Zhelanna Station. A Tour for Railway Workers' Day

A station that goes by the name Zhelannaya

The steppe, the heat, and dust above your head

And that is all the lyrical data

Of a certain Donetsk station.

The railway stations on the Avdiivka-Chaplyne route have names that are alluring to a traveller — Mezhova, Udachna, Zhelanna. Zhelanna station is located in the settlement of Zhelanne in the Yasynuvata district of the Donetsk region, between the stations of Hrodivka and Ocheretyne.

 

Zhelanna railway station. The settlement of Zhelanne, Donetsk region

Zhelanna is a freight-and-passenger railway station of the Krasnyi Lyman division of the Donetsk Railway, but on the website of the Prydniprovska Railway the station's name, translated into Ukrainian, appears as «Bazhana».

 

The place name comes from a word of the feminine gender and means the one you long for, and the station was named after the nearest settlement.

The opening of the station in 1882-1884 was economically advantageous. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century grain was loaded and carried from the station.

 

With the opening of the mines at Hrodivka, Selydove and Kurakhove, mining and factory freight and building materials travelled through Zhelanna to the coal enterprises, and on the return journey the wagons went loaded with coal.

 

Zhelanna station. Looking towards Ocheretyne

Zhelanna station. Looking towards Hrodivka

The station building was raised of stone that was brought from the local quarry and sawn for construction.

The building resembled a palace, and railway workers lived on the second floor. In Soviet times the buffet sold confectionery, ice cream and beer, and children from all over the settlement came for the gingerbread. When electrical equipment was installed at the station, the relay room was placed in the passenger hall, and the waiting hall was moved into the premises of the closed buffet.

 

Local residents remember that the platform was once made of old sleepers, rotted and sloping in places, on which passengers crowded waiting for the electric train to Yasynuvata, Donetsk and Pokrovsk.

Now the passenger platforms are levelled and paved with slabs, and no great throng is to be seen at the station.

 

At Zhelanna the suburban trains Chaplyne-Avdiivka, Avdiivka-Chaplyne, Pokrovsk-Avdiivka and Avdiivka-Pokrovsk stop 9 times a day. 

The 4 dwelling houses for railway workers can be reckoned the same age as the station. 

2 of them have remained in their barrack form, without the conveniences that are vital to life.

 

The nearness of the line of contact and of military action, and also the economic decline at the mines of «Selydivvuhillia», could not but tell on the tempo and the working regime of the station. The grain-receiving enterprise and the granary have ceased operating.

 

Work to protect the railway tracks from snowdrifts and other unfavourable climatic factors has been carried on since the time the Kursk-Kharkiv-Azov Railway was built. It was here in the Donetsk land, near Mykytivka station, that the first living leafy screens against blizzards and snowfalls were created. The section of the Yasynuvata protective forest-planting district at Zhelanna station has ceased to exist, and its service building is falling into ruin.

Empty wagons stand idle awaiting freight and haulage.

 

In March 1943 Red Army prisoners of war were being transported from Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmiisk) to Yasynuvata. 18 soldiers who had died of their wounds were taken off the train at Zhelanna station. Local residents buried them near the station and set up a small monument. In 1961, by decision of the settlement council, the soldiers' remains were moved to the centre of the settlement and buried with full honours. A monument was ceremonially unveiled on the common grave. The surnames of the dead are unknown, since they were taken off the train without documents.

 

The common grave of the Soviet soldiers taken off the train at Zhelanna station in 1943

Poplars with their wilting leaves,

A small soot-blackened station house

And her, so very plain,

Someone once suddenly named Zhelannaya,

He made her a gift of flowers and joys,

Well, each of us, it seems, has their own.

And she will suddenly seem dearer to me

The moment I read her name.

Perhaps a reader can tell me the name of the author of the poem about Zhelanna.

Coordinates of Zhelanna station: 48°12’39"N 37°25’35"E

The Avdiivka-Chaplyne suburban train

Related stories: Ocheretyne. A Junction Station and Its Settlement · Bakhmut I. A Station of Industrial Architecture · Chunyshyne Station. Neglected, Closed, Forgotten · Kindrativka Station and Oleksiyevo-Druzhkivka · Udachne. A Settlement and Its Railway Station · The railway stations of Ukraine

This story is also available in Ukrainian: Залізнична станція Желанна. Транзитна екскурсія до Дня залізничника