rails in what would become the Chor- nobyl Exclusion Zone. Not all trains were that lucky, however. As the hours ticked by, the equipment stored in railyards like the one in Yaniv became more and more contaminated with radiation. Lo- comotives, passenger coaches, and work equipment were all abandoned, deemed too toxic to be operated. Some 29 years later their rusted-out hulks still sit, oc- cupying tracks that have trees growing through their middles. It is, in every sense of the term, a railroad graveyard.
THE RADIOACTIVE RAILROAD
After the Chornobyl disaster, the Ovruch to Chernihiv line was split into pieces. The eastern portion of the line closest to Chernihiv had lower levels of contamination and remains active. To this day, regular trains operate from Chernihiv to Iolcha, which is just over the Dneiper River and in the territory of Belarus. Only special trains operate beyond Iolcha, carrying plant employees to the station at Semikhody, making no other stops. All of the stations after Iol- cha to Semikhody were closed and aban- doned after the 1986 disaster. The length of track located in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone from Semik- hody to Vilcha is under the jurisdiction of the Chornobyl plant. A few working diesel locomotives were posted to Yaniv, and operate within this zone whenever needed. It has, however, been several
YANIV
years since a train has moved any dis- tance west of Yaniv, and trees have be- gun to grow between the rails. Vilcha, on the western portion of the
line, is a checkpoint into the 30 kilometer Exclusion Zone, and its train station was technically still open until 2013, though there was no passenger service. The 44 kilometers of track east of Vilcha all the way to Ovruch are technically still in ser- vice, but are essentially abandoned. Re- alistically speaking, the first 85 kilome-
BELOW: Signs in English and Ukranian guard the checkpoint into the Thirty Kilometer Exclusion Zone. BOTTOM: One of the few working pieces of equipment in the Yaniv railway “graveyard” is this Soviet-built TEM2 diesel locomotive, now wearing the Ukrainian tryzub. It is available for any jobs required of it in the Chornobyl zone, in between Vilcha and Semikhody. It will eventually die here with the rest, as removing it from the zone is prohibited due to radioactive contamination. Built by the thousands between 1967 and 1989, the resemblance to an American road switcher is not accidental.
40 APRIL 2015 •
RAILFAN.COM
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