There are such trips that if I knew where a difficult one would take, I would never go. But we could not refuse to accept the invitation to ride to one of the sections of the railway construction bypassing Ukraine. And let's go …
Kolesnikovka village, Kantemirovsky district, Voronezh region. A place of lots of surprises. The first is that the village is on the map, but in fact it is not. There is one house in the village, where a couple of old people live. And that's all. And a regiment of railway troops.
Pleased with the connection. Beeline reported that Ikhtutnet, MTS and Megafon happily greeted us in roaming … in Ukraine. And only "Tele2" had mercy by accepting us to the Rostov region. And thanks for that.
Roads … Well, they are not there either. There are areas where multi-ton dump trucks and trailers grind fat Voronezh black soil into the finest dust. And, God forbid, it will rain, it all turns into greasy mud. According to the law of meanness, the rain passed at night …
Nevertheless, having repeatedly bite into one place with a crowbar, we arrived at the location of the unit. They were waiting for us there. And the representative of the press service of the Western Military District, and colleagues from the Zvezda shopping center, very puzzled by the landscape. Colleagues were clearly not ready for such a situation and looked at their jeans and shoes with chagrin. And on our ankle boots with obvious envy.
However, we were provided with transportation. "Ural". And we set off on a voyage through the ocean of mud to the place where the canvas was assembled. We were followed by more cars with some kind of structures. But they drove past our site.
Such original tractor-based rail pavers. Made for themselves by military railroad workers. It can be seen in the second photo that the engine is almost twice as large as the native one.
Well, when we arrived, the packing was already underway.
The truck here plays the role of a pusher for a "sandwich" of three sets of rails. The weight of one set is 21 tons.
At the ARMY-2016 forum, we saw new devices for the movement of wheeled vehicles on rails. This is still an old model, without a gearbox. That is, to go forward, you need to turn the wheels back. In new ones - where you turn on the move, you go there.
On the other side of the embankment, an ant assembly work was going on.
By the way, behind the forest belt near the horizon is the former railway. On which no one drives now, because it is now a border …
The laying of the rails went on "one-two-three". On the count of "three" the rails on the bogies ended and the loading process began. The procedure is not less, but in some ways even more exciting than styling.
While we were filming all this, the commander-in-chief of the railway troops talked with the commanders …
Sometimes a comrade general shouted over two tractors from 150 meters. I asked, why is he so, maybe the regiment is behind schedule? “No, what are you? - the captain-lieutenant, accompanying us, told me - They are ahead of us! If they lagged behind, then this would be …"
It was not entirely clear to me what was happening, I kind of thought that the road was being built from point A to point B, moving forward. An, no. They work in several areas in parallel. But here the specialists already know better how to do it right.
The railway soldiers made an impression. Indeed, like ants, harmoniously, calmly, without screaming (and, lo and behold, without a mate) do their job. So, there is an opinion (and it is not only mine) that next year we will laugh three times at all the jokes of the Ukrainian junta associated with the termination of railway communication in this region.
For which we will say words of gratitude to the soldiers and officers of the railway troops of Russia.
