Webcam Novosibirsk. Lunintsev Square online in real time
If you look at the map of Novosibirsk, you can see on it one interesting name - Lunin's square. But few residents of Novosibirsk will be able to answer the question: who are these people of Lunin? And moreover no one will tell about Nicholas Alexandrovich Lunin, in honor of whose followers this area is named.
Nikolay A. Lunin was a senior engineer of the locomotive brigade of the Novosibirsk depot of the Tomsk Railroad in 1932-1945, an outstanding innovator of railroad transport. He initiated the introduction of new methods of steam locomotive operation. For example, in 1940, he proposed to increase the amount of repairs carried out by the locomotive brigade itself, and also advocated the joint repair by the depot and locomotive brigade repairmen.
A slight increase in the brigade's employment during repairs was more than compensated by a higher quality level of repairs (because no one knows the "weak points" of each particular locomotive better than the brigade), a reduction in time losses for operational repairs (qualified depot repairmen during repairs point out to the brigade possible defects in locomotive operation, which allows to prepare for their prompt elimination in advance). The consequence was a significant increase in useful use of the locomotive.
In 1941, Lunin put forward a new idea, a continuation of the previous one: each member of the steam locomotive crew mastered repair skills. As a result, it further reduced the amount of labor required to repair each locomotive, and freed up working time to repair more locomotives at the repair depot. Again, the time for minor operational repairs and maintenance of steam locomotives en route was reduced.
In December 1941 the innovator was the first in the USSR to bring frozen Moscow 5000 tons of coal (100 cars!) by two steam locomotives - with a standard of 1250 tons per one car, skillfully combining the work of two locomotives with respect to the track topography. Thereby the beginning of a new movement - super heavy trains.
In 1942, Nikolay Aleksandrovich became a laureate of the Stalin Prize. With the received award he bought an echelon of coal, weighing 1 000 tons, in aid of Stalingrad, and personally delivered it in February 1943 to the just liberated and completely destroyed city. He gave the rest of the money to an orphanage for the children of fallen Red Army soldiers.
During the war Lunin's cause became widespread in transport and other industries, it was commonly referred to as the "Lunin movement", and the members of steam locomotive brigades who applied it were called "Luninites" throughout the USSR.
