Lines of history: Viktor Petrovich GAPONOV, pensioner, diesel locomotive driver

“I come from the family of a repressed military man. Therefore, I came to Kazakhstan with my family against my own will in 1953, when I was 7 years old. This is where we stayed to live. From here I was drafted into the army. He served in Belarus, in the special forces.

I remember that since childhood I wanted to become a diesel locomotive driver. After the army he worked at the Almaty-1 depot. And from 1969, when I was 24 years old, until retirement, I constantly worked at CHPP-1. I got a job in the fuel transport shop, because they needed a driver for the TGM1 diesel locomotive. The diesel locomotive “dragged” 4-5 cars with coal to the fuel supply. The average yield was 240-250 tons.

It was a difficult and dirty area of ​​work: the boiler room, noise, dust… It was very hard work here, especially for women. The picture is still in my memory: women standing on the reception bars. And when the scraper winch drags coal, not all of it passes through the grate to the feeders. That’s why the women – Maria Kataeva and Ulyana Mitina worked here at the time – hammered him with a sledgehammer so that he wouldn’t get stuck in the bars.

Then the station decided to lease the T3 mainline diesel locomotive. More modern, powerful, but it is very heavy, I also worked on it. Subsequently, the thermal power plant acquired the TGM3 diesel locomotive with serial number 627. Its braking system made it possible to pump out and supply air to 43 gondola cars of coal. And this is the weight of the trains that go to Almaty-2, CHPP-1.

At that time we received coal from Kuzbass. Compared to Ekibastuz, whose ash content was 60%, Kuzbass was very good. It is low-ash, the ash was only 10-12%. And then they started supplying us with the Karaganda mine, RKSh. It was also of high quality and good. Its ash content was no more than 30% ash. And although we did not yet have ash collectors in the 80s, they did not greatly affect the ecology of the city.

The situation worsened sharply in the 90s. Then Karaganda began to export concentrates. This meant that dust was being washed into sludge settling tanks. And selected Karaganda coal was exported, and what was accumulated in sludge sumps was shipped to us. To understand: sludge ponds are a backwater with reeds, ducks, other living creatures and garbage… And all this – feathers, reeds, twigs, garbage – was part of the coal. I had to go there several times to resolve this issue.

I would like to say that the topic of ecology was raised at our station back in the early 80s – after all, the station is located within the city. Tursun Mukaramovna Zhakupova, being a trade union leader, raised this issue at various forums, including in Moscow. The heads of the station and the Ministry of Energy and Electrification of the Kazakh SSR spoke about the same thing, so back in the 80s, at the level of the leadership of the union department, it was planned that the Almaty CHPP-1 would be switched to gas. But it didn’t work out – we didn’t get around to it, so this issue was finally resolved only in 2017.