page_title: Saint Petersburg–Moscow railway
section_title: The ruler legend
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Petersburg–Moscow railway / History / The ruler legend
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Веребьинский мост. см. фото 507917 в альбоме автора
context_page_description: The Saint Petersburg to Moscow railway runs for 649.7 kilometers through four oblasts: Leningrad, Novgorod, Tver and Moscow. It is a major traffic artery in the north-west region of Russia, operated by the October Railway subdivision of Russian Railways.
context_section_description: Tsar Nicholas I figures in an urban legend about the railroad. When it was planned in 1842, he supposedly demanded the shortest path be used despite major obstacles in the way. The story says he tried to use a ruler to draw the railroad in a perfectly straight line. By the Msta River the tsar's pencil hit an awkwardly placed finger which he was using to hold down the ruler, creating a bend in the road. The legend says that the engineers wanted to execute the tsar's order exactly, and the result was a perfectly straight road with a single bend. The false story became popular in Russia and Britain as an explanation of how poorly the country was governed. By the 1870s, Russians were telling a different version, claiming the tsar was wise to overcome local interests that wanted the railway diverted this way and that.
  What actually happened was that the road was laid out by engineers and he endorsed their advice to build in a straight line. The curve, also called the Verebinsky bypass, was actually built in 1877, 26 years after the line came into being, to circumvent a steep gradient that lasted for 17 km. Heading for St Petersburg, trains would pick up so much speed that they steamed straight past the next station, while those heading for Moscow needed four locomotives to get up the hill. In 2001, the bypass was closed as a new viaduct had been opened.
  In 2001, Russia's first high-speed rail line was planned to be constructed along the same route, but the project was eventually shelved amid ecological protests and concerns about the fragile environment of the Valdai Hills. In 2019, the start of a new design phase was given approval.
caption: New Verbinsky Bridge, opened in 2001 to replace the bypass
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