Launch of a tram in besieged Leningrad as a symbol of victory. Blockade tram

On April 15, 1942 in besieged Leningrad, after a four-month break, a passenger tram started.


Tramway was the only form of public transport in the besieged city. Revived after the harsh winter of 1941-1942. The freight tram was used to cleanse the city from garbage and sewage, to transport food, sand and ammunition, to deliver goods to enterprises. The passenger tram brought Leningraders to work and home. The tram has become a symbol of faith in Victory and hope for life!

INfrom the words of the tram driver Leonova M. Ivanova:
“It was a real holiday for people exhausted by the blockade. And it is impossible to convey how they met the first revived cars with tears in their eyes. I remember sitting down on „seven ", a train led across the city under shelling. And from that day, in spite of everything, she drove along with people some kind of general special celebration of life, the joy of renewal. "

INagonovchate tram park them. Blokhina E.F. Agapova:
“We went to the park as if it were a holiday, we knew they had to go to the line ... And here I am in the cab. I touched the controller handle, put it in the first position. And suddenly the carriage came to life. I cannot convey what I experienced at that moment. She took the tram out of the park. At the stops, people enter, laugh, cry with joy ... There were a lot of flights later. Difficult, dangerous under bombing and shelling.
But that flight, April 15, I will never forget. And I always remember the faces of those blockaded passengers "

Hthe traction substation No. 11 on the Fontanka gave the power to the grid in the Central District: the tram went along the main highway of the city. Here's how he writes about it historic day the "commander of the blockade tram" himself Mikhail Soroka: "I am walking along the Nevsky to the Palace Square. I know that the movement should begin at six. Why is there no one yet? I'm excited like a boy before an exam. And suddenly, from somewhere in the distance, a ringing sound is heard. Fancy? Not! But why doesn't the driver take his feet off the pedal? Someone got in the way? Unable to drive?
Involuntarily, he quickened his pace. I looked, and from the General Staff it was leaving for the Nevsky tram. Through the front glass of the motor car, the face of the carriage driver shining with joy is visible. And her foot every now and then squeezes the pedal of the bell, which calls people from everywhere - look, rejoice, we survived!

Hnot to convey the feelings of Leningraders who heard this ringing! People stood along the tram line, crying and laughing; unfamiliar before, they congratulated each other and hugged each other as close and dear ones. And this common joy, these smiles and thousands of happy eyes are dearer to us than any, the highest awards. "

Reconstructors of St. Petersburg also took part in the "Blockade tram" campaign. On April 15, at the initiative of public organizations and military history clubs, a tram of the 1930s, type MS, left. The trip was timed to the anniversary of the launch of a passenger tram in besieged Leningrad.

The tram was leaving for the front ...
Mother crumpled her handkerchief.
He squeezed my shoulder with his palm:
- Stay on your feet, son!

Crosswise paper window,
Sirens cold wheeze ...
In winter, a letter came:
He died at Srednaya Slingshot.

Hunger was like frost
Then spring, quinoa ...
And I didn’t believe it seriously, -
I expected letters from you.

There are flags on the map at school
The largest is to Berlin.
The years of war have passed
There are no worries or ruins.

Mother's husband is different -
Said, they say, life is life,
And to the church "for peace"
Gave it - you do not dream of her!

I'm already thirty five
I'm older than you, father!
I walk your granddaughter
I drive where the lead whistled.

Now they are at home, at home ...
Now there are gardens, orchards ...
And the granddaughter herself
Gathers flowers for you.

The tram went to the front
Twenty five years ago
And I have not forgotten anything ...
Flowers on the grave lie.

Valentin Vikhorev (C)

Thanks to the St. Petersburg reenactors for the opportunity!

On April 15, 1942, in besieged Leningrad, after a four-month break, trams started running again. It would seem that this is so life-affirming? After all, the tram in the city has always been one of the most popular and familiar types of transport. Until September 1941, tram traffic in the city was stable, about 800 trains, usually consisting of two cars, moved along 42 routes. Evacuation was also carried out by trams at the beginning of the war. After all, all the rest of the transport disappeared from the city in June: almost all of it was sent to the needs of the front, except for trolleybuses, which soon went out of order due to network disruptions.

Those who went to the rear traveled by tram to the railway stations, until on August 27 the railway communication with the mainland was interrupted. The trams brought to Palace Square were used to evacuate the collection of the Hermitage to the railway, with the subsequent reloading of cultural values \u200b\u200binto echelons. Freight trams, of which there were always a lot in Leningrad, delivered equipment intended for evacuation to railway stations, transported raw materials and fuel for factories and factories, food to shops and sand for the needs of the foundry.

With the beginning of the war, some of the tram cars were converted into ambulances - for transporting the wounded to the hospital. The passenger seats were removed and the stretcher mounts were installed - in three tiers, up to the ceiling. The carriages were equipped with blackouts and heating devices and hot water tanks were installed, so that, if necessary, it was possible to carry out urgent operations right in the carriage while it was moving.

In September 1941 fighting moved so close to the city that defensive lines were laid across the territory of the Leningrad outskirts. Near the tram park named after Konyashin, pillboxes and barriers were built, and the territory near the tram park. Kotlyakov was mined: the front came too close. The final stop of one of the tram lines - Sosnovaya Polyana station - was captured by enemy troops, on the other - in Rybatskoye - the headquarters of the 55th Army of the Leningrad Front was located.

In addition, by November, the contact network was damaged in places and some of the routes ceased to function. Power outages have also become more frequent. “Back in September, a decree was issued on energy saving,” says chief Researcher of the Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Vladimir Afanasyev ... - Heating was not supplied to the houses, the water supply stopped working, they saved on lighting, many enterprises curtailed their work, and where the process cannot be stopped, they installed gasoline, gas and diesel generators, their own block stations. On November 17, most consumers were disconnected from electricity. " Nevertheless, individual trams continued to carry cargo and the wounded, and in some places passenger traffic was also preserved.

The trams finally stopped on December 8, 1942. The record of the duty engineer of the energy service of the tram control has been preserved about this: “The power supply stopped in the morning on 08.12.1941. The movement did not resume. 52 tram trains that left that day remained on the line. "

On January 3, 1942, all electrical substations were finally mothballed. What this meant for Leningraders is known only to those who survived the blockade. On stiff, swollen legs from hunger, barely moving from weakness, they had to overcome the distances from home to work and back all the terrible blockade winter of 1941-1942, and also go to the Neva for water, and stand in endless lines every day for bread , and many are still in kindergarten and back, with children. Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich wrote in their "Blockade Book" as follows: “The city has become pedestrian. Distances have become reality. They were measured by the strength of their legs. Not in time, as before, but in steps. Sometimes the number of steps. "

The trams stood in the middle of the street, where they were caught by a power outage - dead, dark, with broken glass. “Where the tram or trolleybus stopped, it stood with a snow-ice cap,” says the blockade Konstantin Alekseevich Korshunov, born in 1934. “And there were corpses everywhere. Nobody buried anyone - the corpses were taken out in cars and burned. "

In January-February and March 1942, tens of thousands of people died every month, the mortality rate reached 500-560 per thousand. In the conditions of a de-energized city, in which sewage was poured directly into the courtyards all winter.All this, with the approach of spring, when the snow begins to melt, threatened with massive epidemics. Therefore, the question arose about the need to radically improve the sanitary situation in Leningrad. The State Defense Committee in February 1942 decided to clean up the city. All who could still work were put on their feet. In March 1942, the first Sunday cleaning work took place, and at the end of the month, by the decision of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council, the entire working population, including schoolchildren, was mobilized to clean the streets. But how to cleanse the city if there is nothing to take out snow and garbage mixed with sewage? Trucks, of which there were so few left, could barely cope with the removal of corpses.

The city needed a tram. Even in winter, all the forces of the employees of the Tram and Trolleybus Administration were thrown into the restoration of tram traffic. Almost 90% of rolling stock repairmen, electricians in the energy service, and road maintenance workers during the blockade were women and teenagers. It was necessary to restore almost half of the city's contact network - about 150 km. And on March 8, 1942, the first freight trams returned to the line, and those to which, instead of passenger cars, open platforms were attached, onto which they loaded garbage, ice and snow. With their help, just before the warming, the city coped with cleaning the streets from sewage. By mid-April, about 1 million tons of garbage, sewage and ice were removed from the streets. The epidemic no longer threatened Leningrad.

And since April 15, an almost incredible thing has happened - passenger trams have again gone through the streets of the besieged city! This is how he later wrote about this historic day in his book. head of the Tram and Trolleybus Administration Mikhail Khrisanfovich Soroka: “I walk along the Nevsky to the Palace Square. I know that the movement should start at six. Why is there no one yet? I'm excited like a boy before an exam. And suddenly, from somewhere in the distance, a ringing sound is heard. Fancy? Not! But why doesn't the driver take his feet off the pedal? Someone got in the way? Unable to drive? Involuntarily, he quickened his pace. I looked, and from the General Staff it was leaving for the Nevsky tram. Through the front glass of the motor car, the face of the carriage driver shining with joy is visible. And her foot every now and then squeezes the pedal of the bell, which summons people from everywhere - look, rejoice, we survived!

It is impossible to convey the feelings of Leningraders who heard the ringing of the first blockade tram! People stood along the tram line, crying and laughing; unknown before, they congratulated each other and hugged each other as the closest and dearest. And this common joy, these smiles and thousands of happy eyes are dearer to us than any, the highest awards. "

Little-known fact: during the blockade, the tram was paid, the fare was 15 kopecks, as in the pre-war period. Such a ticket price remained until the 50s, except for those lines where the tram went far out of town. In such cases, the route was divided into 2-3 tariff zones.

The blockaded children were completely happy.“When the tram was started up again in the city, the guys and I took turns racing with him on the only scooter,” recalls Pavel Pavlovich Kolanov, born in 1939. - I ended up in the police, and my mother was given a certificate that I was a homeless child ”.

« With great joy I remember how the first tram went after all this horror, - says Zinaida Ignatievna Staroverova, who was 7 years old in 1942. - Only one trailer, but how it rang! People rejoiced, cried with happiness, kissed each other ... ".

On April 15, 1942, trams entered the line on only five routes. More routes could not be opened due to a shortage of electricity entering the city. But where did the electricity come from for these five routes? After all, the most severe economy continued!

“At least trams were launched on each route,” says military historian Vladimir Afanasiev ... - The fuel line laid along the bottom helped out, which was put into operation on July 18, 1941, and its productivity was 300-350 tons of fuels and lubricants per day. Now it is difficult to say how much it was possible to transport through it in reality, but it was and functioned. Plus a submarine power cable from the Volkhovskaya hydroelectric power station, laid along the bottom and working almost all the time of the blockade. In addition, the workers of those enterprises that were mothballed were used in peat mining on the right bank of the Neva: they extracted fuel for five thermal power plants that worked for defense needs. And in the spring, when navigation opened, the fuel tanks were lowered along a slipway into the water, and then towed along the Road of Life by ships, since oil products are lighter than water and could be towed by swimming. "

The launch of the trams was not only an incredible joy and a sign of the coming victory for Leningraders. It became a serious psychological blow to the enemies besieging the city. One of the prisonersgermans, Lance corporal, artilleryman Hans Volckenhorst, said later: “There, over Leningrad, some strange blue flashes were running through the clouds. Not rockets, no, something completely different! Damn it ... they started the tram! In Leningrad, in the seventh month of the blockade?! .. Why did we freeze here all winter? Why did we shout about the inevitable death of the residents of the city, about our victory, if they ... started the tram ?! "

By the summer of 1943, trams were carrying passengers on 15 routes.

At present, in memory of the blockade tram, the memorial "Blockade Flight" is held annually on April 15, on which wartime trams leave from the Museum of City Electric Transport.

Tatiana Trofimova

At the end of this week, on January 27, St. Petersburg and the whole country celebrate the 74th anniversary of the lifting of the blockade of Leningrad. MIR 24 begins a series of publications of its own special project, Remember the Blockade.

On April 15, 1942, in besieged Leningrad, after a four-month break, trams started running again. It would seem that this is so life-affirming? After all, the tram in the city has always been one of the most popular and familiar types of transport. Until September 1941, tram traffic in the city was stable, about 800 trains, usually consisting of two cars, moved along 42 routes. Evacuation was also carried out by trams at the beginning of the war. After all, all the rest of the transport disappeared from the city in June: almost all of it was sent to the needs of the front, except for trolleybuses, which soon went out of order due to network disruptions.

Those who went to the rear traveled by tram to the railway stations, until on August 27 the railway communication with the mainland was interrupted. The trams brought to Palace Square were used to evacuate the collection of the Hermitage to the railway, with the subsequent reloading of cultural values \u200b\u200binto echelons. Freight trams, of which there were always a lot in Leningrad, delivered equipment intended for evacuation to railway stations, transported raw materials and fuel for factories and factories, food to shops and sand for the needs of the foundry.

With the beginning of the war, some of the tram cars were converted into ambulances - for transporting the wounded to the hospital. The passenger seats were removed and the stretcher mounts were installed - in three tiers, up to the ceiling. The carriages were equipped with blackouts and heating devices and hot water tanks were installed, so that, if necessary, it was possible to carry out urgent operations right in the carriage while it was moving.

In September 1941, hostilities moved so close to the city that defensive lines were laid across the territory of the Leningrad outskirts. Near the tram park them. Konyashin, pillboxes and barriers were built, and the territory near the tram park. Kotlyakov was mined: the front came too close. The final stop of one of the tram lines - Sosnovaya Polyana station - was captured by enemy troops, on the other - in Rybatskoye - the headquarters of the 55th Army of the Leningrad Front was located.

In addition, by November, the contact network was damaged in places and some of the routes ceased to function. Power outages have also become more frequent. “Back in September, a decree was issued to save electricity,” says Vladimir Afanasyev, chief researcher at the Central Museum of the Russian Armed Forces. - Heating was not supplied to the houses, the water supply stopped working, they saved on lighting, many enterprises curtailed their work, and where the process cannot be stopped, they installed gasoline, gas and diesel generators, their own block stations. On November 17, most consumers were disconnected from electricity. " Nevertheless, individual trams continued to carry cargo and the wounded, and in some places passenger traffic was also preserved.

The trams finally stopped on December 8, 1942. The record of the duty engineer of the energy service of the tram control has been preserved about this: “The power supply stopped in the morning on 08.12.1941. The movement did not resume. 52 tram trains that left that day remained on the line. "

On January 3, 1942, all electrical substations were finally mothballed. What this meant for Leningraders is known only to those who survived the blockade. On stiff, swollen legs from hunger, barely moving from weakness, they had to overcome the distances from home to work and back all the terrible blockade winter of 1941-1942, and also go to the Neva for water, and stand in endless lines every day for bread , and many still go to kindergarten and back, with children. Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich wrote in their "Book of Blockade" as follows: “The city has become pedestrian. Distances have become reality. They were measured by the strength of their legs. Not in time, as before, but in steps. Sometimes the number of steps. "

The trams stood in the middle of the street, where they were caught by a power outage - dead, dark, with broken glass. “Where the tram or trolleybus stopped, it stood with a snow-ice cap,” says the blockade Konstantin Alekseevich Korshunov, born in 1934. “And there were corpses everywhere. Nobody buried anyone - the corpses were taken out in cars and burned. "

In January-February and March 1942, tens of thousands of people died every month, the mortality rate reached 500-560 per thousand. In the conditions of a de-energized city, in which sewage was poured directly into the courtyards all winter. All this, with the approach of spring, when the snow begins to melt, threatened with massive epidemics. Therefore, the question arose about the need to radically improve the sanitary situation in Leningrad. The State Defense Committee in February 1942 decided to clean up the city. All who could still work were put on their feet. In March 1942, the first Sunday cleaning work took place, and at the end of the month, by the decision of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council, the entire working population, including schoolchildren, was mobilized to clean the streets. But how to cleanse the city if there is nothing to take out snow and garbage mixed with sewage? Trucks, of which there were so few left, could barely cope with the removal of corpses.

The city needed a tram. Even in winter, all the forces of the employees of the Tram and Trolleybus Administration were thrown into the restoration of tram traffic. Almost 90% of rolling stock repairmen, electricians in the energy service, and road maintenance workers during the blockade were women and teenagers. It was necessary to restore almost half of the city's contact network - about 150 km. And on March 8, 1942, the first freight trams returned to the line, and those to which, instead of passenger cars, open platforms were attached, onto which they loaded garbage, ice and snow. With their help, just before the warming, the city coped with cleaning the streets from sewage. By mid-April, about 1 million tons of garbage, sewage and ice were removed from the streets. The epidemic no longer threatened Leningrad.

And since April 15, an almost incredible thing has happened - passenger trams have again gone through the streets of the besieged city! This is how the head of the Tram and Trolleybus Administration Mikhail Khrisanfovich Soroka later wrote about this historic day in his book: “I am walking along the Nevsky to Palace Square. I know that the movement should start at six. Why is there no one yet? I'm excited like a boy before an exam. And suddenly, from somewhere in the distance, a ringing sound is heard. Fancy? Not! But why doesn't the driver take his feet off the pedal? Someone got in the way? Unable to drive? Involuntarily he added his step. I looked, and from the General Staff it was leaving for the Nevsky tram. Through the front glass of the motor car, the face of the carriage driver shining with joy is visible. And her foot every now and then squeezes the pedal of the bell, which summons people from everywhere - look, rejoice, we survived!

It is impossible to convey the feelings of Leningraders who heard the ringing of the first blockade tram! People stood along the tram line, crying and laughing; unknown before, they congratulated each other and hugged each other as the closest and dearest. And this common joy, these smiles and thousands of happy eyes are dearer to us than any, the highest awards. "

Little-known fact: during the blockade, the tram was paid, the fare was 15 kopecks, as in the pre-war period. Such a ticket price remained until the 50s, except for those lines where the tram went far out of town. In such cases, the route was divided into 2-3 tariff zones.

Photo: Anatoly Garanin, RIA Novosti

The blockaded children were completely happy. “When the tram was started up again in the city, the guys and I took turns racing with him on the only scooter,” recalls Pavel Pavlovich Kolanov, born in 1939. “I ended up in the police, and my mother was given a certificate that I was a homeless child.”

“I remember with great joy how the first tram went after all this horror,” says Zinaida Ignatievna Staroverova, who was 7 years old in 1942. - Only one trailer, but how it rang! People rejoiced, cried with happiness, kissed each other ... ".

On April 15, 1942, trams entered the line on only five routes. More routes could not be opened due to a shortage of electricity entering the city. But where did the electricity come from for these five routes? After all, the most severe economy continued!

“A minimum of trams were launched on each route,” says military historian Vladimir Afanasyev. - The fuel line laid along the bottom helped out, which was put into operation on July 18, 1941, and its productivity was 300-350 tons of fuels and lubricants per day. Now it is difficult to say how much it was possible to transport through it in reality, but it was and functioned. Plus a submarine power cable from the Volkhovskaya hydroelectric power station, laid along the bottom and working almost all the time of the blockade. In addition, the workers of those enterprises that were mothballed were used in peat mining on the right bank of the Neva: they extracted fuel for five thermal power plants that worked for defense needs. And in the spring, when navigation opened, the fuel tanks were lowered along a slipway into the water, and then towed along the Road of Life by ships, since oil products are lighter than water and could be towed by swimming. "

The launch of the trams was not only an incredible joy and a sign of the coming victory for Leningraders. It became a serious psychological blow to the enemies besieging the city. One of the captured Germans, corporal, artilleryman Hans Volkenhorst, said later: “There, over Leningrad, some strange blue flashes were running through the clouds. Not rockets, no, something completely different! Damn it ... they started the tram! In Leningrad, in the seventh month of the blockade ?! Why have we been freezing here all winter? Why did we shout about the inevitable death of the residents of the city, about our victory, if they ... started the tram ?! "

By the summer of 1943, trams were carrying passengers on 15 routes.

At present, in memory of the blockade tram, the memorial "Blockade Flight" is held annually on April 15, on which wartime trams leave from the Museum of City Electric Transport.

Tatiana Trofimova

In the Kirovsky district of St. Petersburg, on Stachek Avenue, there is an unusual historical monument - a blockade tram.

That's what I want to tell about on the eve of the holiday - the 70th anniversary of the complete lifting of the blockade of Leningrad.
The official opening of the monument took place on September 8, 2007.
Several meters of rails were used as a pedestal for the monument, installed where defensive structures were located during the blockade. Retrovagon MS series Retrovagon MS series restored by restorers in the smallest detail. It was these trams that ran along the streets of the besieged city. The tram on route 12 became a monument to the heroic tram driver.

The St. Petersburg tram has a not so long history as the Kiev or Moscow one. It emerged only in 1907, but in the late 1980s the tram network of Leningrad reached its largest scale, becoming the largest in the world, for which it was included in the Guinness Book of Records.
However, the most glorious pages of the history of the St. Petersburg tram fall on the period of the Great Patriotic War. In 1941, the Leningrad tram was the largest transport company in the city. There were 1835 carriages on 43 routes daily. The route network consisted of over 700 kilometers and connected all areas of the city and some of the then suburbs (Ozerki, Ligovo and Strelna, Rzhevka, the villages of Murzinka and Rybatskaya) with the city center.
On September 8, 1941, Nazi troops captured the city of Shlisselburg, thus closing the blockade ring around Leningrad. By this day, there were 2.5 million inhabitants in the city.
Almost all transportation of passengers and goods fell on the shoulders of trams.
Soldiers were transported on tram cars to the front line, which ran just a few kilometers from the city, just near the monument, and the wounded were taken back in special ambulances.
During the blockade, about four and a half thousand people worked in tram parks and on lines. Many lived right at work, so kindergartens were even set up in the tram fleet. I had to work 18 hours a day.
At the beginning of the 20th century, trams had their own power plant, but by 1941 they received all their electricity mainly from thermal power plants located within the city. With the outbreak of the war, power plants were converted to coal, then to peat, but when the blockade closed in September, they began to switch to firewood.
However, on December 8, 1941, due to a shortage of electrical power caused by the blockade, the Leningrad tram stopped operating. The power outage happened without warning, so many cars stopped right on the line and stayed in the middle of the city until spring !!!
Freight trams went on March 7, 1942, from that time on the restoration of the tracks destroyed by bombs and shells.
Passenger traffic was restored on April 15, 1942 - then 116 tram trains entered five routes, which were produced in Leningrad itself at the Kirov plant.
The drivers and conductors were mostly women and children. Many of them wore uniforms - dark blue jackets with shoulder straps, which depicted wings, a hammer and a wrench.
The duties of the conductors included not only collecting a fare of 15 kopecks, checking documents, but also evacuating passengers during the shelling that had begun. So, on June 15, 1942, the eighteen-year-old carriage driver Agafya Gerasimova brought a damaged train to the park, one of the cars of which was disfigured beyond recognition. Fortunately, there were no casualties: as soon as shells began to explode nearby, Agafya Gerasimova stopped the tram and ordered the passengers to immediately take refuge in a bomb shelter.

On November 18, 1942, trams were launched on five more routes, in 1943 Leningraders could use 13 routes, and by the end of the goal the number of routes increased to 20.
And in January 1944, when the blockade was lifted - simultaneously with the roar of the salute, the train drivers also called the bells. In this way, they saluted the arrival of this long-awaited day.
During the years of the blockade, the tram industry of Leningrad suffered enormous damage, about 4.5 thousand workers and employees of the TTU went into the ranks of the Red Army, many of whom never returned. In Leningrad itself, 57 city tram workers were killed or died of wounds, 211 trammen were wounded or contused. The enemy completely destroyed 2 substations, 25 service buildings, damaged 1,065 trams, 153 carriages were completely destroyed, 13% of the tracks were out of order.
Now the number of tram lines in St. Petersburg is rapidly decreasing, but in vain !!! After all, this is a memory !!! And how pleasant it is to ride a tram through the city - just like that, without haste, admiring the beauty of St. Petersburg.

In the first winter of the war, Leningrad was left without a tram service. Tram depot workers performed feats of labor to preserve traction substations. In the spring, the army of Leningraders cleared the streets of snow, and on March 8 freight trams drove through the city. On April 15, passenger traffic was resumed. Until now, at the nab. On the Fontanka River 3a, there is a memorial plaque "TO THE FEAT OF TRAMMERS IN BLOCKAD LENINGRAD", which reads "After the harsh winter of 1941-1942, this traction substation gave energy to the grid and ensured the movement of the revived tram."

On April 15, 1942, in besieged Leningrad, the city tram started working again. At the very beginning of the blockade, when the city began to lack electricity, the carriages froze in the streets, not having time to reach the depot. It is difficult to imagine how much strength and determination it took Leningraders to revive the tram. And they succeeded. It was possible to prove that they are alive, that they will not surrender. We have collected for you excerpts from the memories of the blockade, who on that spring day again heard the long-awaited call.

“The city has become pedestrian. Distances have become reality. They were measured by the strength of their legs. Not in time, as before, but in steps. Sometimes the number of steps. "
"Blockade Book", A. Adamovich, D. Granin
“With our own money, we bought rubber bandages at the pharmacy, which are usually used to bandage athletes' ligaments, smeared the pipe with red lead, which, fortunately, was enough, wound a bandage around this place, again smeared red lead, and wrapped it tightly on top with so-called strong keeper tape. From above - again with red lead. This method of treatment fully justified itself ... So water cooling was restored at most substations: Klinskaya, Central, Nekrasovskaya, Lesnoy and others ... "Many years later, in the 1980s, water supply pipes were changed at many substations and the locksmiths were very surprised by the strange" pipe patches "that have stood for over 40 years".
Physicist L.A. Sena

“February 1942. The fuel situation began to improve. The 5th CHP was launched and generates 8 thousand kilowatts on February 26, and 14 thousand on March 13. The bureau of the regional party committee makes a decision: to resume the movement of the tram. March 8 - to start up the cargo, April 15 - passenger routes. Dozens of kilometers of tracks, 500 kilometers of overhead lines, hundreds of wagons in short term were put in order. "
From the memoirs of A. Marinin, director of hydroelectric power station No. 5
He woke up the Leningraders in April 1942 Great Patriotic War, history, leningrad, blockade, transport
“I looked, and from the General Staff building I was leaving for the Nevsky tram. Through the front glass of the motor car, the face of the carriage driver shining with joy is visible. And her foot every now and then squeezes the pedal of the bell, which calls from everywhere people - look, rejoice, we survived! "

He woke up the Leningraders in April 1942 The Great Patriotic War, history, Leningrad, blockade, transport
“Despite all the cold weather, bombs, damned fascists, we had to make a holiday in our city, please the tired Leningraders, bring traffic to the streets. And movement is life. It was not even a holiday in our park that was especially memorable that day - we knew that he would come and were preparing for it. The most joyful thing was to see passers-by who slowly turned around at the familiar sound of an approaching tram. To see the incredulous, surprised eyes of people and somewhere in the very depths of these eyes the already forgotten smile of Leningraders. "
Tram driver of the tram park named after Leonova A. N. Vasilieva
“We went to the park as if it were a holiday, we knew they had to go to the line ... And here I am in the cab. I touched the controller handle, put it in the first position. And suddenly the carriage came to life. I cannot convey what I experienced at that moment. She took the tram out of the park. At the stops, people enter, laugh, cry with joy ... There were a lot of flights later. Difficult, dangerous under bombing and shelling. But that flight, April 15, I will never forget. And I always remember the faces of those blockaded passengers. "
Tram driver of the tram park named after Blokhina E. F. Agapova
He woke up the Leningraders in April 1942 The Great Patriotic War, history, Leningrad, blockade, transport
“And the unusual tram of the spring of 1942 is ringing, ringing, passing along Nevsky. The winning tram, the legendary tram! "
"Leningrad acts", P.N. Luknitsky
He woke up the Leningraders in April 1942 The Great Patriotic War, history, Leningrad, blockade, transport
“During the blockade, we all understood what such a familiar thing from childhood as a tram is for us ... We all remember these hanging, twisted with a bundle of wires, shot, filled with snowdrifts carriages. And then you did an unheard-of work in these conditions. With weak hands, exhausted, then you raised the contact network and gave the opportunity to run again to a simple Leningrad tram car. It was for us a symbol of rebirth, a symbol of life. We ran, we were also weak, but we ran on our fragile, swollen legs behind this car. I remember how they shouted: "Call again!" This tram car was such a joy! "
Writer V.K. Ketlinskaya
He woke up the Leningraders in April 1942 The Great Patriotic War, history, Leningrad, blockade, transport
“By the night of the 15th… it was a damp April night with low clouds. Everything was as usual, but there, over Leningrad, some strange blue flashes were running through the clouds. “Kurt,” I said, “what is this strange illumination, aren’t the Russians going to use a new secret weapon?” “Damn it, Volkenhorst, they started the tram.” They started the tram in the seventh month of the blockade! .. I wondered: why did we freeze here all winter, why did we shout about the inevitable death of the city's residents if they let the tram go? "
Hans Volckenhorst, corporal, artilleryman
“1944, January 7. It looks like the city is living out the last months of the blockade. I remember the general jubilation of the Leningraders when, for the first time after a 5-month break, trams rumbled through the streets. It was April 15, 1942. And today the tram has already become a common occurrence, and when you have to wait for more than 5 minutes, it causes discontent. "
From the diary of Vladimir Ge

“I don’t really like to use the so-called“ loud words ”unnecessarily, but for what Leningrad trams did in the days of the Great Patriotic War, I will not find any other definition but a feat…”.
Head of the Tram and Trolleybus Department M.Kh. Soroka