Description of the attraction
At the beginning of the 20th century, before the massive use of electricity, horse trams (horse-drawn railways) were the main means of transporting a large amount of cargo and a large number of passengers in St. Petersburg - as a rule, representatives of low-income strata of the population who did not have funds for cabs.
A horse-drawn carriage is one of the varieties of an omnibus (a one- or two-deck carriage drawn by one or two horses). The speed of the horse tram was about 8 km per hour. Double-decker cars had an open upper platform (imperial), which could be climbed by a metal spiral staircase. The platforms differed from each other in the location of the benches - at the bottom of the benches were located, as in modern trams, on the imperial, the passengers had to sit with their backs to each other on one long double-sided bench. A ticket on the first "floor" cost 5 kopecks, there could be accommodated 22 people, on the imperial - 24 people paid 2 kopecks for travel.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the horse tram covered 30 routes passing through the center, Admiralteyskaya Square, Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Street. The profitability of the horse tram turned out to be enormous - when the first line was launched in the city, in the first year alone it transported about a million passengers. Therefore, a specialized society was created, which owned six equestrian parks for 3, 5 thousand horses, which served 26 routes with a total length of about 150 km. The horse-drawn carriage was driven by a coachman, and tickets were sold, stop and departure signals were given by the conductor.
Driving the horse tram required a lot of skill and effort: when going down the bridge, even the slightest mistake was enough so that a heavy carriage could immediately hit the horses and provoke an accident. If there were steep ascents on the route, then additional horses were harnessed, driven by their coachman. After the ascent ended, the horses were unharnessed, and they remained to wait for the next show jumping, which they helped on the difficult section of the path. At the final stop, the horses were harnessed from the other end of the carriage, outweighed the bell with a brake, and set off on the return trip.
The rails of the trams were imperfect, there were no grooves for the wheels yet, and the path was paved with cobblestones, laid on the level with the rails. When the wheels jumped off the track, as well as when cornering, the horse-drawn tram drove straight over the stones, which caused very uncomfortable sensations among passengers. With the introduction of electric trams (1907), the St. Petersburg horse tram began to lose its significance and by 1917 it had completely disappeared.
The monument to a truly popular means of transportation - the horse tram - was erected in 2004 opposite the Vasileostrovskaya metro station. Vasilievsky Island is rightfully considered the primordially "tram" center of St. Petersburg, since it was there that the largest number of horse-drawn tram routes were laid.
The monument - a two-story horse tram car - was created according to the model of 1872-1878. The details had to be restored according to the drawings of the Putilov plant, which were found in the Central Archives. A point of sale of tickets for trains and planes was placed in the trailer.
In 2005, the monument was supplemented with new "characters" - sculptures of two horses by A. Ziyakaev, made of plastic and concrete. In 2009, a coachman-driver appeared by the sculptor I. Penteshin and co-authors. The coachman's clothes include historically accurate details: a cap, inscriptions, a badge with number 1, the coat of arms of a horse-drawn railway - everything was recreated from historical photographs, Lenfilm records and archival materials. Even the buttons of the coachman's coat, with the coat of arms of Russia, were made from casts from the buttons of the original uniform of the coachmen, preserved at the Mosfilm studio.
