International Railroad Discussion > Armenia, part 4. Yerevan Childrens Railway

Generally I prefer paper maps to GPS. On this trip I had very little success finding paper maps, and 90% of time I was just using GPS to find my way around.

One advantage of GPS, though, is that it labels all rail lines pretty clearly, so its easy to spot them all.

In Europe this is useful for spotting which cities have tram systems. The Caucasus nations no longer have trams, but on the GPS I saw the "Yerevan Children's Railway" which seemed worth a look.

I like to spot interesting things on the maps in cities, and head off on foot to find them. That was I get to see a nice transect of the city along the way, too. I generally don't like doing much research ahead of time. Sure, I could have Googled Yerevan Childrens Railway and gotten the full bio, known what to expect, whether it was in operation or not, etc. But I find life to be much more interesting if I just pretend the internet doesn't exist and head out walking.

The Childrens Railway took a while to find, I wandered through a 1/2 kilometer abandoned tram tunnel, which was open as a public passage. And into an amusement park that was closed for the season. Finally, using the "I am here" feature on the Pocket Earth app on my iPhone I was able to find the flights of stairs into the river gorge where the railway was.

And it was worth the trip. A charming little station, a trainset of a diesel locomotive and two open air cars that were in service (but presumably only operational in the summer), a decaying steam locomotive on display, and two abandoned 4-season passenger cars rotting in the trees.

Photos

1) The operating consist, locomotive and 2 cars

2) The steam locomotive, on display

3) The rotting passenger cars



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/18 23:58 by gobbl3gook.

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The train was a very respectable operation. The locomotive looked powerful enough to pull about 20 cars full of children, and the station was spacious enough to handle hundreds of passengers per hour.

And, though it was plainly past its heyday, it was still in a state of good repair. And looked as if it had been running in the past few months.

4) Locomotive badge

5) Locomotive cab

6) Car seating areas

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The steam locomotive had been out of service for quite a few years, it seemed.

7) Built in 1937?

8) Cab windows still opened and closed, but I'm guessing that a lot of the valves and things have gone missing. And there's a bit of rust.

9) It's all gotten painted regularly over the years, so the decay is pretty well arrested. I like to imagine many retired Russian Railway employees sitting on this bench while resting between coal throwing sessions as the train chugged up and down the gorge, pulling loads of children, in the 1960s and 70s, happily recounting their days as younger men shoveling coal in mainline service in the mountains of Armenia.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/18 22:58 by gobbl3gook.

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The rotting cars had been parked there for a long time. The sycamores and sumac?/tree of heaven? had grown up right next to the gauge, lifting up the track.

10) Parked in the weeds

11) Interesting patterns of peeling paint. These cars had been in service long enough to be painted quite a few times.

12) CCCP raised lettering, with the remains of a medallion.

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The insides of the rotting cars were in pretty poor shape, but still had original furnishings and what looked like a functioning stove.

13) Car interior

14) Coal stove

15) This appeared to be the builders information -- not Cyrillic, so imported from Eastern Europe?

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16) The track was in good shape. Looks like a couple ties had been replaced fairly recently. It only ran for 700 meters or so, but it went around a curve, had a suburban station, had some varied scenery with a canal, river views, etc. It may have run further in one or both directions in the past. I walked the ROW, and kept walking at the south end. Didn't see any signs of abandoned track, but didn't see any reason it couldn't have continued, either.

17) In 2016 I was in Lviv, Ukraine and spotted an interesting tram line on the map. I investigated, and found a park train there. Looking at photos of both sets of cars, they appear to be the same.

18) Comparison on GPS of the Yerevan Childrens Railway to the Lviv park train. Lviv is marked as a tram, Yerevan as a railroad. So if you're ever traveling around the former Soviet Union, look for either of these to see where the park trains are. Or if you're armchair touristing at home, it would be interesting to know which other USSR or Eastern Europe cities are still running park trains.

Photos taken on about Nov 1, 2017.

Location
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.1853644,44.5000397,15.81z/data=!5m1!1e4

A bit more info from a Google search:
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerevan_Children%27s_railway

TripAdvisor
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g293932-d7104259-r506401497-Yerevan_Children_s_Railway-Yerevan.html


Questions, comments?

Ted in OR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/18 14:47 by gobbl3gook.

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Bonus pics -- to get from downtown to the amusement park/childrens railway, I walked through what appeared to be an abandoned tram tunnel repurposed as a pedestrian route under a hill.

There were two tram tunnels/paths on the GPS, but only one was open.

It had been lined with a flimsy liner, but you can see how the liner is now bowed out at the bottom. I slapped the liner just to see what was going on, and I could hear and feel loose rubble behind it.

So, not a workable long-term re-lining project, but its working for now, and provides a nice flat, sheltered pedestrian route from one part of the city to another.

19) east entrance

20) deep in the tunnel



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/18 14:27 by gobbl3gook.

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In a way, I feel almost embarrassed to yet again thank you so much for posting an article with such detail. I am frustrated that I cannot pay you a compliment by way of enriching the thread with the addition of some further enlightenment. So, with that in mind, I say:

Thanks for posting this!

Don't underestimate the impact that your posts have. Readers of all kinds read these posts, and so many of them take away a little learning.

Yes, very interesting; thanks!

Andy

"Childrens Railways" were quite common in former Soviet republics. The name is a bit of a misnomer. They weren't so much designed to carry children. Rather they were run by children. This was a means to indoctrinate children into the Soviet worker system. We rode the fine Children's Railway in Budapest in 2013. No rotting equipment there. And serviceable steam but only used on certain days. The railway was 100% run by kids 12-16. Everything from ticket takers to guards. Only the driver was an adult. All nicely dressed in proper railway uniforms, saluting the train as it arrived and departed the various stations. As I recall, the line was about 12 miles in length. I assume the one you reference in Lviv is a similar but smaller operation. We have been to Lviv several times but didn't know of it's existence.

andersonb109 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Childrens Railways" were quite common in former
> Soviet republics. The name is a bit of a misnomer.
> They weren't so much designed to carry children.
> Rather they were run by children. This was a means
> to indoctrinate children into the Soviet worker
> system.


not really indoctrinate as much as provide training and experience (sorely lacking in the US in the 21st Century). Lots of people a generation ago and before learned that way, not quite officially one might say, on US railroads. Such interest is not allowed now.

After learning the basics of railroading on the Children's railway, they could go on to learning more at one of the full railroad programs in a technical university.



> Only the driver was
> an adult.

That is always the case on the German children's railways. In some of the other countries, the children run the engine too.

TAW

Hi All,

Thanks much for the comments, I'm glad you all are enjoying the series. (Sometime when I finish a post and take a look at it I think: "If I hadn't just done this I would be pretty jealous...")

& thanks for the info on how the Childrens Railways worked. I wish something like that had been around when I was a teenager in suburban St. Paul, MN in the 1980s (my turn to be jealous of the Armenian kids).

A few more pics of the operation -- the locomotive

21) Locomotive cab view

22) Generator

23) Front truck and air reservoir?

The "replication" of a larger locomotive makes a lot of sense when you think about the railroad as being a training grounds for future railworkers. And that front truck is certainly good for 60 kmh, probably faster. Just like the trackbed. Unfortunately, as I stated earlier, the entire system is only 700 meters long.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/18 14:45 by gobbl3gook.

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And a few more of the equipment in the passenger cars -- definitely good training for learning how to operate full size equipment.

24) Air valve?

25) Ventilation cover

26) Plenty of real-world railroading elements on the car end.

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TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> andersonb109 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > "Childrens Railways" were quite common in
> former
> > Soviet republics. The name is a bit of a
> misnomer.
> > They weren't so much designed to carry
> children.
> > Rather they were run by children. This was a
> means
> > to indoctrinate children into the Soviet worker
> > system.
>
>
> not really indoctrinate as much as provide
> training and experience (sorely lacking in the US
> in the 21st Century). Lots of people a generation
> ago and before learned that way, not quite
> officially one might say, on US railroads. Such
> interest is not allowed now.
>
> After learning the basics of railroading on the
> Children's railway, they could go on to learning
> more at one of the full railroad programs in a
> technical university.
>
>
>
Usually operated by the Young Pioneers, the Communist Party's youth movement. The railways were also know as Pioneer Railways.

> > Only the driver was
> > an adult.
>
> That is always the case on the German children's
> railways. In some of the other countries, the
> children run the engine too.
>
> TAW

Found a photo of he same locomotive and passenger cars in Latvia
https://mark5812.smugmug.com/ADLRailtours/ADL-Railtour-Latvia/i-M6Q5SBx/A

Ditto! Most interesting journey.