About the railway
The State Enterprise Irad Temir Jolu (ГП «Ирад Темир Жолу») owns and works the whole railway of the Irad Special Economic Zone. It was formed in January 2008 from the Territorial Railway Administration, is wholly owned by the ISEZ and answers to the Ministry of Transport.
The enterprise
The railway has about 5,200 employees, most of them in Nurzhan. Its locomotives are mainly Soviet-built 2TE10 main-line diesels and TEM2 shunters, with four Chinese shunters bought in 2019; heavy repairs are done by works in Kazakhstan and running maintenance at the Nurzhan depot. Russian remains the working language of dispatching and the yards. A short annual report with traffic figures is published each year.
History
- 1931The Turksib is completed across the lower Chu plain; the railway settlement of Kobozev, now Nurzhan, becomes a junction.
- 1934The Talas branch opens, making Talas a railhead for the grain and livestock of the valley.
- 1962The Sary-Bulak spur is laid to the antimony works and the Chatkal mill.
- 1993The Territorial Railway Administration takes over the lines of the Soviet Kobozev division.
- 2000Crude oil traffic to Shymkent ends when the Northern Export Feeder pipeline opens.
- 2008The State Enterprise Irad Temir Jolu is formed in January; the Northern Border Demarcation Protocol of October fixes the two stations where trains are exchanged with Kazakhstan.
- 2014The sidings of the Talas export zone are enlarged for refrigerated container trains.
- 2019Four Chinese-built shunting locomotives arrive, the first new locomotives since the Soviet period.
- 2026A new passenger timetable comes into force on 1 June.
The railway workers' football club, founded as Lokomotiv Kobozev and renamed Temirjolchu Nurzhan in 1993, plays in the Irad League at the Lokomotiv Stadium beside Nurzhan station and has been champion three times.