TCh-1 Avtovo & TCh-2 Dachnoye

In this story, unfortunately, I will have to use other people's photographs - no one will let me take pictures in the depot.

The TCh-1 Avtovo metro depot was opened in December 1955. This is the first metro depot in Leningrad and the only depot that, from 1967 to 1972, before the opening of TCh-3 Moskovskoye, served three metro lines at once. According to the standards verified by many years of practice, each metro line must be served by its own depot, and if the line is longer than 20 km, then two depots at both ends of the line.

It differs in that since 1977 it has not been at a dead end at the end of the line, but on the stretch between the stations Leninsky Prospect and Avtovo. The depot is connected with the station Avtovo by a double-track connecting branch. Its park tracks are also adjoined by the tracks of the TCh-2 Dachnoe repair depot.

Both depots are located on the same territory. The repair depot TCh-2 Dachnoe was opened on June 30, 1970 and since then has been serving trains on all metro lines of Leningrad and Saint-Petersburg.

Let's go back to TCh-1 Avtovo. For its construction, a site of more than 52 hectares was allocated, where the electric depot itself, a warehouse for the material and technical supply service, workshops for signaling and communication services, tunnel structures, electrical substations and networks, sanitary and escalator services were sequentially introduced. Has its own diesel locomotive depot.

The depot has an open-type service station with two platforms. Metro employees can reach it on some trains from the station Avtovo.

The depot has a special long straight track for checking trains after repairs before releasing them on the line. Any breakdown on the line is fatal for the movement of the entire line, therefore, as far as possible, trains are tried to be checked at the depot.

If you believe the bloggers who were in this depot on excursions, there is also a special path for cutting old cars. I don’t know if it’s true or not.

In the Avtovo depot, one of the episodes of the film "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: The Twentieth Century Begins" was filmed. The tunnel portal played the role of a London Underground tunnel.

In the photographs I counted 43 tracks in the main building of the depot, but I could be wrong, suddenly there are even more of them.

Quite a large depot.

Interestingly, the freight car in the depot (middle photo) is signed as belonging to TCh-3 Moskovskoye.

Of course, train washing is also available.

Now about the repair depot TCh-2 Dachnoye. An analogue of the Moscow Electric Rolling Stock Repair Plant, it was opened on June 30, 1970 at the site next to the Avtovo depot. Today, the Dachnoye depot is carrying out medium and overhaul repairs of the cars of the Saint-Petersburg metro.

The first stage of the Dachnoye depot became a platform for lifting repairs of metro cars on the production line. The second stage of the depot with production lines for medium and overhaul of carriages was opened in 1976. Metro cars began to undergo medium repairs at the Dachnoye depot in December 1976, major repairs began only in 1979.

Here, on the territory of TCh-2 Dachnoe, there is a gate with a railway (facing the Avtovo railway station).

It was in the depot TCh-2 Dachnoe that contact-battery electric locomotives were created on the basis of type D cars. The first six electric locomotives of this type, now having numbers Ek/a-03...06 and Ek/a-08...09, were created with a standard rheostat-contactor control system for metro cars, and the seventh electric locomotive, which received the board number EK/a-07, was equipped with a promising thyristor-pulse control system.