The glory of railway engineer-General Pavel Melnikov

Pavel Melnikov, a talented engineer, the first head of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire was born 215 years ago, on August 3, 1804. On the eve of the Day of the Railwayman, which is celebrated on the first Sunday of August, the Presidential Library has the opportunity to present the prominent theorist and practice of the railway industry, using its collections.

In the work of Pavel Melnikov "About the Railways" (1835) there is such a definition: "In the greater number of improvements, which marked the last century, the railways occupy an honorable place". He further describes the "famous enterprise" of the road between Liverpool and Manchester, "crowned with perfect success" in 1830.

With the opening of the Tsarskoye Selo railway in 1837, the expediency of introducing railway transport in the country was confirmed. However, opponents of this technical innovation turned out to be quite a few - at least until the new generation of engineers in this innovative field, the symbol of which was Pavel Melnikov.

At the age of 14, he entered the Moscow noble boarding house of Vasily Kryazhev and graduated from it successfully, then was accepted into the Military Building School at the Institute of the Corps of Railway Engineers, from where he was credited immediately to the third year of the Institute.

When in Europe they began to intensively build railways, Melnikov was sent abroad to study them. Upon his return, he continued teaching at the institute, but when Emperor Nicholas I decided to build a railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Professor Melnikov was again sent abroad, instructing him to look at the roads in the United States of America. Returning, Melnikov raised the question of the urgent construction of the St. Petersburg - Moscow road. In a detailed report on the trip, he criticized the norms for the construction of railways that existed abroad and gave a number of unusual proposals.

On March 8, 1841, the tsar ordered the establishment of a commission to draw up a draft railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Among others, the commission included Melnikov and his associate N. O. Kraft. Although the chief of the gendarmes Benkendorf was appointed chairman of the commission, Pavel Petrovich was appointed head of the Northern Directorate and its ideological inspirer and chief drafter.

The railway department released only 4000 rubles for the exploration of cycle of construction. Clearances throughout all 600 miles were cut manually. The only “mechanisms” were a heavy iron pick, a shovel, a wheelbarrow, a stretcher, and a huge wooden hammer for tamping the sleepers with ballast.

Civil engineers had to live in remote villages without going home. Melnikov was able to raise the spirit of his subordinates.

The railway has been built for eight and a half years and was one of the outstanding engineering structures of the mid-nineteenth century, being the largest in the world at that time. The official opening of the road took place on November 1 (13), 1851.

The electronic copy of the “Encyclopedic Dictionary” by F. A. Brokgauz and I. A. Efron (1890–1907) says: “ In 1858, Melnikov was appointed a member of the board of the main directorate for communications and the chief inspector of private railways”.

Checking the commercial activity of the latter, Melnikov faced financial irregularities and facts of bribes.

In 1865, the department headed by Melnikov was transformed into a ministry, and he became his first minister. During his stay at this post, the network of Russian railways increased by more than seven thousand kilometers. Already after P. P. Melnikov’s death, in 1918, the atlas “Railways of Russia” was published.