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Description:
Beautifully engraved Certificate from the famous Imperial Government of Russia Nicolas Railroad issued in 1869. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the Russian Czar's double headed eagle coat of arms. This item is hand signed and is over 131 years old. This railroad is named after the Russian Czar, Nicholas I and the history of Railroads and Russian Czar's are shown below:
Below is a scan of the reverse side of this document which is written in English and French. The Beginnings of Railways in Russia by Kevin Fink Due in large part to Russia's large land area and harsh conditions, transportation has always been a major problem for its people and government. In early times, waterways provided the majority of transportation for goods and passengers. Some roads were also built, but they were only usable at certain times of the year due to the weather, and were not good even then. Railroads, although experiencing a slow start, proved to be more efficient for transportation than either waterways or roads. Prior to the reign of Nicholas I, very little consideration had been given to railroads in Russia. A few mines and factories in the Urals used tramways to move ore or products but they used horses or men to pull the carts over short distances. Several proposals were made to build railways, but none were accepted until the Austrian engineer Franz Anton von Gerstner pushed through his proposal to build the St. Petersburg-Tsarskoe Selo Railway in 1836. This inaugurated the start of railways in Russia, and set the pattern for subsequent government attitudes about and policies on railway development. The early history of Russia was dominated by the river system. The rivers provided the fastest and most reliable means of transportation throughout the summer months, when roads were impassibly muddy. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were the golden age of river transport in Russia. Extensive canal systems were built, starting as early as 1709 with the Upper Volga waterway system. Peter the Great built the Vyshnii Volochek System to unite Moscow with St. Petersburg and give the interior the advantage of the access to the Baltic Sea. Paul I started the Mariinskii and Tikhvinskii Systems to further link St. Petersburg to the interior. These were finished in 1810 and 1811, respectively, under Alexander I. Although these systems were a great improvement to transportation, the movement of goods was still slow and uncertain. The trip from Rybinsk to St. Petersburg took 3 months via the Vyshnii Volochek System, 2 months via the Mariinskii, and 1 month via the Tikhvinskii. Although much faster, the Tikhvinskii route was narrow and treacherous, so that only small barges could travel. A big disadvantage of the river systems was that they could only be used when the rivers were not frozen. In southern Russia, the rivers froze from three to four months per year. In northern Russia, they froze from six to seven months per year. In addition, some of the routes, especially those around Moscow, were too shallow in the summer months for barges. These systems were thus only usable from four to six months per year. Traffic which didn't reach its destination in time would either spoil or have to be stockpiled until the next season. The complete voyage from Astrakhan and the Lower Volga to St. Petersburg often took two years to complete. The road system of the time was even worse. Those few roads that existed were too muddy to use much of the year, and often had broken bridges blocking them. Most roads were made with sand on top of dirt. These became swampy in wet weather and the sand formed drifts many feet high in dry, windy weather. The first real roads were started by Alexander I, who in 1817 started construction of the St. Petersburg-Moscow Chaussee, the country's first hard- surface road. This was finished in 1834, allowing travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg in only 10 days. However, this road was only suitable for expensive, nonbulky goods, since all traffic was in small carts which could carry less than 1000 pounds each. "As V.P. Gur'ev remarked, it was very inefficient to have 3 million carters going on trips in winter lasting sometimes as much as seventy days, each carter having a sledge carrying only 25 poods" (Haywood, 1969, p. 37). In 1833, Nicholas I formed a committee to study long-range plans for roads. "By a law of March 24, 1833, a general plan for building a network of major roads was promulgated. All the roads of the empire were to be divided into five classes and improved gradually be the central, provincial, and local authorities as funds and labor became available" (Haywood, 1969, p. 24). However, due to a lack of funds, engineers, and labor, nothing much happened. Despite the great problems with transportation, railways were not embraced by Russian leaders immediately. In fact, many members of the nobility raised vehement objections to the government's support of railways. Prominent among these were Count Kankrin, the Minister of Finance, and Count K. F. Toll, the Director of Ways and Communications. "Kankrin was an economist who considered that the welfare of the people would not benefit from the diversion into railway-building of capital which could be used to improve agriculture" (Westwood, 1964, p. 23). Toll's reasons weren't explicated, but probably involved the influence of one of his subordinates, Destrem, who was an ardent supporter of improved canal systems. The first railways in Russia were built by and for the mining and metallurgical industries. The first was an ore-carrying tramway built from 1763 to 1765 by K. D. Frolov at the Zmeinogorsk mine of the Kolyvano-Voskresenskie factories in the Altai. The next was a factory tramway built by A. S. Yartsev, head of the Olonets factories in Petrozavodsk in 1788, with the help of Scottish engineer Charles Gascoyne. The tramway was
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