Novy Urgal is an urban-type settlement

Urban-type settlement

Urban-type settlement ; , selyshche mis'koho typu ) is an official designation for a type of locality used in some of the countries of the former Soviet Union...

 in Verkhnebureinsky District

Verkhnebureinsky District

Verkhnebureinsky District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the seventeen in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. Its administrative center is the urban locality of Chegdomyn. District's population: Population of Chegdomyn accounts for 46.0% of the district's population....

 of Khabarovsk Krai

Khabarovsk Krai

Khabarovsk Krai is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Russian Far East. It lies mostly in the basin of the lower Amur River, but also occupies a vast mountainous area along the coastline of the Sea of Okhotsk, an arm of the Pacific Ocean. The administrative center of the krai is the...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. Population: 6,779 (2008 est.);

Geography

The settlement is situated in the valley of the Bureya River

Bureya River

The Bureya River is a 623 km long south-flowing tributary of the Amur River. Its name comes from the Evenk word birija, meaning river...

, close to its confluence

Confluence (geography)

In geography, a confluence is the meeting of two or more bodies of water. It usually refers to the point where two streams flow together, merging into a single stream...

 with the Urgal River. Novy Urgal is located around 340 kilometres (211.3 mi) north-west of the krai

Krai

Krai or kray was a type of an administrative division in the Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR, and is one of the types of the federal subjects of modern Russia ....

's administrative center of Khabarovsk

Khabarovsk

Khabarovsk is the largest city and the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It is located some from the Chinese border. It is the second largest city in the Russian Far East, after Vladivostok. The city became the administrative center of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia...

 and 28 kilometres (17.4 mi) west of the district's administrative center of Chegdomyn

Chegdomyn

Chegdomyn is an urban-type settlement and the administrative center of Verkhnebureinsky District of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. Population: 14,431 ; -Geography:...

.

History

The village was founded in 1974 in conjunction with the construction of the Baikal Amur Mainline (BAM), near the original village of Urgal, located on the river of the same name. The railway line connecting the Trans-Siberian Railway

Trans-Siberian Railway

The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. It is the longest railway in the world...

 at Isvestokovaya to the nearby Chegdomyn coal fields had already run through the Urgal area since 1951, after an earlier construction project was dismantled before completion during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

A large junction station between the BAM and the old line was built, along with the settlement, by workers from the then Ukrainian SSR

Ukrainian SSR

The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...

. As part of the BAM construction project, sections of the line were placed under the patronage of Komsomol

Komsomol

The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...

 brigades from different parts of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.

In 1985, Novy Urgal was granted urban-type settlement status. 1989 saw the commencement of regular traffic between Tynda

Tynda

Tynda is a town in Amur Oblast, Russia. It is an important railway junction, often referred to as the capital of the BAM. The name is of Evenk origin, tendy translating roughly as on the river bank. Population: -Geography:...

 and Komsomolsk-on-Amur

Komsomolsk-on-Amur

Komsomolsk-on-Amur is a city in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, situated on the left bank of Amur River. It is located on the BAM railway line, northeast of Khabarovsk. Population: -Geography and climate:...

, after the completion of the railway a large proportion of the inhabitants left the settlement, its population dropping from 9,126 in 1989 to 6,779 in 2006.

Economy and infrastructure

Novy Urgal is an important station on the BAM, located on the junction of the BAM and the Isvestkovaya–Chegdomyn line. The station, originally named Urgal-II, is located ten kilometers to the east, in the original village of Urgal) with its large locomotive depot, is the main economic focus of the settlement. In 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) west of the settlement, the BAM crosses the Bureya over a 600 m-long bridge.