At the end of the 19th century railway construction and industrial development led to sharp increase in Moscow’s size and a rise in its population. The city’s rapid development required radical reorganization of urban and suburban public transport. The first project urban underground railway was drafted in 1901 by A.I.Antonovich together with two railway engineers, N.I.Golenevich and N.P.Dmitriev. Unfortunately the designers failed to arouse the city government’s interest and the project remained on paper. The 1902 project of two other civil engineers, P.I.Balinsky and E.K.Knorre contained a feasibility study of building “underground or elevated rapid railways off the street level in Moscow” and proposed a three-stage approach. It envisaged the construction of 67 km of elevated railway and 16 km of tunnels. It was planned that all stations would have their platforms on either side since the adjoining elevated railways and tunnels were to have two tracks. All tunnels were to be built with cast-in-situ linings, and metal crated elevated tracks were designed to be on foundations of precast piles. The key feature of this project was the original design of a three-storey Central Terminal on Vasilievsky Spusk the design of which would complement the Kremlin walls and the silhouettes of the adjacent cathedrals. In 1903, after thorough consideration, the Duma rejected the project.

The construction of an underground railway was once again on the agenda. In 1923, the Moscow City Council formed the Underground Railway Design Office at the Moscow Board of Urban Railways (Trams). They carried out preliminary studies and by 1928 had developed a project for the first route from Sokolniki to the city centre. A long period of technical examinations and coordination began during which it became clear that the projects developed were not adequate to meet the city’s needs. In July 1931 the critical situation of public transport was considered at a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. A decision was taken “to start immediately the development of a project for underground railways to provide adequate and cheap transport for the public”. A new body called the State Construction Department for the Design and Building of the Moscow Metropolitan Underground Railway (Metrostroy) was set up on 23 September under the terms of this decision. The development of a new project began.

From the very start Metrostroy came up against great difficulties because the development of the reconstruction plan for Moscow had not yet been completed. Since there was no time to wait, the designers of the general metro layout were forced to rely on the results of topographic and geological studies of the Moscow underground combining them with those directives of the Moscow reconstruction plan which were then available. Preliminary studies of the city showed that the most intelligent solution would be the development of an initial laying of lines to correspond to Moscow’s radial-circular layout. To ease pressure on overloaded surface transport, the underground routes were to be constructed in parallel with those on the surface. In January 1932 the plan of the first lines was approved and on 21 March 1933 the Soviet Government approved a layout of 10 lines with a total route length of 80 km.
The first 11.6 km route was to provide a service from Sokolniki to Krymskaya Square branching from Okhotny Ryad to Smolenskaya Square. By the end of 1933 Metrostroy employed 36,000 people while by the middle of the following year this figure had grown to 75,000.
Work was done mainly by hand since there was a shortage of pneumatic hammers and a lack of rock loaders.

The First Train

At the end of 1934, with the Severnoye depot still under construction, the first two cars were delivered there. The motor car, No. 1, was red and the second trailer car, No. 1001, was the color of sand. They became known as “A” stock.

On 15 October these cars were used on test runs of one of the tracks between Komsomolskaya and Sokolniki. Testing of the second track began in January 1935.

On 4 February 1935 the first train ran along the whole route and two days later delegates of the Seventh All Union Congress of Soviets became honorary metro passengers. Trains began regular trial runs on 19 February. Thousands of the most distinguished workers from the city’s enterprises were invited to travel in the metro during the trial runs.

Simultaneously, efforts were concentrated on checking and tuning the automatic interlocking systems, traction and step-down substations and local control centres. Train crews checked the profile of the route, the positioning of signalling devices and defined the correct operation mode of trains, while the station staff studied all the technical devices which made up the station equipment.

On 14 May 1935 a gala meeting dedicated to the start of the metro operations was held in the Column House of Unions. Several workers received awards for the successful construction of the metro. The Moscow Komsomol organisation was awarded the Order of Lenin. The metro became part of the People’s Railway Commissariat of the USSR and was named after L.M.Kaganovich, the People’s Commissar.
Hundreds of Muscovites spent the night of 15 May 1935 at the doors of the stations to be the first passengers, and at 7 a.m. the metro was opened for public use.

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