The Russian Railroad Amateurs’ Society has been founded on July 25, 1990.

Our full name since 2008 is The "Railroad Amateurs’ Society" Inter-Regional Public Organization (VOLZD).

We preserve and propagate the historical heritage of the railroad transport and create its positive publicity. We also help to meet the youth’s interest to railways and enlighten will-be railroaders. We develop railroad modeling and collect all kind information on railways.

The Society has several sections devoted to old-time machinery preservation, retro tour organization, modeling, photo and video, art and literature, science and technology.

We took part in the contribution of old-time machinery to five railway museums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk and Rostov-on-Don. All in all the Society helped to preserve more than 200 historical locomotives and cars and to found a retro park.

The annual May, 9 retro tour for World War II veterans has been arranged. Also 17 different retro tours with steam traction took place on three railroads. Since 1990, 36 such tours have taken place.

Three documental films have been produced, one of them took part in the Oberhausen festival. Hundreds of radio broadcasts and newspaper and magazine articles can be contributed to this including the steam locomotives’ column in the well-known "Technology–Youth" magazine in 2005-06, by Leonid Makarov.

Three books devoted to the history of the Э and C steam locomotives, by Leonid Makarov and Alexander Nikolsky, and to the day-to-day life of Russian railroads, by Aleksey Voulfov, have come out, as well as postcard series devoted to Russian steam locomotives and rail cars.

Several model and photo exhibitions and thematic conferences have taken place.

We permanently seek for and collect all kind of information on survived old-time locomotives and cars as well as semaphores, station buildings and the machinery and architecture of the kind. Our main area of interest is Russia and the countries of the former USSR but we are ready to international cooperation.

The Society works in close cooperation to the Russian Railroads (RZD) company. We also closely cooperate to the nine railway museums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad (Königsberg), Rostov-on-Don, Saratov, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Yuzhno-Sahalinsk.

The Society has got three regional departments in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don.

The Society is headed by Alexey Voulfov (Chairman) and Alexander Nikolsky (Vice-Chairman).