The locomotive driver who carried productivity innovation onto the railways
On 1 July 1935, Krivonos's locomotive crew raised freight-train speed from the previous 30 kilometres per hour to 53.
Pyotr Krivonos was a Soviet productivity innovator who expanded the carrying capacity of the railways from the cab of a locomotive. In July 1935, before Stakhanov's better-known record, he demonstrated a method that sharply increased the technical speed of freight trains, creating a model for railway labor heroes and a following known as the Krivonosites. During the war he directed rail transport and the restoration of destroyed lines, then completed higher technical education and led a major railway for decades.
Career Timeline
- 1925–1929Mechanic at the Sloviansk locomotive depot and student at the factory-apprenticeship school
- 1929–1933Assistant locomotive driver and locomotive driver on the South Donetsk Railway
- 1935Innovator in freight-train operation and pioneer of the railway productivity movement
- 1937–1938Head of the Sloviansk locomotive depot
- 1938–1941Head of the South Donetsk and North Donets Railways
- 1941–1943Plenipotentiary for wartime railway transport and construction, then head of the Tomsk Railway
- 1943–1953Head of the North Donets Railway and coordinator of postwar railway restoration
- 1953–1980Head of the Southwestern Railway in Ukraine