 1:18. Others think about children's attraction. None of them will be right, because the children's railway is an educational institution that allows you to prepare children aged 8 to 15 years for future work in the railway sector (training is carried out for almost all railway specialties). The rules adopted by the ChRW and the equipment used in laying tracks on the children's road and designing rolling stock are as close as possible to those on public railways. The only differences from ordinary roads are that narrow-gauge tracks are used on the ChRW, and transport purpose children's roads do not have (although there are wagons in the trains that can carry and even carry passengers, but only within the training area). The training zones are isolated from the general railway network, usually have a ring structure, the length varies from 1 to 11 km. The gauge of children's roads is 750 mm (after all, this was the state standard for narrow gauge roads in the USSR), the only exception in Russia is the Krasnoyarsk Railway (initially the gauge was only 305 mm wide, later changed to 508 mm).

The rolling stock used on children's railways has always been identical to those intended for ordinary narrow gauge railways: first steam locomotives were used, and since the 1960s diesel locomotives. Children's railways were not electrified due to the great danger of electrical systems for children.

History of Children's Railways

The first children's railway was built by the Moscow Komsomol members in 1932, when it was not yet intended for educational purposes. Unlike her followers, she was electrified. It was closed by the beginning of the 1940s.

In 1935, on the initiative of Georgian schoolchildren, the first educational children's road was opened in Tbilisi (at that time, Tiflis). After the construction participants appealed to the Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper with a call to continue construction in other cities, the idea of the Children's Railway was supported by the People's Commissar of Railways Kaganovich and Academician Obraztsov - soon children's roads began to be built in almost all the capitals of the USSR republics. A short time later, the children's railway of Krasnoyarsk was opened, and by the mid-1980s more than 50 children's roads were operating. The longest children's road is the road of the city of Svobodny - its length is 11.6 km. Almost all ChRW were under the Ministry of Railways.

Children's Railways contributed to the training of railway specialists at a time when there was an acute shortage of qualified personnel in the country.
Following the example of the USSR, other socialist countries also began to build children's railways, but the children's railways received active state support only in our country, so the children's roads of today's Europe lasted no more than 15 years and were abandoned. In Russia, on the contrary, not only were children's railways not closed, but 3 new ones were launched since 2004. In particular, in July 2011, the South track Malaya Oktyabrskaya Railway, named Malaya Tsarskoye Selo Railway.

In 2010, for the first time, a diesel locomotive was designed specifically for children's railways - model TU10 (narrow-gauge diesel locomotive, type 10y), in a different way - Hummingbird. In October 2015, the 30th revision of the TU10 diesel locomotive arrived for operation on the Malaya Oktyabrskaya Railway.

To date, almost a million kilometers of railway lines have been laid on the territory of the leading countries of the world. Many developments have been invented to improve railway transport: from trains moving from electricity to trains that move on a magnetic cushion without touching the rails.

Some inventions have firmly entered our lives, while others have remained at the level of plans. For example, the development of locomotives that would run on nuclear energy, but because of the high environmental hazard and high financial costs, they were never built.

Now the world's first railway is being developed for a gravity train, which will move due to its inertia and

Rail transport has great potential. More and more new ways of traveling by rail are being invented, despite the fact that everything in this area seems to have been invented long ago.

The origin of rail transport

The very first railways began to appear in the middle of the 16th century throughout Europe. It could not be called rail transport in full. Trolleys pulled by horses ran along the tracks.

Basically, such roads were used in the development of stone, in mines and mines. They were made of wood, and horses could carry a lot more weight on them than on a regular road.

But such rail tracks had a significant drawback: they quickly wore out, and the wagons went off the tracks. In order to reduce the wear and tear of wood, they began to use cast-iron or iron strips for reinforcement.

The first railways, the rails of which were made entirely of cast iron, began to be used only in the 18th century.

First public railroad

The world's first passenger railway was built in England on October 27, 1825. It connected the cities of Stockton and Darlington and was originally intended to carry coal from the mines to the port of Stockon.

The railway project was carried out by engineer George Stephenson, who already had experience in operating and managing railways in Keelingworth. To begin construction of the road, had to wait for the approval of Parliament for four years. The innovation had many opponents. Horse owners did not want to lose their income.

The very first train that carried passengers was converted from coal trolleys. And in 1833, for the rapid transport of coal, the road was completed to Middlesbrough.

In 1863, the road became part of the North Eastern Railway, which is still in operation today.

underground railroad

The world's first underground railway was a breakthrough in the field public transport. The British built it first. The need for the subway appeared at a time when Londoners were fully acquainted with traffic jams.

In the first half of the 19th century on central streets cities there were clusters of various wagons. Therefore, they decided to “unload” traffic flows by creating a tunnel underground.

The London underground tunnel project was invented by the Frenchman Marc Izambard Brunel, who lived in the UK.

The tunnel was completed in 1843. At first it was used only as a but later the idea of the subway was born. And on January 10, 1893, the grand opening of the first underground railway took place.

It used locomotive traction, and the length of the tracks was only 3.6 kilometers. The average number of passengers carried was 26 thousand people.

In 1890, the trains were modified, and they began to move not on steam, but on electricity.

magnetic railroad

The world's first railway, on which trains moved, was patented in 1902 by the German Alfred Seiden. Construction attempts were made in many countries, but the first was presented on International exhibition transport in Berlin in 1979. She worked for only three months.

Trains on a magnetic railway move without touching the rails, and the only braking force for the train is the aerodynamic drag force.

To date, they cannot compete with the railway and the subway, because, despite the high speed of movement and noiselessness (some trains can reach speeds of up to 500 km / h), they have a number of significant drawbacks.

First, large financial investments will be required for the creation and maintenance of magnetic roads. Second, maglev trains. Thirdly, it causes great harm environment. And, fourthly, the magnetic railway has a very complex track infrastructure.

In many countries, including the Soviet Union, they planned to create such roads, but later abandoned this idea.

Railways in Russia

For the first time in Russia, the predecessors of full-fledged railways were used in Altai in 1755 - these were wooden rails in the mines.

In 1788, the first railway for factory needs was built in Petrozavodsk. And for passenger traffic in 1837, the railway St. Petersburg - Tsarskoye Selo appeared. It was steam-powered trains.

Later, in 1909, the Tsarskoye Selo Railway became part of the Imperial Line, which connected Tsarskoe Selo with all lines of the St. Petersburg Railway.

Narrow gauge railway (narrow gauge) - a railway with a gauge less than standard; the rolling stock of such roads is incompatible in a number of ways with normal gauge roads (that is, the technical problems are not limited to the rearrangement of bogies). Usually narrow-gauge railways are called railways with a gauge of 600-1200 mm; roads with a smaller gauge are called micro-gauges, as well as decavils, which is not always correct. Decavile gauge is a track with a width of 500 mm.

Japanese narrow gauge train

Characteristic

Narrow gauge railways are cheaper to build and operate than standard gauge railways. Smaller locomotives and wagons allow lighter bridges to be built; when laying tunnels for narrow-gauge railways, it is required to extract a smaller volume of soil. In addition, narrow-gauge railways allow steeper curves and climbs than conventional railways, which has made them popular in mountainous areas.

The disadvantages of narrow-gauge railways are: smaller size and weight of transported goods, less stability and lower maximum allowable speed. As a rule, narrow-gauge roads do not form a single network and are most often built by enterprises for one specific purpose (for example, for the removal of harvested timber or peat).

In addition to industrial narrow-gauge railways, there were supply lines that connected ordinary railways with those areas where it was unprofitable to build standard-gauge railways. Such narrow-gauge railways were subsequently “re-made” to a standard gauge or disappeared, unable to withstand competition with motor transport, since all their advantages were covered by a big drawback: transshipment of goods from one railway to another was a long and laborious process.

Areas of application for narrow gauge railways

Industrial and national economic use

Narrow-gauge railways were built to serve peat extraction, logging sites, mines, mines, individual industrial enterprises or groups of several related enterprises, areas of virgin lands at the time of their development.

Micro-gauge railways were built inside workshops or across the territory of large enterprises to move large workpieces, large quantities materials, machine tools, removal of large-sized finished products from workshops, sometimes for transporting workers to remote workshops. Currently, forklifts and electric cars are used for these purposes.

Military use

During wars, in preparation for major military battles or when creating border fortifications, narrow-gauge military field roads were built to ensure the transfer of troops and military cargo. For laying such roads, existing roads with dirt or asphalt concrete pavement were often used. The length of the roads ranged from several to a hundred kilometers.

In addition, separate narrow-gauge railways were built railway lines inside fortifications. Such roads were used to transport ammunition with large dimensions.

Children's Railways

Other

Separate railway lines were built as narrow gauge, this was done to save money. In the future, with an increase in freight traffic, such lines were changed to a normal gauge. An example of such an approach is the Pokrovskaya Sloboda - Ershov - Uralsk and Urbakh - Krasny Kut - Aleksandrov Gai lines of the Ryazan-Ural Railway. On the Odessa-Kishinev road there was a whole department of a narrow gauge - Gayvoronskoe.

Gauge of narrow gauge roads

Among micro gauges, the narrowest gauge (only 260 mm) is used in the UK on the railway Wales - Walsingham. Most micro gauge railways are 381 mm or 15 inches wide, which is the unwritten standard. Widths of 500 mm, 457 mm, 400 mm are also common.

Rolling stock of narrow gauge roads

Locomotives, railcars and locomotives

Steam locomotive Gr, as well as other series.

Power plant Self-propelled narrow-gauge (ESU)

Electric locomotives operated on a few electrified narrow-gauge railways. One of the first narrow-gauge electric locomotives, P-KO-1, has been operated since 1951 at the UZhD of the Shatura Transport Administration, which was chosen as a test site. Now almost all of them have been dismantled or de-electrified (the contact network has been removed). But, for example, in Ivanovo, Lipetsk, Tootsi, Proletarsk and Tekeli, electric locomotives are still used. On two last roads electric locomotives PES1 and PES2 operate, produced in Dnepropetrovsk and never used on other roads. On the mountain narrow-gauge railway Borjomi - Bakuriani (Georgia) with a gauge of 911 mm, electric locomotives ChS11 operate.

Snow plows and other special equipment

Construction and repair train manufactured by: KMZ

Passenger and freight cars

Passenger cars for narrow gauge railways were supplied by PAFAWAG (Poland)
Demikhov Carriage Works (cars PV-38, PV-40, PV-40T)
Passenger cars VP750 produced by: KMZ

Among the republics former USSR there is not a single surviving narrow-gauge railway only in Azerbaijan(after the closure of the Baku ChRW) and Moldova. The most dense operating narrow-gauge railways is Belarus. Narrow-gauge railways are being actively built and developed there, new locomotives and wagons are being built for them.

Narrow-gauge railway of the Smoky peat enterprise
Narrow-gauge railway of the Otvor peat enterprise

Already this Sunday, October 28, the Moscow Railway will switch to winter schedule. "Country" electric trains on weekends will traditionally be removed from the schedule, routes for some trains will be reduced, while others will run even more often. In total, the changes will affect six out of ten regional suburban destinations.

Infographics "RG"/Leonid Kuleshov/Svetlana Batova

For the second season in a row, nothing will be changed in the Yaroslavl, Gorky and Kursk directions. The reason is common - the movement and passenger traffic there is very dense at any time of the year. For example, on Yaroslavl direction there are always so many passengers that at rush hour the trains come almost like in the subway - every four minutes. It is clear that in such a situation there is no time for change.

In other directions, the changes will mainly affect electric trains running on weekends or on especially long distance. For example, on the Paveletsky direction, the schedule will change to Yaganovo, on Kievsky to Maloyaroslavets, Kaluga, on Kazansky - to Ryazan and Golutvin. On Savelovsky direction, the press service of the Central Suburban passenger company, several trains to the Bolshaya Volga are canceled, on Rizhsky they shorten the train that went to Volokolamsk.

All changes are already uploaded to mobile applications- they can be seen by selecting a date starting from October 28th. By Sunday, the schedules on the billboards at the stations should also be updated.

Also, some changes are possible in December, when new timetables on European railways come into force. Basically they can touch Belarusian direction, since it is from him that trains go to Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria.

From December 9, as specified in the Moscow-Tver suburban passenger company, the schedule will also change on the Leningrad direction, which belongs to the Oktyabrskaya railway (other directions are subject to the Moscow Railway).

On the branch of the Belorussky direction to Usovo, from October 25, the schedule will also change significantly. But this is not due to seasonality, but to the fact that express trains are launched here. At their expense, electric trains will run one and a half times more often. All flights will be operated by Ivolga trains. They have a through passage through the entire train, wide seats, climate control, no vestibules, toilets, bike racks, sockets for charging gadgets and much more.

As RG was told in the press service of the Moscow Railway, the number of flights on weekdays will be increased from 22 to 32, and on weekends - from 24 to 36. The express train will run about 8-10 minutes faster. It will make three stops between the station and Usovo: Fili, Kuntsevo-1, where you can transfer to the metro, and Barvikha. Ordinary suburban trains make seven stops.

A new timetable has been developed. The fare for both express and conventional trains Will not change.

Alexander Mashchenko, founder of the Zernovoz.in.ua project
Photo source: website

Rail logistics is often referred to as the "bottleneck" of agricultural transportation. This is primarily due to the lack of rolling stock, insufficient track development of key stations, and a shortage of traction stock. But where is the line between these factors? Due to the fact that the railway does not allow transporting the entire crop on schedule, the first thing that comes to mind is an increase in the rolling stock, although today it is already clear that this situation will not change without an increase in traction, and an increase in traction is probably the same without reconstruction at key stations.

New schemes

Appeals began to appear to allow a private owner to provide traffic on the railway. Here, no matter how much we would like to dilute the state monopoly, I do not think that this is possible. After all, the point is not only that there is no political will to enable private traders to provide traction. It's just that at all levels there are no regulatory mechanisms that would make it possible to synchronize the work of the state enterprise and private traction. So far, there is no way to ensure freedom of action for a private person who is not integrated into Ukrzaliznytsia.

The only one possible mechanism is the purchase of diesel locomotives/electric locomotives and their leasing to the state. But there are no concrete action plans worked out for it either. Ukrzaliznytsia, using the example of leasing with rolling stock, has proposed a rather crude scheme, which, firstly, does not show a normal return on investment, and secondly, does not yet provide answers to questions about transportation guarantees.

UZ calls: invest in infrastructure development, and it will work for you! But how this will be ensured and where the investor's guarantees are stipulated is still unclear. Now Ukrzaliznytsia is taking the first steps towards resolving the issue with wagons. Probably, if this issue were resolved, it would take at least another year or two to adapt the same program for traction stock.

There is a program that allows a private investor to buy a wagon and lease it to Ukrzaliznytsia to ensure priority cargo transportation in their directions. But there are no examples of using this program in practice yet. The owner receives lease payments plus - the wagon travels on your routes as a priority. But it is not known how all this can be implemented organizationally. Since now the provision of traffic at Ukrzaliznytsia does not take into account the priorities of investors.

Connect the impossible

In order to radically change the situation, huge investments are needed. If we say that today an investment in the construction of a grain carrier, amounting to $40-45 thousand, does not give a payback within the foreseeable period (it often goes beyond 10 years), and to this all is added investments in a diesel locomotive and track development of stations, at which you work, then, most likely, this will not fit into any business framework.

Often, an investor who works in the agro-industrial complex is a specialist in the agro-industrial complex, but it is not at all necessary that it will be a specialist operator of the rolling stock of railway cars. Now in large holdings, subdivisions are being born that own wagons, but by and large these are completely different businesses. The production of agricultural products, the trading of these products and the operation of railway cars are completely different specifics that require their own specialists, competencies, and templates. In fact, this is just an integration of even a related, but completely different business.

Yes, in all capitalist countries there is a consolidation of business and what is well financed crushes related industries. But in the case of the agricultural sector and railway logistics, this is not the case. There is no healthy balance here. A normal stable structure of any core business is specialists who know their business well. The industry that they know less, they outsource and give to other specialized specialists.

For example, the company there are no own wagons, only rented ones. Kernel did not want to take on a non-core business, but is ready to pay for normal services. It was a perfectly healthy approach for a company in the market that wanted to do what it was good at. They have taken a sensible path, but the prices in the market are constantly skyrocketing, and this can backfire. If the market forces even such large players as Kernel to buy their own railcars, this is not a very healthy order of things.

Monopoly fight

The investment of the agricultural sector in rolling stock is a medal with two sides. On the one hand, investments in infrastructure, but on the other hand, this is the arrival of, I would say, an alien culture to the railway, which does not have traditions and sufficient knowledge in the management of rolling stock and traction. In any case, if there are large investors from the agro-industrial complex, they will have a share of influence on the operations that will take place on the railway, and it is not certain that this influence will be beneficial. Most likely, it will be just protectionism of their interests to the detriment of the balanced harmonious work of the same rolling stock and traction.

If a consumer could order a transportation service from us at fair prices, most likely, such a model would be healthier. But now there is a struggle of one monopoly against big businesses that are trying to move this monopoly. In any case, in this struggle, the small consumer will get nothing in almost any development of events. If large players in the agro-industrial complex invest in infrastructure development, they will gain such influence that will push small players even further away from the consumption of these services. If there is no pressure and there is sufficient protection from the state monopolist, then, most likely, we will not get sufficient efficiency.

The fate of the market in the near future

Ukraine is at the threshold of its export potential. Now Ukrzaliznytsia has a new management team and I would like to believe that they will be able to increase efficiency by at least 10-15%. After all, organizational moments can also be improved.

In addition, liquid infrastructure is what is now available in Ukraine and will be developed. Heavy infrastructure will catch up with liquid infrastructure if it runs out of reserves. The liquid infrastructure includes, first of all, motor transport. Of course, the amount of investment, the growth of rolling stock and freight traffic will affect motor transport. We are seeing a positive trend in improving the construction and repair of roads in Ukraine. It is possible to discuss the quality of this repair, but nevertheless we understand that there are definitely costs for the infrastructure part of the roads in the state, therefore, first of all, the growth in freight traffic will be on vehicles.

Effect of Tariffs

Ukrzaliznytsia's tariffs for transportation affect a lot. For example, on the expediency of road freight transportation. Now the tariffs are constantly growing, they are also affected by the investment of private traders in the rolling stock. Any new wagon built is an accumulation of potential to increase transportation prices.

Trucking is definitely expensive logistics. They can not be compared with the railway. But besides the nominal price of logistics, there are also the concepts of liquidity and availability. Logistics is part of grain trading within the country. It allows you to get best price if you are able to deliver the goods in the shortest possible time. Cars, being more expensive logistics, have higher liquidity and allow you to get more profit from trading than from railway deliveries.

Fuel prices are rising more slowly than rail fares. Therefore, while the attractiveness of vehicles is growing. The calculation shows that transporting 200-300 km is an economically adequate limit provided by vehicles, but in fact we see grain carriers that travel 450-550 km across Ukraine. Since this situation is repeated from year to year, it means that it brings profit, not losses.