When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian Federation established its own Ministry of Railways (MPS of Russia) on January 20, 1992, inheriting control of the railway network on Russian territory from the USSR's Ministry of Railways. It inherited management of 86,800 kilometers of railways.
Russia's railways took a major hit when the unified Soviet economy fell apart and industry and agriculture went into decline. Freight and passenger traffic plummeted, forcing the closure of many rail lines. These abandoned sections were either written off the Ministry's books or turned into industrial access roads.
Ruins of the railway station at Kirovsk-Murmansky station, September 15, 2015. In 1996, the Titan–Kirovsk section was transferred to JSCo Apatit, and passenger service was discontinued. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)
The 1990s saw just one major railway project: the Kizlyar-Kizil–Yurt (Sulak) bypass line, completed in 1997 in Dagestan. This 79-kilometer railway shortened the route from the Volga region to the Transcaucasian states and played a key role during the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya.
As a result, since 1991, something unprecedented happened in Russian railway history: for the first time in over 150 years, the railway network stopped growing and started shrinking instead. But this trend however wasn't just a Russian phenomenon. As other forms of transport developed, many countries experienced similar railway cutbacks by the end of the 20th century. Developed nations in Europe and America saw the biggest drops—the USA alone slashed its operational rail network by over 70% from 1975 to 2000. Russia's situation wasn't nearly as severe, though.
Railway electrification kept moving forward during the 1990s crisis. Ironically, lower traffic volumes made these upgrades easier to complete. Major electrified sections included: Volkhovstroy – Svir (direct current, 166 km); Volkhovstroy – Babaevo – Costa (direct and alternating current, 342 km); Idel – Belomorsk (69 km, alternating current); Belomorsk – Sumsky Posad (57 km); Konosha – Obozerskaya – Vonguda (400 km); Bui – Vologda (Paprikha) (111 km); Yelets – Stary Oskol – Stoilenskaya (209 km); Krasnodar (Enem I) – Novorossiysk (123 km), and others.
Electrification of the Moscow railway junction continued throughout the 1990s. Photo: Krasnoarmeysk station, first electric train departing for Moscow, November 22, 1994 (Source: pastvu.com)
The Trans-Siberian Railway saw the biggest advances, with electric power replacing diesel on three sections: Zilovo–Mogocha (236 km), Khabarovsk II–Guberovo (307 km), and Sibirtsevo–Ussuriysk (68 km).
During this period, Russia achieved another significant milestone by completing its first conversion of an extended railway section from direct to alternating current—the 377-kilometer Zimá–Irkutsk–Slyudyanka I section of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1995.
The first domestic serial passenger electric locomotive EP1-001, built in 1998, remains in service today (Ilanka station, Krasnoyarsk railway, March 30, 2022). Source: railgallery.ru
Meanwhile, in 1999, after years of downturn, industrial production began its gradual recovery. It was becoming clear that rail transport still operating like a Soviet-era state enterprise would struggle to adapt to market conditions as demand grew.
In response, the Russian Government approved a structural reform program for railway transport running through 2010. The program outlined three phases. The first stage (2001-2002) would separate regulatory and business functions while creating JSCo Russian Railways. The second stage (2003-2005) would establish subsidiary companies for specific activities, develop freight competition, and reduce cross-subsidization of passenger services. The third stage (2006-2010) would transfer most freight fleets to operating companies, sell subsidiary shares to private owners, create a separate passenger company, and establish regional commuter companies jointly with Russian regions, ensuring their break-even operation.
The new JSCo Russian Railways building on Kalanchevskaya Street in Moscow, built in 2004, became a symbol of structural reform in railway transport. Source: company.rzd.ru
JSCo Russian Railways was established on September 18, 2003 and took over railway management functions just two weeks later on October 1. Shortly thereafter, on March 9, 2004, the Ministry of Railways was restructured as the Federal Railway Transport Agency (Roszheldor) under the Ministry of Transport.
The start of industry reform didn't halt further railway infrastructure development. The first half of the 2000s saw the successful completion of several landmark construction projects. December 25, 2002, marked a historic date for the Trans-Siberian Railway when electrification of the final diesel-powered section—Bikin–Guberovo–Ruzhino–Sviyagino–Sibirtsevo (353 km) – was completed at Ruzhino station in the Far East. As for the BAM railway, a major milestone came on December 5, 2003, with the opening of the Severomuysky Tunnel, Russia's longest railway tunnel at 15,343 meters, which had been under construction since 1977.
The eastern entrance of the Severomuysky Tunnel and railway bypass overpass, April 2, 2015 (Source: Wikimapia.org)
Although Russia's railway network continued to shrink from 2000-2007, the first decade of the 21st century saw increased construction activity compared to the 1990s. Key projects included completion of the 122-kilometer Ledmozero–Kochkoma railway line in 2003, a project begun during the Soviet era. Railway connections were also built to the new ports of Olya (2005) and Ust-Luga (2008), along with a deep bypass around the Berezniki sinkhole—the Yayva–Chashkino section (2009)
The largest public railway infrastructure project of this period, however, was the 359-kilometer Neryungri–Aldan–Tommot line, the southern section of the Amur-Yakutsk mainline. Construction began in 1985, and the line entered temporary service in 2004 under JSC AK ZHDYA (the project was removed from the under-construction list in 2006).
Railway electrification efforts also continued during this period. Between 2000 and 2006, the 435-kilometer Idel–Svir section was electrified, completing the conversion of the entire St. Petersburg-Murmansk route to electric traction. The grandest electrification project involved the phased conversion of the Syzran–Saratov–Volgograd–Tikhoretskaya railway to alternating current, including the Volgograd junction. This was completed in two phases: from 2000 to 2001 (the Saratov–Petrov Val–Ilovlya–Volgograd–Kotelnikovo–Tikhoretskaya section, 1,000 km) and from 2004 to 2008 (the Syzran–Gromovo–Sennaya section, 200 km). The Saratov–Sennaya section had already been operating on electric traction since 1991.
A major milestone in Russian railway history came in 2009, when regular Sapsan high-speed train service began between Moscow and St. Petersburg on December 17, operating at speeds up to 250 km/h. This achievement followed extensive long-term infrastructure improvements along the main corridor of the Oktyabrskaya Railway.
Electric train EVS1-06 "Sapsan" on the Berezayka–Bologoe-Moskovskoye section, February 7, 2010. (Source: railgallery.ru.Photo by S. Vasiliev)
Overall, major efforts were undertaken during this period to attract passengers back to rail transport and reverse the declining ridership that followed the 2008 economic crisis. This led to the establishment of the Federal Passenger Company (FPC) on December 3, 2009, created from assets of the Federal Passenger Directorate, a JSCo Russian Railways division. The company began operations on April 1, 2010.
Meanwhile, in 2007-2008, Russian Railways ran a pilot program for electronic tickets on the Moscow–St. Petersburg "Yunost" train. The pilot proved successful, and electronic ticketing for long-distance trains rolled out across three routes on June 1, 2009. By 2018, electronic tickets made up over 51% of all seats sold nationwide, jumping to more than 80% by January 2024.
Freight rail saw major changes as well. The freight car industry completed its overhaul in 2010, creating around 100 active rolling stock operators (with roughly 1,800 on paper) and three major wagon repair companies (VRK-1, VRK-2, VRK-3) that operate nationwide.
Innovative articulated hopper car for grain transport with 25-ton axle load capacity; Shcherbinka, August 30, 2019. (Photo by Ya.Yu. Chibryakov)
The railway reform largely kept the railway engineering industry in business. As a result, this engineering sector proved to be one of the few that not only survived deindustrialization but actually expanded its capabilities.
These JSCo Russian Railways initiatives from the 2010s created the biggest stir:
First, a large-scale project to modernize JSCo Russian Railways' Eastern Polygon infrastructure has been underway since 2013. During the first stage of the project (2013-2022), more than 1,200 facilities were built, including social infrastructure, 5,000 km of track were reconstructed, and the transportation capacity of the Eastern Landfill reached 158 million tons in 2022.
Second, the company actively rolled out new passenger services, including interregional express trains using modern rolling stock—Lastochka electric trains (since 2011) and Strizh locomotive-hauled trains (since 2015). Additionally, 2019 saw the revival of tourist trains that were hugely popular during Soviet times but nearly disappeared in the 1990s. The retro Ruskeala Express started the revival—today these tourist trains run on 100 routes across 48 regions and about 70 cities. The company also completed major urban rail projects, including the world's first inner-city circular passenger line—the Moscow Central Ring (MCC)—which opened in 2016 using the reconstructed Small Ring of the Moscow Railway. In 2019, it launched the first two Moscow Central Diameters (MCD), with the more complex MCD-3 and MCD-4 following in 2023.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin in the cabin of an ES2G electric train during the opening ceremony of the Moscow Central Circle (MCC) on September 10, 2016. (Source: Moscow Government press service / mos.ru)
Third, in 2020, Russian Railways completed the conversion of Sakhalin Island's railway gauge from 1067 mm to the standard 1520 mm gauge used across Russia. Over 17 years, crews replaced more than 820 km of main tracks, 350 switches, 130 km of station tracks, 25 km of access tracks, and about 70 bridges.
JSCo Russian Railways managed to reverse the decline of the railway network inherited from the Soviet Ministry of Railways (MPS), which had shrunk by 2,300 km over twenty years (1992-2011) to 85,200 km. Moreover, in the 2010s, several projects were implemented for the construction of new public railway lines. The 2010s saw several major new public railway projects: the 48-km Adler–Krasnaya Polyana passenger line (2014), the Losevo I–Kamennogorsk (56 km) and Zhuravka–Millerovo (123 km) sections (2017), the 65-km Krasnodar railway bypass (2018), and the 41-km approach to the Crimean Bridge from Vyshestebliyevskaya station (2019).
The decade's biggest achievement, however, was completing the Amur-Yakutsk Railway. On June 28, 2019, JSC Amur-Yakutsk Railway Development Company (AK ZHDYA) put the 439-km Tommot–Nizhny Bestyakh section into permanent operation, ending five years of temporary service that began in 2014.
Nizhny Bestyakh railway station.(Source: gelio.livejournal.com )
Progress in electrifying railways dropped off markedly during the 2010s relative to previous decades. Beyond the MCC, another major project was the phased electrification of the Karymskaya–Olovyannaya–Borzya–Zabaikalsk line (at the Chinese border), completed between 2007 and 2021.
In 2018, Russian Railways hit a record freight turnover of 3.3 trillion ton-kilometers. That same year launched the second phase of Eastern Operating Domain infrastructure upgrades, running parallel to the first phase. Notably, freight volumes on the Eastern Operating Domain's key corridor along the BAM (Novy Urgal–Komsomolsk-on-Amur section) jumped from 6.6 million to 25.6 million tons between 1990 and 2023 — nearly a fourfold increase.
Alongside implementing Phase III of the Eastern Operating Domain development launched in 2024, high-speed rail construction ranks among the top priorities for Russia's transport sector. The first 679-kilometer high-speed rail line is planned to connect Moscow and St. Petersburg. JSCo Russian Railways is already constructing fifth and sixth tracks between Moscow's Leningradsky Station and the Alabushevo halt under its investment program — tracks designed for high-speed trains to race along.
In recent years, the railway sector has been actively developing and implementing digital technologies. A prime example of the successful digital transformation underway in rail transport was the launch of the first unmanned Lastochka train on the Moscow Central Circle on August 28, 2024. The industry's future is inconceivable without digital innovations such as the Internet of Things, big data, distributed ledgers (blockchain), artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and new data transmission technologies, including quantum communications.
A joint project of 1520International and the Institute for Transport Economics and Development (IEDT)
(based on the materials of JSC "IEDT" and the research results of Ya.Chibryakov)
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