Dūkštas railway station

The station is located on the 125th kilometer of the Vilnius–Turmantas section. The town of Dūkštas began to develop after the construction of the railway. The station was built in 1862. It was built as a class III station, where trains could pass, steam locomotives could fill up with water, and passengers could walk. Workshops were set up in Dūkštas, where large and small earth-moving wagons, wheelbarrows, and other necessary tools were manufactured. The 1863–1873 plan marked a passenger house, a steam locomotive building (depot), a goods platform, a water tower with a pump, two dormitories next to the tower, two servants' houses, a public toilet, and two barracks. The station could load and unload freight wagons, accept and issue luggage, so at least two additional roads had to be installed there. In 1863, the suppressors of the uprising built two barracks and a kitchen for the soldiers.

Dūkštas Station is on the right side of the St. Petersburg–Warsaw railway. The railway up to and beyond the station is single-track. Additional roads (branches), a main road and a branch for access to the passenger house and the goods platform were installed at the station. During the interwar period, there were no major changes at Dūkštas Station, the railway station remained on the eastern outskirts of the town. During World War II, the passenger house at Dūkštas Station was destroyed, and some of the most important buildings were also damaged – the water tower was destroyed, and the depot lost its roof. Residential buildings, warehouses and smaller farm buildings remained untouched. After the war, the functions of the passenger house were performed by a residential building. In 1950, documents noted that it was intended to build a passenger house at Dūkštas Station according to the template of one of the stations on the Minsk–Brest railway section. The Dūkštas station passenger house was built to the west of the destroyed one, a little further from the tracks and platform, in line with the depot. A luggage room and two warehouses were built next to it.

On July 4, 1861, the first strike in Lithuania began in Dūkštė. During the construction of the St. Petersburg–Warsaw railway, stonemasons demanded that the contractors not reduce their already low wages. The striking workers even appealed to the Governor-General in Vilnius, hoping for his intercession. The Tsarist officials, fearing unrest and strikes along the entire railway construction route, resorted to urgent and harsh measures: at the end of July, the 4 most active strike organizers were imprisoned, and 5 were brutally flogged. The officials suppressed the first strike and forced the stonemasons to work under the old conditions.

Dūkštas station is associated with one major railway accident, which occurred on January 4, 1895 between Dūkštas and Ignalina. At that time, a steam locomotive of a train departing from Ignalina broke down. An auxiliary train was sent from Dūkštas to tow the train back. It was supposed to tow the broken-down train to Dūkštas. The driver of the auxiliary locomotive braked too late and crashed into a stationary locomotive. Both locomotives, a service wagon and one freight wagon were destroyed, and three locomotive workers were injured. There were other accidents in Dūkštas. On June 30, 1898, a train killed a station conductor, on June 30, 1900, a train ran over a rail greaser, and in July, an unknown person died under the wheels of a train.

Information updated 2026-01-12