Savyolovsky Rail Terminal

Savyolovsky Rail Terminal is one of Moscow's ten railway stations and the youngest of them, located in the north of the capital near the former Butyrskaya Zastava (tollgate). Unlike the city's other terminals, it serves suburban traffic exclusively: commuter trains of the Savyolovo direction and the Moscow Central Diameters line. Officially, the terminal is listed as the passenger terminal of the Moskva-Butyrskaya station.

Construction of the line to the village of Savyolovo near Moscow began in 1897 on the initiative of the industrialist Savva Mamontov, with the emperor's permission; it ran about 130 kilometers. The station building itself took several years to build under the direction of engineer Alexander Sumarokov, and the grand opening took place on March 10, 1902. Originally the building was single-storied, rising to two floors only in the central section occupied by staff apartments; its appearance was designed in an eclectic style. Almost simultaneously with the terminal, a water tower about 30 meters high was built to service steam locomotives — the only structure from that period to survive to this day without major rebuilding.

The terminal retained its original appearance for nearly a century, until expansion and reconstruction began in 1987 under the direction of Yakov Shamray: the building became two-storied and its area grew two and a half times. The work was completed in 1992 without halting train traffic. In 2012 another modernization costing over 500 million rubles took place: engineering systems were updated, a waiting hall was opened, and ramps were installed for passengers with limited mobility. Today the complex covers about six thousand square meters, with traffic served by eleven tracks and five platforms.

During the Soviet era the terminal repeatedly changed status: in 1936 two stations were formed on its site, a passenger and a freight one, and in 1957 they were merged into a single Moskva-Butyrskaya station. In 1988 the Savyolovskaya metro station opened nearby, making the terminal the last one in Moscow to be reached by the subway — an important development given the growing flow of dacha commuters. Turnstiles were installed in 2000, and in 2018 a second metro station, on the Big Circle Line, opened close by. Long-distance trains were discontinued back in 1999, being transferred to Belorussky Rail Terminal.

Today Savyolovsky Rail Terminal is part of the Moscow Central Diameters route: the MCD-1 line connects it with the Belorussky direction, and commuter trains run to Dmitrov, Iksha, Lobnya, Dubna, and the Savyolovo station in Kimry. “Region-Express” trains and the Sheremetyevo Aeroexpress also run along these tracks. Every day the terminal receives and dispatches more than eighty pairs of trains, serving about fifty thousand passengers daily.

Having evolved from a late-19th-century suburban station into a hub of the Moscow Central Diameters, Savyolovsky Rail Terminal remains an important transport point in the capital's northern part. The surviving water tower recalls its original appearance, while modern infrastructure makes the terminal convenient for thousands of residents of the city and the Moscow region.