History of development of freight carriage park in Ukraine (1875-1917)

Tetiana Antonijuk

Abstract— The article is devoted to description of the freight rolling stock development in Ukraine during 1875-1917, in particular on Odessa railway. The rolling stock, the freight wagons peculiarities and the increase of their carrying capacity have been analyzed in the article. It is concluded that Odessa railway made a significant contribution to cars construction in Russian empire. The amount of loads to be carried by railways was constantly increasing. However, the increase of freight rolling stock was considerably slower, than the increase in the number of loads. The reason for this was that the increase of existing railways movement was ignored during many years in the Russian empire and newly constructed lines were poorly equipped. Therefore railway lacked freight cars at the end of the 90-s of the XIX century. For example, it lacked 739 locomotives and 25 265 cars in autumn 1896, and 1166 locomotives and 36777 cars in 1898. An average traffic growth required annual rolling stock increase by 6%. There was also a deficit of cars later on, as the capacity of car building enterprises was not completely used. The number of cars exceeded 50 thousand at the beginning of the XX century.

Key words: Ukraine, railways