Not many pre-WWI workshops, factories, and workshops have survived in Kharkiv. The “Kharkiv-Glavnoe” locomotive depot, located near the Kharkiv railway station, is one of the few exceptions.

It was built to repair steam locomotives; now it services electric locomotives.

In some places, it feels as though time has stood still—the rooms look as if they’ve stepped out of a photograph by Prokudin-Gorsky, a pioneer of early 20th-century color photography.

The oldest depot of the Southern Railway began as a steam locomotive repair shop, which was established near the current Kharkiv railway station station as early as 1869.

It’s hard to say when the depot with the turntable shown in the photo was built, but it already appears in the same location on Ginzburg’s 1916 map.