The townspeople had to be transported to Talnah, Kayerkan, to Alykel, to the Nadezhda metallurgical plant under construction. Old buses ZIL-158 and a small number of PAZ could not cope.
At that time, the trucking company purchased LAZ-695M, as well as LiAZ-677, which for many years served the Norilsk people faithfully. The buses of the Likinsky automobile factory were traveling on the city’s roads for over 50 years: the last LiAZ-677 was decommissioned only in 2011.
In 1973, the first composters appeared in city buses. The staff of the Norilsk Central Automobile Enterprise was the first in the RSFSR to switch to cashless service in buses. Pre-purchased tickets were punched (or simply perforated) in metal composters. To tell the true, inspectors in Norilsk buses were a rather rare occurrence, so over time the townspeople stopped buying and punching tickets for travel. So in the 1990s, the conductors selling tickets in buses returned to their passengers.
Read other materials of our photo project in the History spot section.
Text: Svetlana Samokhina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
