Rail transport in Ukraine
Rail transport in Ukraine is a mode of transport by railway in Ukraine. Railway infrastructure transport in Ukraine in majority is owned by government of Ukraine through Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways) that officially has a country-wide monopoly on passenger and freight transport by rail. A portion of the Ukrainian rail network in eastern Ukraine was privatized in the late 1990 creating from those assets the biggest private railway company in the country, Lemtrans. Lemtrans is focused on freight transport. General scope. It consists of several components. The company in charge of non-mass transit railways is  Ukrainian Railways which since 2015 has changed its form of ownership from a state company to public one. History. Before Ukrainian Independence. The railways in Ukraine were first built under the imperial rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (in the western territories, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Duchy of Bukovina and the Hungarian comitatus in Carpathian region), and later in the Russian Empire-controlled territories that held bigger portion of modern Ukraine, having seen major development and reformation since then. On the territory of modern Ukraine, trains that were headed by self-propelled locomotives (as oposed to horse-drawn trains ) appeared in the 1860s on the efforts of Prince Leon Sapieha. He initiated the extension of the Galician Railway of Archduke Charles Louis from Przemyśl (Premissel) to Lviv (Lemberg). The first train arrived in Lemberg on 4 November 1861. Also during the Crimean War in 1855 British troops built a long railway line on territory occupied by the Allied military forces between Sevastopol and Balaklava to improve their military logistics in their fight against the Russian Empire. After the war, in 1856 the Russian authorities dismantled the line. Later in 1860s the line from Lviv was extended towards Chernivtsi (at  that time Czernowitz was a capital of a crown land Duchy of Bukovina) and Iași (at that time Jassy was in the Kingdom of Romania). Also in 1865 in the Russian Ukraine railroad started to be built from Odessa towards Balta. In 1869-70 in Russian Ukrainian gubernias saw the start of a major construction of the railway network from Kursk in the west to Kyiv and south towards Lozova (between Kharkiv and Dnipro) passing Kharkiv. Between Darnytsia and Kyiv the Struve Railroad Bridge was built. The Lozova railroad expanded eastwards towards the Donbas area through Sloviansk and reaching Horlivka . At about the same time the line between Odessa and Balta via Kremenchuk–Kriukiv was extended towards Poltava providing for a line on both banks of the River Dnieper. In Kriukiv (now Kremenchuk) the Kryukiv Railway Car Building Works was built. In 1869 the Rostov-on-Don to Taganrog line was extended to Horlivka. Also in Austria, the railroad was extended from Lviv towards the Austria-Russia border near Brody and in 1870 it was extended to Ternopil (Tarnopol). In 1870 Kyiv, Vinnytsia and Zhmerynka were connected with the Odessa–Balta railway. In 1871 the first Austria-Russia border rail  crossing was built when Ternopil was connected with Zhmerynka over the Zbruch River near Volochysk and Pidvolochysk located on opposite banks of the river. In 1871 Poltava was connected with Kharkiv providing with an alternative to reach the city of Odessa and its port with the Russian central provinces through Kharkiv. In 1872-73 a major expansion of the railway network started in Russian Volhynia branching out from the Kyiv-Odessa line near Koziatyn west pass Brest-Litovsk and connecting cities such as Kovel, Rivne, Zdolbuniv, Shepetivka and Berdychiv. In 1873 a branch line from Zdolbuniv was extended to Brody  becoming another railway border crossing. Some railway network expansion took place in the Donbas area as well. In 1873 from Znamianka in Central Ukraine located on the Poltava-Balta road another branch was stretched south towards the port of Mykolaiv on the Black Sea making it the second seaport in Ukraine connected to the railway network. At about that time the railway system expanded further towards the Drohobych-Boryslav oil fields and greater Sambor areas in the Ukrainian Carpathians and another branch line was extended along the Tisza River in Hungary. In 1873-75 the line from Lozova was expanded  towards the Crimean peninsula connecting Sevastopol with Kharkiv via the Chonhar peninsula. For more information, see: Independent Ukraine. On 24 September 1991, following the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) on separation from the Soviet Union, all railroad administration was temporarily passed to the South-Western Railways. According to the resolution, all assets located within the borders of the former Ukrainian SSR became property of Ukraine. To improve efficiency a special centralized administration was created. On 14 December 1991 the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine issued declaration No. 356 ""In creation of the State Administration of Railroad Transportation  in Ukraine"" which proclaimed Ukrzaliznytsia a government body in administration railroad transportation uniting the six state railroad companies. As of 2015 the Ukrainian government transformed the railways into a public joint-stock company named "Ukrainian Railways" (). 2022 Russian invasion. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine showed the crucial role of railways in both civilian and military logistics in the area. Given the lack of roads passable during Rasputitsa and the Russian lack of vehicles capable of off-road operation, logistics relied heavily on rail transport from the initial Russian amassing of troops in February 2022. Railways played a critical role  in the logistics of Russia's invasion, delivering troops and material to the border areas in the initial phase of the war and railway nodes became an important target of Russian attacks to maintain their own supply lines and disrupt those of Ukraine. At the same time, Ukraine's exports and imports were shifted even more to rail than in peacetime as Russia captured or cut off many important Black Sea Ports which usually handle a large share of Ukraine's external trade. Railways were crucial in transporting refugees and European governments and state railways organized special trains for humanitarian  aid to and from Ukraine. As airports were targets of Russian attacks and/or Ukrainian counter-attacks, trains were also used for diplomatic visits by foreign heads of state and government. 2022 rail freight crisis. Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, many of the country's Black Sea ports were blocked, prompting a crisis in the export of agricultural products that were normally shipped. Railway freight has become the most viable alternative, but the Ukrainian railway network has not been able to cope with the demand, particularly because the railway gauge differences between Ukraine's Soviet-era 1520 mm  gauge railways and the standard-gauge railway (1435 mm) of states west of its borders have created bottlenecks at break-of-gauge transloading stations. On 7 April 2022, Ukrzaliznytsia reported that 10,320 wagons (about half of the total) were waiting at the Ustyluh (Izov)–Hrubieszów border crossing on the Linia Hutnicza Szerokotorowa line, the main railway connection between Ukraine and Poland and the longest 1,520 mm gauge railway of Poland. Efforts to quickly increase rail freight capacity have been launched, including the construction of new large transloading stations near Mostyska and elsewhere. As of 12 April 2022, the Mostyka station was  planned to be completed by June 2022, was to obtain a transloading capacity of 50,000 metric tonnes of grain per month by July, and 100,000 tonnes by September. Additional challenges included the need to increase the amount of wagons, appropriate permits to let Ukrainian wagons ride in EU territory, and to increase the capacity of EU ports (such as Gdańsk, Hamburg and Rotterdam) that would have to take over the shipping role of the blocked Black Sea ports. Infrastructure. The total length of railroad network is . The total length of electrified lines is . There are 1,447 stations that have 118  various station buildings. There are 2,268 smaller halts. The infrastructure also contains 5,422 railway crossings (level crossing), 4,168 of which employ an automatic signaling system. At the same time 1,497 crossings are manned 1,468 out of those equipped with automatic signaling system (grade crossing signals). Other rail transport in Ukraine. Rail transport used for mass transit is usually administered by local government, typically city authorities; this includes trams, subway (metro), funicular and others. There are rapid transit systems in Kiev, Kharkiv and Dnipro as well as tram systems among which the Kryvyi Rih Metrotram contains underground sections. In mountainous regions  various narrow gauge railways are owned and operated privately, sometimes in the form of heritage railways.