Southwestern Railroad

a system formed by the railroad lines of Kiev, Zhitomir, Khmel’nitskii, Chernigov, and Vinnitsa oblasts, Ukrainian SSR, and by sections of lines in Sumy, Poltava, Cherkassy, Chernovtsy, and Rovno oblasts, Ukrainian SSR, in Kursk Oblast, RSFSR, and in Gomel’ Oblast, Byelorussian SSR. In 1976 the total length of the railroad was 4,574 km, or 3.3 percent of the length of the entire railroad network of the USSR. The railroad is administered from Kiev. It was founded in 1870 and organized in its present form in 1961.

The railroad has five divisions: Zhmerinka, Kazatin, Korosten’, Kiev, and Konotop. It is linked to the Byelorussian Railroad (Ovruch, Novobelitskaia, and Terekhovka stations), the Moscow Railroad (Khutor-Mikhailovskii and Vorozhba stations), the Southern Railroad (Vorozhba, Bakhmach, Nezhin, and Grebenka stations), the Odessa-Kishinev Railroad (Mironovka, Andrusovo, Ziatkovtsy, Vapniarka, and Mogilev-Podol’skii stations), and the L’vov Railroad (Kel’mentsy, Gusiatin, Podvolochisk, Lanovtsy, Zdolbunov, and Olevsk stations). The railroad connects the southern and southwestern USSR with the Central Region and the west and northwest.

The Southwestern Railroad provides through conveyance of export and import freight. It serves enterprises of the machine-building, chemical, and construction industries, as well as developed agricultural regions. At Kiev it connects with river transport on the Dnieper. In 1976 the total freight turnover of the railroad was 90.3 billion ton-km, or 2.7 percent of the total for the entire country. Mineral building materials and agricultural products constitute the largest portion of outgoing freight. Through freight comprises mainly coal, oil, ores, and metal building materials. In 1976 the railroad’s average freight-traffic density was approximately 20 million ton-km/km. Passenger traffic was 14.9 billion passenger-km, or 4.0 percent of the total for the entire country.

The equipment of the Southwestern Railroad has undergone considerable improvement. The principal trunk lines are double-tracked, and track facilities have been extended. Large freight and sorting stations have been built. Automatic block signaling is in use, and there is centralized traffic control. Service is provided by modern forms of traction, with electric traction accounting for 55 percent of total traffic.

The railroad was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1970.