Voroshilovgrad Diesel Locomotive Construction Works

(full name, October Revolution Voroshilovgrad Diesel Locomotive Construction Works), one of the largest factories of the USSR transport machine-building industry. Located in the city of Voroshilovgrad. Created on the basis of the Lugansk Steam Locomotive Factory of Gartman, the construction of which began in 1896. The first steam engine was manufactured in 1900. Before the Great October Revolution the factory produced low-power freight locomotives, iron and steel castings, rolled steel, and stationary steam boilers.

The Voroshilovgrad factory is famous for its revolutionary and labor traditions. In 1896 the first factory workers’ strike occurred, in 1900 the first Social Democratic group was organized, and in 1905 a deputy assembly was formed and a detachment of armed workers created. K. E. Voroshilov worked at the factory in 1903. A. la. Parkhomenko and other members of the Bolshevik underground also worked here. Voroshilov organized worker-volunteers in the first Lugansk Socialist detachment which, as part of the Fifth Army, completed a heroic march to Tsaritsyn (1918).

The plant was thoroughly modernized during the prewar five-year plans (1929-40). New plant sections with specialized heavy-duty equipment were constructed. Series FD freight steam locomotives (1931), series IS passenger locomotives (1936), and the experimental high-speed series 4-6-4 steam locomotive (1937) were built at the factory. The FD and IS series steam locomotives were represented among the world’s finest examples of locomotive construction at the International Exhibition in Paris (1937). The plant was destroyed during the German fascist occupation of the city (July 1942 to February 1943) in the Great Patriotic War. The first postwar steam locomotive of the SO series was delivered on Oct. 23, 1945. The construction of steam locomotives came to an end with the design of the L and LV series in 1956, and in the same year the first diesel locomotive of the TE-3 series was built as a gift to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. High-speed TG-100, TG-102, TG-105, and TG-106 hydraulic drive locomotives and TE-3L, 2TE-10L, and TE-10L electrical drive locomotives were manufactured in the 1960’s. In the late 1960’s the plant produced 2TE-10L and M-62 diesel locomotives. Commercial product output in 1969 represented a 36.5 percent increase over that of 1965. The locomotive works was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1947.