Orsha Central Station

The Central Station at Orsha is one of Europe’s outstanding railway stations. The town stands at the confluence of the Dnieper and Arshytsa rivers, and the station is on the line from Moscow to Brest (formerly Brest-Litovsk), opened in 1871 which is the principal route from both Moscow and St Petersburg to western Europe, with regular services to Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Katowice and Ostrava. Some 60 trains a day pass through in the winter months and 80 per day in summer, and Orsha is also an important centre for the marshalling of freight trains.

The station, a concrete building in the Art Nouveau style with crenelated towers, was built in 1912 and enlarged in 1930. During the Second World War it was fortified by the German forces of occupation and then destroyed by the Red Army in one of the first actions in which BM-13 Katyusha rockets were fired. The building was restored within two years of the end of the war and its interior was restored in 1980. Further substantion restoration took place in 2004. A steam locomotive, P-34 stands on a plinth at the station.