THE FIRST IN THE EMPIRE

Baku's past holds many unique and simply amazing things. A city that was reconstructed many times, it often changed its appearance and as a result, it combined features of both the East and the West, and, contrary to Rudyard Kipling's well-known ballad "Of East and West", here the twain did meet.

Having gone through several stages of the construction boom, Baku has repeatedly transformed, but in the process, many interesting moments from that time were lost to the past. The history of the Baku Railway is one of them.

How it all began

It is believed that the Baku Railway was established in 1880. On 20 January of that year, an imperial decree put into operation the first broad-gauge railway measuring 20 km in length. Up until this point, there were few railways at all in the Russian Empire and what did exist was mostly of narrow gauge. The new railway connected the districts of Baku-Sabuncu-Suraxani, becoming the first railway in Azerbaijan. According to the government decree, the construction of the first railway in Azerbaijan, the Baku-Suraxani-Sabuncu line, began in 1878. But, interestingly, a small narrow gauge railway had existed on the same route 10 years prior.

Although it was one of the first broad-gauge railways in the empire, it was not created for the purpose of developing the city's infrastructure, but rather for the transport of crude oil from oil fields in Baku port. The railroad tracks ended not in what would later become the very centre of Baku, but in the White City where up until the 1930s the city station was located. It was an unremarkable and rather unpresentable building painted in white and blue. Incidentally, these single-storey buildings later became a kind of marker, being found until very recently, when the now discontinued electric commuter trains still ran in the suburbs of Baku.

But way back in the 1880s, there were no electric commuter trains. The railway served the empire's oil interests, and only one passenger train a day passed through Sabuncu.

In 1883, the rail station expanded, a two-storey building was constructed, and it began sending trains from Baku to Tiflisvia Ganca (known then as Elisabethpol). In the daytime, a passenger train would pass through once every three (and sometimes even four) days, but more often it was the mail train that reached there by new routes. Itwould deliver parcels, letters, and newspapers (most newspapers in the Caucasus were printed in Tbilisi). In addition, a supply train shuttled between the cities on a daily basis. It was now Baku that was many times larger than Ganca or Tbilisi, and in those days the populations of the cities was much more comparable, although Baku has always taken the lead in this.

In those days, people spent less time at home, as we do, and instead travelled more. It was common for one to go on holiday to a nearby town. And the price of the fare was, incidentally, quite acceptable. A ticket from Naxcivan to Culfa cost 3 qapiks. To provide some perspective, acommon worker in Baku earned 10 roubles per month.

The low prices were due to the fact that the trains were already equipped with four classes (not counting, of course, the special imperial train), and the differences between them were much greater than that found between a seat in today's third class (platzkart) and a bed in a first class sleeping car (SV). Third class back then did not have any beds at all, and second class consisted of up to as many as seven bunks - three on each side of the cabin and one lying perpendicular. First class resembled our second-class (kupe), but the parlour car was truly luxurious. Each compartment consisted of two rooms - a double bedroom and a guest room. These cars, however, did not serve the outskirts of the city.

The Baku railcars were modest; they could all be considered third class cars. In addition, the train travelled incredibly slowly. Up to 15 (!) cars could be attached to the coal train. This usually happened during the summer beach going season, when the inhabitants of the city went to the sea. The train, packed with beachgoers, would chug along slowly and reach Mardakan, for example, after five or sometimes even six hours.

In June, a huge queue would form in the early morning at the station in the White City. People wanted to buy tickets for seats in the first three to four cars. This was due to the fact that in certain sections along the route where the slope became steep, the rear cars were uncoupled, allowing the train to proceed to the nextstation with the forward cars and only then returning for the rearcars. It is for this reason that the wayto the beach took so long.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the number of suburban rail lines grew to such an extent that the Baku Railwaybecame connected to the rest of the empire.

Electric Commuter Trains

By the time of the Bolshevik revolution, the Baku Railway was in full decline. The trains were old, having not been replaced for many years, and the tracks had fallen into disrepair. All of this led to the incident of 16 September 1913 on a stretch of track between Leushkovskaya and Sosyka stations on the Vladikavkaz railroad where mail train No 3 crashed on its way from Baku. The accident left many dead and wounded and resulted in the locomotive and six cars smashed to pieces.

The tracks that ranon the Abseron peninsula were also in a sorry state. The automobile, contrary to the contemporaries of Ilf and Petrov, was a luxury, not a means of transportation. World War I and the ensuing civil war only worsened the situation. It was not until the mid-1920s that the railroads began to see improvement.

Few today know that the first electric train in the Soviet Union was put into operation in 1926 here in Baku along a section of the Baku - Sabuncu- Suraxani line. This was symbolic, as it was exactly the same route travelled by the first train in Baku.

The old tracks fell into such disrepair that it became necessary to install new ones in their place. The construction went atan accelerated pace, and in the Soviet way, forcibly so. The newspaper "Baksovet" ["Baku Worker"] reported in January 1921 that people without steady jobs were simply rounded up and brought to the construction site. It is believed that in exchange, they were given money, kerosene (with which many heated their homes) and food. But what they called food was just one loaf of bread; one can only guess what their "wages" were. 

When the forced labourers started to complain, more details of their plight began to emerge. In another issue of the same newspaper many workers reported that they had to work the night shift for 12 hours without the promised salary.

In any case, it was with great effort that toward the end of the 1920s the electric commuter trains were placed on their rails. They represented the largest (following Moscow) suburban rail transportation network in this vast country. According to its total length, this rail network surpassed even the Simferopol-Yalta line in Crimea.

…The city changed, and long gone are the locomotives and electric commuter trains. If only this form of transport had been preserved, it would have provided an alternative form of transport that could help ease traffic congestion to a certain extent. Today, the old railroad tracks have been replaced with multi-lane highways. And the old locomotives and electriccommuter trains remain only in our memories and captured in old photos…