Railways in

Belarus

Locomotive TU7A-2782 and train at Zaslonovo on the Minsk Children’s Railway.
The locomotive carries a logo marking the 50th Anniversary of the railway in 2005.

The first railway in present day Belarus reached Brest-Litovsk (present day Brest) from Warsaw in 1866, the first section of through route to Moscow completed in 1871. The Belarus network developed under the Russian Empire was naturally built to the Russian standard gauge of 1520mm.

From 1921 until the outbreak of the World War II the western part of the territory formed part of Poland. However, there were no significant railway developments in that part of the country during this time. After the war, the country took its present boundaries, to form the Bielorussian SSR of the Soviet Union.

Belarusian Railway came into being as an administration in its own right on the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

• BZD/BCh Belarusian Railway
• Minsk
  • Metro (Site in Belarusian)
  • Trams
• Minsk Children’s Railway tourist railway in Minsk operated by children in the manner of a main line railway. 4km, 750mm gauge, diesel hauled (Site in Russian and Belarusian)
• Mazyr trams (Tram information in Russian, English version of website contains no details of trams)
• Navapolatsk trams (Site in Russian)
• Vitsebsk trams (No website located at present)

© 2004-2019 Glyn Williams
Flag image from CIA World Factbook
Photo image by Hanna Zelenko from Wikimedia Commons