Sokolniki (Metro)

Sokolniki ( _ru. Сокольники) is a station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line of the Moscow Metro. It is located under Rusakovskaya street at the foot of Sokolnicheskaya Square and was part of the first Metro line. The station is named for the nearby Sokolniki Park of Culture and Leisure.

The northeastern end of the line, including Sokolniki, was built using the cut and cover method. The tunnels from Krasnoselskaya to Sokolniki were under construction as early as the summer of 1933, but work did not begin on the station itself until March, 1934. The concrete shell of the station was completed in just five months, and Sokolniki opened along with the rest of the line on May 15, 1935. The first test run of the Metro, in 1934, took place between this station and Komsomolskaya.The station was designed by architects Ivan Taranov and Nadezhda Bykova and features tiled walls and pillars faced with grey-blue Ufaley marble. A model of the station was awarded a Grand Prix at the 1937 Paris World's Fair.

Sokolniki was the northeastern terminus of the line for 30 years, until the 1965 extension to Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad was completed. The reversal sidings are still used for maintenance and overnight storage of trains.

External links

* [http://www.metro.ru/stations/sokolnicheskaya/sokolniki Description of the station on Metro.ru] (in Russian)
* [http://www.mymetro.ru/cgi-bin/list.pl?lng=ru&a=1&b=1&c=04 Description of the station on Mymetro.ru] (in Russian)
* [http://metro.molot.ru/st_sl_sokolniki.shtml Description of the station on Metro.molot.ru] (in Russian)
* [http://www.kartametro.info/?hl=EN&ms=Sokolniki&z=17&t=k KartaMetro.info] — Station location and exits on Moscow map (English/Russian)