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In my previous publication entitled “About Father,” I wrote that on the Abakan-Taishet highway there is a Koshurnikovo station, named after the survey engineer Alexander Mikhailovich Koshurnikov. Here, in the young village of railway workers, there is a monument to A. M. Koshurnikov, who died during research.

In 1942, when a brutal war was going on, research began for the construction of the Abakan-Taishet railway. One of the expeditions was entrusted to lead the talented and experienced prospector Alexander Koshurnikov. The lines of his diary, which I quote below, tell about him. Here is the letter he sent to his wife with the guide returning back on October 12, 1942.

In the letter, he wrote: “… during the survey of the pass I received a positive result. I would be very pleased if these studies were given to me next year as preliminary ones. There are very interesting places here. Don’t be bored, I’ll see you soon.

“If I’m gone for a long time, then wait quietly — more than once I left the taiga even in the middle of winter. I can’t die, I have too much thirst for life.” On October 31, Koshurnikov writes in his diary: “There are only 52 kilometers left to housing. And they are so insurmountable that the possibility cannot be ruled out that we won’t get out at all.” Already on November 3, he writes: “I’m probably writing for the last time.

I’m freezing. Yesterday, November 2, a disaster occurred. Kostya and Alyosha died. The raft was pulled under the ice, and Kostya immediately left with the raft.

Alyosha jumped out onto the ice and crawled about 25 meters along the ice and water. I helped him get to the shore, but I couldn’t pull him ashore, so he became frozen half in the water. I walk. Hungry, wet, without fire and food.

I’ll probably freeze today…” It is very difficult, very difficult to read Koshurnikov’s latest entry. The path along which the prospectors walked was called by the builders “The Route of Courage.” A monument to A. was erected in the village.

M. Koshurnikov, and right from the monument begins the street of Alexander Afanasyevich Nevsky, the foreman of construction and installation train No. 241 - my father. And I send my filial greetings to everyone who worked with him and who knew and remembers him. And also special thanks to the staff of the local museum who helped me collect the necessary material about my father and the heroic explorers: A.

M. Koshurnikov, A. D. Zhuravleva and K.

A. Stofato, whose memory is immortalized in the names of the railway stations on the “Route of Courage”.