The development of the railway infrastructure of the Ust-Luga railway hub and on the approaches to it was dictated by the need to increase the volume of cargo transshipment at the Ust-Luga Commercial Sea Port.
An important stage in the implementation of this investment project and in the development of transport approaches to the Ust-Luga Commercial Sea Port is the performance of work on the electrification of the section from Gatchina-Tovarnaya-Baltic to Luzhskaya and the parks of the Luzhskaya station.
Within the framework of the investment project "Complex reconstruction of the Mga — Gatchina — Weimarn — Ivangorod section and railway approaches to ports on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland", with the implementation period from 2005 to 2020, the following main volumes of work were carried out under the projects of Lengiprotrans:
- the extension of the receiving and departure tracks to 1050 m was carried out at 11 stations (Mga, Stekolny, Milling, Gatchina, Voiskovitsy, Elizavetino, Kikerino, Volosovo, Weimarn, Kerstovo Park, Kotly-II);
- a railway track with a length of 4.7 km was built bypassing the Kotly station to eliminate the corner arrival of trains;
- continuous second main tracks with a length of 156.0 km were put into operation;
- 9 new traction substations with a supply voltage of 110 kV were built;
- 1 existing traction substation was reconstructed;
- the electrification of the Mga — Gatchina section was strengthened due to an increase in the weight norm of trains — 44.0 km;
- the KC-160 contact network was built on the Gatchina — Weimarn, Weimarn — Kotly, and Kotly — Luzhskaya sections.
The main result of the implementation is the organization of electric train traffic on the entire range from Siberia to the North-West in the direction of the Commercial Sea Port of Ust-Luga, which is 3,912 km by rail (Altayskaya station — via Koshta station — Luzhskaya station under the Network-3 program — 3,912 operational kilometers).
As part of the implementation of the investment project, 627.8 km of the contact network was built and reconstructed in the period from 2010 to 2017. The total investment in the electrification of the Mga — Gatchina — Weimarn — Luzhskaya section amounted to 19.2 billion rubles, excluding the cost of providing external power supply to traction substations (13.6 billion rubles).
The completion of the investment project made it possible to increase the average section speed of trains on the Mga — Gatchina — Luzhskaya section and increase its capacity.
