Yanov Station

Yanov Station is a real, not fictional, railway station in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, near the city of Pripyat in Ukraine, on the Chernihiv-Ovruch line of the South-Western Railway. It was built long before the Chernobyl accident and remains part of the zone's infrastructure, even though it has long been closed to passenger traffic.

History of the Station

The station opened in 1925, and the settlement that grew up next to it became the seed of the future city of Pripyat. Before the accident, the station belonged to the South-Western Railway and handled both passenger and freight traffic — its tracks led to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, warehouses and an oil depot. The last passenger train, running the Moscow-Khmelnytskyi route, passed through Yanov on 29 April 1986, after which civilian traffic stopped here for good.

Separate from the station, there was a village of the same name, Yanov: the earliest records of it date back to the 18th century, in October 1943 it saw fighting during the Chernihiv-Pripyat operation, and about ten years after construction began on the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant it was administratively absorbed into the newly formed city of Pripyat. On 27 April 1986, around 100 of its residents were evacuated because of radioactive contamination; the houses could not be decontaminated, and in 1987 they were demolished and buried. The village was officially deregistered in 2003.

The Station Today

In 1986-1987 the Chernihiv-Yanov section of the line was electrified to support the staff and builders working on the clean-up of the accident, and later one of the tracks was restored to deliver materials for the construction of the New Safe Confinement over the fourth reactor. The station is part of the transport operations of the state enterprise Chernobylservice, and the station building is now used by local workers to repair heavy machinery.

Among visitors to the exclusion zone, the station is known as a "train graveyard": abandoned freight cars and locomotives have piled up on and alongside the tracks. It became widely known outside Ukraine through the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R., where it serves as a trading post for stalker factions — but the station itself is not a film set, it is a real place with a history going back to 1925.

Getting There and Visiting Rules

The station lies inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where an access-permit regime is in force. Entering the zone on your own is forbidden: a visit is only possible with a permit issued by the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management, or as part of an organised tour. Illegal entry into the zone ("stalking") carries administrative liability, and taking any objects out of the zone is a criminal offence under Article 267-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.