Russia’s first public railroad linked St. Petersburg to the suburb of Tsarskoye Selo, a major summer retreat of the Russian imperial family. Its construction began on May 1, 1836, under the supervision of Austrian engineer Franz Gerstner. The inauguration ceremony took place on October 30, 1837. A second leg of the project extended the railroad to the suburban Pavlovsk, the site of another imperial estate. But the construction of railroads in Russia did not assume a massive scale until the second half of the 19th century. In 1892, a West-Siberian railroad project was launched, later becoming part of the famous Trans-Siberian Railroad, according to the Web-site http://history.rzd.ru. Photo: A priest about to perform a service outside a church-car, on the West-Siberian Railroad, 1898.