Pivansky Tunnel

Pivansky Tunnel is an unfinished railway tunnel cut into a hill by the village of Pivan on the left bank of the Amur River, across from the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in the Komsomolsky District of Khabarovsk Krai. It is known as the first tunnel of the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM): it was meant to link the railway with a crossing over the Amur, but construction was never completed.

History

Construction began in 1939. The work was carried out by prisoners of Amurlag: at the time, three forced-labor camps of the Nizhamurlag system, which supplied labor for BAM construction in the area, operated in Pivan simultaneously. The hill was tunneled the mining way, with explosives (dynamite and ammonal), pickaxes and shovels, without tunnel-boring shields or other heavy machinery.

On October 26, 1940, builders broke through the pilot heading all the way. By early 1941 they had managed to complete the concrete lining of the arch and part of the walls. But in March 1942 the work was shut down: the rails already laid turned out to be needed more at another construction site, the Bureya camp, and were removed and taken there. The driven section of the tunnel was left unfinished; its length is about 800 meters.

Legends

Several local legends surround the tunnel. According to one version, its planned length was supposed to reach a full three kilometers, and Japanese prisoners of war helped build it. There are also stories about design errors that supposedly caused the construction to stop. None of these versions has documentary confirmation; they are tales passed on by word of mouth among locals and visitors.

What remains

Inside the tunnel, narrow-gauge rails that carried rock out of the heading on trolleys are still in place, along with metal pipes that once delivered concrete for the wall lining. The entrance on the Amur side is almost completely filled in with soil and rocks — only two narrow openings allow access inside. The entrance on the Pivan side is sometimes blocked with trash as well. The structure is in a dangerous condition: the vaults and walls have not been reinforced since Soviet times, and going inside is unsafe.

Getting there

Pivansky Tunnel is located in a hill in the village of Pivan, on the bank of the Amur opposite Komsomolsk-on-Amur. In August 2010, a metal cross and a sculpture of the Mother of God were installed at the entrance on the river side, in memory of the prisoners who died during this construction. Next to the cross and the sculpture, a small recreation area was set up, with a flower bed, a parking spot, tables and a barbecue grill — in summer people come here to relax and look at the tunnel.