[4K] 🇷🇺 Walking Streets Moscow. Bolotnaya embankment
HPP-2 was built in 1905-1907 and was originally called “Tram“, because it was intended to power the contact network of the city tram. The first tram line in Moscow appeared in 1899, replacing the city’s horse-drawn railway. At the end of the XIX century, the development of Moscow public transport was carried out by private companies “First Society of Horse-drawn Railways“ and “Belgian Joint-Stock Company“, and electricity for the first tram lines was also supplied by the Raush power plant, owned by the “Joint-Stock Company of Electric Lighting in 1886“. At the beginning of the XX century, the Moscow authorities adopted a policy of reducing the role of private capital in the field of public transport and in 1901-1909 completely bought the property of both transport companies, in 1904, in parallel with the signing of a 4-year contract with the Joint Stock Company of Electric Lighting in 1886, the city laid a new power plant in Verkhny Sadovniki specifically for electric public transport[6][7][8][9].
The site for the construction of a Tram power plant was allocated from the territory of the state wine and salt yard, where back in the 1880s engineer Pavel Yablochkov planned to build a power plant to illuminate the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The location provided a convenient supply of water from the Drainage Channel and allowed saving on laying cables in the collector to the busiest tram junction at Lubyanka in Lubyanka Sloboda. The architect of the Tram Station was Vasily Bashkirov, a graduate of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Imperial Academy of Arts, who performed it in the neo—Russian style, electrical engineer Mikhail Polivanov, who headed the station, and mechanical engineer Nikolai Sushkin, with the participation of Vladimir Shukhov. Construction began in the summer and autumn of 1904, and it was planned to put the station into operation in 1906, but the completion of work was postponed due to the strikes of 1905[7][8][9][10].
On February 2 (15), 1907, in the presence of Mayor Nikolai Guchkov, members of the City Council and vowels of the City Duma, a divine service was held in the engine room, the priest consecrated the steam turbines and the first stage of the station was put into operation. The commissioning of all station equipment was tied to the end of the contract with the “Joint Stock Company of Electric Lighting in 1886“ and plans to expand the tram network and lasted until 1910. The city treasury spent 2.1 million rubles on the construction and equipment of the Tram station. Finzer and Gamper steam boilers, Brown-Boveri turbines, and Westinghouse Electric transformers were installed at the station. The boilers were powered by oil supplied by pipeline from the storage at the Simonov Monastery. In 1910-1912 and 1917, additional equipment was installed at the station, which increased its capacity by more than 2 times. The tram station fed Lubyanskaya, Krasnoprudnaya, Miusskaya and Sokolnicheskaya substations[6][7][8][9].