Arsenalna Metro Station

You're in the dungeon! Well, in fact you're in the subway, but at a depth of 105 meters underground. Amazing, isn’t it?

There was nothing here 60 years ago. Let's look into the past and find out where it all had began. The world's first subway line was put into operation on January 10, 1863 in London. A lot of things have changed since that time, the technology has improved and metro stations have appeared in many cities around the world. In particular, in Kyiv, the subway began its work in 1960, and the station "Arsenalna", where you are now, was one of the first ones. Nowadays it’s the deepest station in the world.
But why is it so deep? Why not to build it closer to the surface? The fact that the banks of the Dnipro river in this place are so high that the engineers had to reach the record of 105 meters, so even a journey by escalators takes about 5 minutes.
However, not only the depth of this station is impressive. What could the engineers decide if such long escalators simply did not exist at the time of construction? They thought for a long time and finally offered an unrealistic plan: to break the descent into 2 parts, and between them to build an intermediate lobby.
But then the second question arose: how to place the builders between the two cemented ditches that would erect this lobby? And again there was a revolutionary decision. What if we build a lobby on the surface, and then let it down to the desired depth? Such a decision has never been made before.
When the Kyivans saw a giant reinforced concrete ring, weighting more than three thousand tons, it was humorously called it "a huge glass". Only the team of physicists, chemists and geodesists were not in a laughing mood.
Finally, in 4 months, everyone breathed with a relief - the lobby was in its place. And in November 1960, the Kyivans first tried the deepest station in the world.
Well, now it's time to climb to the surface. Let's check how much time you will need to walk up all the way from the Kingdom of Underground to see the sunlight?