When will the bridge to Crimea be opened for trains? All railway supports of the Crimean bridge are ready When the railway to Crimea is built.

Alexey Zakvasin

The railway across the Kerch Strait will be seamless and will be able to withstand a magnitude nine earthquake. Leonid Ryzhenkin, deputy general director for infrastructure projects of the company - the general contractor for the construction of the Crimean Bridge, spoke about this in an interview with RT. According to him, when designing the transport crossing, engineers took into account the complex geology and difficult natural and climatic conditions of the region. Work on the railway track of the bridge will be completed in 2019, but within a few months the builders will connect the spans from the sides of Tuzla and Kerch.

Panorama of the Crimean Bridge
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— At what stage is the implementation of the project for the railway part of the Crimean Bridge?

— This year we brought the construction of the railway part of the Crimean Bridge to peak capacity. Work is underway along the entire length of the road - all 19 km, in eight sea and land sections. The railway across the Kerch Strait began to be built simultaneously with the road, in February 2016, but according to the schedule it will be commissioned later - in 2019.

In almost 30 months, we loaded all the piles, formed 295 of 307 railway supports with a height of five to 35 meters, and assembled over 110 thousand tons of 160 thousand tons of metal span structures. They are heavier and more complex than road ones.

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Last winter, they began to construct railway spans over the waters of the Kerch Strait using the longitudinal sliding method. This is a multi-step process. The structures are assembled from factory blocks at a stand on the shore and are one by one moved along sliding devices over the water area onto ready-made supports using jacks at a speed of about 6 m/h.

Thus, we are pulling strings of spans towards the arch from both sides - from the side of Tuzla Island and from the side of Kerch. The bridge deck will close in this area in a few months. The railway arch itself, installed on supports last year, is now being filled with everything necessary for future operation.

Inside and outside this structure there are already inspection passages, stairs, platforms for personnel who will monitor the condition of the existing railway in future. Under the arch arches, a trolley will move along its tracks, from which employees will be able to monitor the operation of the tracks. In addition, architectural lighting is mounted on the arch.

After the launch of the railway, the fairway section of the Crimean Bridge will be painted in the colors of the tricolor.

— What rails are used for the railway part of the Crimean Bridge? Are natural and climatic conditions and terrain taken into account when laying tracks?

— Since July of this year, the construction of the superstructure of the track has been underway on those sections of the bridge deck of the Crimean Bridge that are currently ready. Currently, this is the first construction site, the beginning of the Tuzlinskaya Spit. Two tracks are being formed for the movement of passenger and freight trains from Kuban to Crimea and in the opposite direction.

The upper structure of the path is formed from one bank to the other: from Taman to Kerch. If on a highway we could lay asphalt in several sections at once, then railway tracks are built linearly, sequentially.

Deputy General Director for Infrastructure Projects at Stroygazmontazh Leonid Ryzhenkin
Alexander Polegenko / RIA Novosti

We work with Russian-made rails, which are rolled at a Russian rail site. These are standard heat-strengthened rails of the P65 type, which have already proven themselves and are widely used in our country. They were chosen by the designers taking into account the operating mode of the bridge.

The road is designed for the movement of trains weighing up to 7,100 tons with a design speed of up to 120 km/h for passenger trains and up to 80 km/h for freight trains in the temperature range from -27 to +57 °C. Capacity is up to 47 pairs of trains per day.

— How are the rails delivered to the bridge?

— Rails are supplied from the manufacturer by rail to the link assembly base deployed on the Taman Peninsula. Here the so-called rail and sleeper gratings are formed. Service trains transport them to the bridge, to the laying site, along the finished section of the railway - the approach.

— It is known that Russian metallurgical companies are capable of producing rails tens and even hundreds of meters long. What will be the average length of the Crimean Bridge rails? And will the route through the Kerch Strait be continuous?

— A continuous, or, as the railway workers say, a “velvet track” is being built over the Kerch Strait. It consists of long rail strands. Each strand is a long rail welded from several standard rails. The longer the rails, the fewer joints, along which the wheels of the trains pass a characteristic knock.

The length of one rail line of the Crimean Bridge is 440 meters.

So-called equalizing joints will be formed between such strands, which compensate for the thermal expansion of the metal.

— Can we say that Russia is building the longest railway bridge in its history? How difficult is this task from an engineering point of view?

— The bridge across the Kerch Strait is the longest in Russia and Europe. Its length is 19 km. The natural conditions in the construction region are difficult and change along the long route from difficult to very difficult. Each site has its own conditions and requires certain design solutions.

For example, geology. In one area, strong layers of soil in which the pile feels confident are located closer to the surface. Here we used prismatic or bored piles with a driving depth of up to 45 meters. In another area, strong layers lie deep. Above them is a layer of muddy soil. And the pile must go through this thickness and go deeper into the hard rock.

Here, powerful tubular piles with a diameter of almost 1.5 meters and a wall thickness of up to 40 mm were needed. They dived to a record depth - up to 105 meters. Each such pile was gradually built up from sections by welding annular joints, set at the required degree and driven to the design mark. We have loaded several thousand of these piles.

The weather in the strait is not resort-like at all. We are building at the crossroads of two seas, where a prolonged storm and surge are the norm. Last winter, almost 800 storm hours were counted. Wind gusts reached 23 meters per second. In such conditions it was necessary to build pile foundations. We drove the first pile in 25 days instead of the three planned. Then we worked through this process and achieved the result of the pile in 24 hours, without sacrificing quality.

— What technological innovations are used in the construction of the railway across the Kerch Strait?

— The Crimean Bridge project, like any other extracurricular bridge project, was developed for certain natural conditions. The Kerch Strait has high seismicity, a difficult climate, and complex geology. Based on the characteristics of the region, engineers created the project. Both standard solutions tested at other construction sites and new working methods were selected.

The Crimean Bridge project is a combination of a variety of solutions; such a project can be called unique. They decided to expand the construction site along its entire length at once: the Crimean Bridge does not grow from shore to shore, but from the ground or water upward. To achieve this, dozens of technological processes had to be implemented in parallel.

Laying railway tracks Crimean bridge
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If we talk specifically about the railway part of the bridge, then its most complex element - the navigation arch - was transported and installed on supports in a unique way. A most complex naval operation was carried out - the first of its kind in the history of domestic bridge construction. A floating system was developed and created specifically for this purpose, as well as a monitoring system with a combination of hundreds of sensors. This is new experience, new knowledge and skills that will allow us to develop bridge construction.

— How securely is the railway part of the bridge reinforced? What load is it designed for? It is known that a road crossing can withstand a magnitude nine earthquake.

— The Crimean Bridge is being built and operates taking into account the seismic characteristics of the region. According to scientists, once every five thousand years, earthquakes with a force of up to nine points can occur in the Kerch Strait. The likelihood of this happening is small, but the designers took this point into account.

Even before construction began, an analysis of all natural conditions in the strait was carried out. This involves months of research, laboratory research, and work with archives. All natural features of the region were taken into account when designing the facility. Taking these features into account, the design was developed and construction technologies were selected. Leading Russian organizations were involved in the work, including the Institute of Earth Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Comprehensive anti-seismic protection was developed for the road and railway parts of the bridge. To increase the seismic stability of the facility, the designers increased the number of supports - 288 for the road and 307 for the railway part. Accordingly, if the step between the supports is minimal, the spans are short. The length of the Crimean Bridge spans, excluding navigation ones, is up to 63 meters.

Another solution is inclined piles. The tubular piles of the bridge are immersed in the ground both vertically and at a certain degree. It turns out that a bunch or bush of piles is formed under each support. Support on such piles is more stable during seismic vibrations.

For reliable operation, the road part of the bridge was equipped with special hydraulic devices - shock transmitters. 760 such anti-seismic devices were installed between the supports and spans of the existing highway.

On the railway, anti-seismic securing of spans is different. Here, fixed and linearly movable supporting parts are used between spans and supports. On the one hand, the combination of these structures will allow the bridge to breathe in the event of thermal expansion of the metal, and on the other hand, in case of sudden and strong shocks in the event of an earthquake, on the contrary, they will reliably fix the main railway structures and ensure their integrity.

— Which enterprises are participating in the cooperation on the construction of the Crimean Bridge?

— The best bridge teams in the country — almost 30 organizations — were involved in the construction of the Crimean Bridge. Some of them, for example Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov and Cheboksary, were created on the basis of bridge military recovery trains during the Great Patriotic War.

The railway part of the transport crossing across the Kerch Strait under construction
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Specialized domestic enterprises are responsible for the production and supply of building materials, including Voronezhstalmost and the Borisov Bridge Metal Structures Plant named after V.A. Sklyarenko. The main cooperation of the construction is 180 companies from all over Russia. Several thousand more small and medium-sized businesses, including Crimean and Kuban ones, are indirectly involved in providing construction.

One of the largest orders for bridge builders in Crimea was carried out by Sevmorzavod. The shipbuilders of the oldest city-forming enterprise in Sevastopol completed a floating system that delivered the arches of the Crimean Bridge from the Kerch technological site to the installation site - to the fairway supports in the Kerch Strait. Of course, the significance of the construction of the Crimean Bridge for the country is great: our enterprises received large orders, the project helped solve employment issues.

The construction project of the Crimean Bridge provides that its automobile component will go into operation in December 2018. The launch of traffic on the railway part of the bridge is scheduled for December 2019.

The start of the bridge's operation should open a new page in the life of the Crimean Railway, which is currently undergoing a period of large-scale modernization.

Kyiv left Crimea, taking wagons and locomotives

The railway came to Crimea in 1874, when train traffic from Melitopol to Simferopol was opened.

All the main branches connecting the peninsula with other regions of the country went through Ukraine. This most logical option turned into a problem after the Crimean spring and the return of the peninsula to Russia, when official Kyiv headed for a transport blockade of Crimea.

To begin with, the Ukrainian authorities tried to remove all movable property. Analysts at the Kyiv Center for Transport Strategies reported in March 2014 that the new Ukrainian authorities tried to remove everything newer, including ChS7 passenger locomotives, track machines and new series of cars.

The Gudok newspaper, citing its sources, reported that former head of the Simferopol locomotive depot Viktor Mandyk Even on the eve of the referendum, he drove the newest locomotives 2TE116 and ChS7 to Melitopol, quit his job and left for Dnepropetrovsk. As a result, in the spring of 2014, Crimean railway workers had to use ChS2 locomotives produced in the early 1960s to provide passenger traffic.

The difficult legacy of the Ukrainian period

In Ukraine, for more than three years they have been fond of talking about “colossal losses incurred as a result of the annexation of Crimea.” In fact, the situation is the opposite - throughout the entire period of independent Ukraine, the infrastructure of the peninsula, created during the Soviet period, was destroyed with the complete indifference of the Kyiv authorities.

The Crimean Railway is no exception. Russian specialists received the farm in a terrible state.

In October 2014, specialists from Russian Railways and Goszheldornadzor, who assessed the Crimean railway, concluded that the KZD infrastructure, namely the superstructure of the tracks and turnouts, was in an unsuitable condition. On many sections of the railway, experts from the supervisory agency recommended reducing the speed of trains to 40, 25 and even 10 kilometers per hour. Only at this speed limit was it possible to ensure safe movement.

It was necessary to almost completely change the rolling stock, modernize existing lines and build new ones.

Transport blockade

From that moment on, messages “There is no more railway in Crimea!” began to appear regularly in the Ukrainian media. or “The transport blockade made the Crimean train stations empty.”

The cessation of the movement of passenger and freight trains through Ukraine, of course, had a negative impact on the life of the Crimean railways.

But, on the other hand, every cloud has a silver lining. The reduction in traffic made it possible to prepare in freer conditions for a new stage in the life of the Crimean Railway. A stage that will begin in December 2019.

Back in 2014, the Moscow-Simferopol passenger train was launched, which went to the peninsula via a ferry crossing. This practice is not new - some trains from the eastern regions of the RSFSR in the Soviet years moved to Crimea through the ferry crossing. However, now, after several months of working according to this scheme, it was decided to abandon this practice. Transporting tourists with a single ticket on buses from the railway stations of Anapa and Krasnodar turned out to be faster and easier than using a ferry for transportation passenger trains.

Large construction site

Therefore, the restoration of the movement of freight and passenger trains to Crimea will occur after the launch of the Crimean railway bridge.

In addition to the work being carried out in Crimea, as well as the construction of the bridge itself, no less significant tasks are being solved by railway builders in Taman.

From Vyshesteblievskaya station, construction is underway on a 42-kilometer section that will lead directly to the bridge. The Kerch section from Bagerovo station to the bridge will be 17.8 km.

The construction of the section on the Taman Peninsula was envisaged during the construction of the Taman port and included the construction of a new Portovaya station 8 km from the transport crossing. A Taman-passenger station is planned near the village of Taman. On the Kerch section, passing through Cementnaya Slobodka, a branch to the Kerch-Yuzhnaya station and the creation of a new park are provided. Also on this site it is planned to build four overpasses, two bridges and a tunnel.

24 hours from Moscow to Simferopol

Until recently, skeptics expressed doubts about whether the intentions of the Russian authorities are realistic? But the pace of construction of the Crimean Bridge, the successful implementation of the most complex operation of transportation and installation of railway and automobile arches, indicate: when people work and do not reason, almost everything is doable.

Summer 2017 General Director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Crimean Railway" Alexey Gladilin stated that for the trains that will go to Crimea after the opening of the bridge, it is planned to purchase 800 cars, most of them are double-decker sleeping cars in a compartment design.

Speaking in Alushta at the IV Crimean Transport Forum, Gladilin said: “It is planned to purchase 15 pairs of passenger trains. Moreover, they will be distributed as follows: two trains each to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Feodosia, the rest to Simferopol.” The approximate train travel time between Simferopol and Moscow will be from 24 to 28 hours.

In the future, it is planned to make the railway route to Crimea a high-speed one, reducing travel time from the capital to Simferopol to 18 hours.

The launch of passenger trains to Crimea is only the first stage of the new life of the peninsula’s railways. But, probably, it will make sense to talk about the future later, as plans turn into real actions.

What they write on one well-known forum:

If schedules have been prepared since December 9 of this year, this does not mean that the first trains will go through the Kerch Strait in 2018. The southern training ground of Russian Railways is being prepared in advance for the passage of trains to Crimea. As we know, in the railway south of Russia, traffic is very busy.
Passenger rail traffic to Crimea is planned for the summer of 2019.
The directions are already definitely clearly marked. Basically, what was expected. I never doubted that "Ekaterinburg - Simferopol" would be returned to historical route.
With trains from capitals (national and cultural) to resort towns In Crimea, everything was also clear: naturally they would come.
Regarding trains to Kerch, I was also not mistaken: there will be no PDS from the terminal in Kerch. They are simply no longer needed. Kerch has become a transit city. There will be enough people passing by.

At the first stage, Sevastopol receives fast trains from Moscow and St. Petersburg. All three cities of federal significance are connected by rail. This is right. In winter there will be two pairs: Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the summer they may well add one or two more. Not more.

Simferopol receives all Sevastopol transit and its own: to Ektaterinburg, Murmansk, Chelyabinsk, Izhevsk, Ufa, Saratov, Perm, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow. In Simferopol there will be no problems at all with the Moscow direction.

"Moscow-Evpatoria" and "SPB-Evpatoria" will pass by Simferopol. These should be strictly summer ones. They didn’t go in winter even in Ukraine. There were only trailer cars "Evpatoria - Moscow". It will continue to be so.

The same can be said about Feodosia. In summer there will be direct trains, in winter there will be trailer cars passing through Vladislavovka.

It is not yet clear how Murmansk and Nizhny Novgorod will be allowed on the mainland. Will they go through Moscow? Will Murmansk go through St. Petersburg? They can also launch it bypass, for greater connection between the regions of the European part of Russia and Crimea. It would be logical. There are already purely metropolitan trains. It is also necessary to gather people in the “bending” outback.

Cars from the Crimean Railway will also appear on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The farthest to Asia, to the east, will be “Simferopol - Novosibirsk”. I would like to go to Irkutsk. But the new terminal of the Simferopol airport is already dictating its own competitive conditions.

Silence for now regional trains: between the cities of Crimea and Krasnodar region. Some express trains were planned.

By the spring of 2019, it will become clear exactly what will go where, and how.

The rolling stock of the Crimean Railway has not yet been updated. Will there be time to deliver new cars by the summer of 2019? If they don’t make it in time, it’s okay - they’ll lease it from Russian Railways. There are no problems with the carriages.

And the Tver Carriage Works bakes new cars like pies. They may well have time to make several new ones double-decker trains.

P.S. We also decided not to visit Dzhankoy. Two years ago he proposed this: by diesel locomotive to (from) Simferopol.

This makes me happy.

99.9% of train passengers to Dzhankoy do not need it. Those who need Dzhankoy should equip a convenient platform closer to the city. To all passenger trains here -

There is no point in wasting time changing the locomotive and direction of travel.

Of course, it is quite possible that all trains will not travel like this. Some will be delivered to the Dzhankoy station. So that it’s not empty at all.

Over the past 30 months, we have already completed all the foundations in full and loaded all the pipe piles. More than 300 supports out of 307 have been formed. This was stated by Leonid RYZHENKIN, Deputy General Director for Infrastructure Projects of the Stroygazmotazh company: “Work on assembling metal structures of span structures continues, and about 130 thousand tons of metal structures have already been assembled today. Work is underway in all areas - offshore and onshore. In the offshore sections, we began the active phase of assembling spans in February of this year, and over the past period we have already assembled more than 5.5 km of 11 km of spans.” At the same time, in offshore sections, the sliding of these spans is still underway - longitudinal and transverse. Today, about 23 thousand tons out of 50 planned have already been moved (above the water area) and are in their design positions. At the same time, in the land sections where the bridge deck is ready, and this is primarily the Taman coast, work on the construction of the upper structure of the track is already underway. Railway workers are laying seamless rails, and today about 4 km have already been assembled. Read: Work continues on the fairway section, on our dominant feature - the railway arch. There, work is underway on the construction of inspection passages and other technological devices that will make it possible to reliably operate the arched span structure in the future. “Work continues on the construction of architectural lighting, and with the opening of railway traffic on the Crimean Bridge in December 2019, our dominant feature - the fairway section - will be illuminated in the tricolor of the Russian flag. At the same time, there are about 7.5 thousand workers and specialists at the construction site today. They work in 2 shifts. All work is progressing in accordance with the approved schedule.”

Crimean Bridge Railway

After the opening of the road part of the Crimean Bridge, all the efforts of builders in the Kerch Strait were devoted to the construction of the railway component. According to the schedule, the first trains will run from the shore of Taman to Crimea in December 2019.

There will be two tracks across the strait with a capacity of up to 47 steam trains per day. The design speed of passenger trains is 120 km/h, freight trains are 80 km/h.

Now specialists are preparing the last supports, and the assembly of the spans is in full swing. Their total weight is almost 160 thousand tons, which is 1.5 times more than the road part of the structure.

Under each support there are from six to 95 piles, just like under a road bridge, some of them are driven into the ground vertically, some at an angle. Inclined piles will increase the stability of the bridge in the event of an earthquake.

One railway span weighs 580 tons and consists of 40 elements, which are connected by welding and high-strength bolts. Such spans are placed on supports, the distance between which does not exceed 65 meters. The peculiarity of the railway bridge is its smooth rise to the arch above the fairway.

Each subsequent support is approximately half a meter higher than the previous one. The railway bridge is gradually “growing”: from 5 meters it begins to rise higher and higher on the island of Tuzla, so that towards the sea section the height of the supports reaches almost 17 meters, and further - 35 meters above the fairway of the Kerch-Yenikalsky Canal, says Head of the technical service of the SGM-Most company Yuri Beskov. - Such a smooth rise will ensure comfortable and safe entry of passenger and cargo trains onto the arched span, under which ships can freely pass/

In parallel with the work in the Kerch Strait, construction of a railway is underway on both banks. 40 kilometers of new tracks will appear on the Taman Peninsula, and 17.5 kilometers on the Crimean Peninsula.

The railway approaches will be put into operation simultaneously with the railway part of the Crimean Bridge in 2019, the Crimean Bridge information center reports.

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Crimean Bridge: 27 months of construction in 3 minutes. Video: Info-center "Crimean Bridge".