In 1862, the Moscow–Saratov Railway Company extended the railway to Kolomna, where construction was halted due to the need to build a bridge across the Oka River. At the same time, in late November 1862, because of significant expenses, it was decided to limit the railway construction to Ryazan; under the Charter of January 8, 1863, this responsibility was assigned to the Moscow–Ryazan Railway Company. The bridge across the Oka was entrusted to the former head of the first section of the Moscow–Saratov Railway Company, engineer A. E. Struve. Near the village of Bobrovo, not far from Kolomna, the Golutvin station was built and workshops were set up to manufacture metal trusses for the bridge under construction. At first, it was a small operation: an iron foundry shop producing 200–300 poods of castings per day, a forge, mechanical workshops, and a shed for assembling metal and wooden structures. The permanent bridge across the Oka, which became Russia’s first combined bridge for both railway and horse-drawn transport, was opened on February 20, 1865.
From 1865, Gustav Struve took over the management of the enterprise, and the plant became known as the “Mechanical and Foundry Works of the Engineer Brothers Struve.” Foreign specialists were invited to serve as the plant director, shop heads, and foremen. In 1869, the first steam locomotive was produced from French drawings. The plant manufactured the steam engine cylinders and a number of other parts, while many components were purchased.
In 1870, the enterprise was reorganized into the joint-stock company “Kolomna Machine-Building Plant.”
At the plant in Kolomna, the following were built: the first Russian three-axle steam locomotive of the T series (1870), which became the first locomotive for the plant itself; the world’s first vessel with a diesel installation—the tugboat “Kolomna Diesel” (1907); the first two-stroke PDP diesel of the Koreivo system, which became the internal-combustion prime mover on the world’s first river motor ship; and the world’s first mass-produced diesel locomotive, Eel.