The factory was founded on August 25, 1898 as the Higher Volga Railway Materials Factory. Its construction was commissioned by the Franco-Belgian joint stock company Dil and Bakalan Group between 1896 and 1898, to specialise in producing a wide variety of rolling stock for the railways, from cargo carriages and wagons, to high quality passenger carriages.
Currently the Tverskoi Vagonostroitelny Zavod (Tver Railway Carriage Works) is one of the largest businesses in Russia in the production of various kinds of passenger railway carriages.
TVZ produces all sorts of passenger carriages: compartments, open plan, with chairs, carriage class, staff, military, first-class sleepers and special use, postal and baggage, and also bogies for passenger carriages, for coupled carriages on electric trains, wheeled pairs with axle equipment for both passenger and cargo carriages, as well as iron castings.
Since last year the factory has begun to produce carriages made of stainless steel, which increases their working life from 28 to 40 years. In the past five years the model range they produce has more than tripled, from four to fourteen.
Today TVZ has become one of the main rolling stock suppliers to Russian Railways. The factory's production also supplies: the Nevsky Express, Krasnaya Strela, the Smena and the Moscow-Kiev Express.
The factory takes pride in its workers and specialists. Two of them have doctoral degrees, eight have PhDs, 1,800 have higher education, including 300 professional workers who graduated from university, and all work unstintingly. This is because the factory is undergoing major modernisation involving introduction of modern high-tech equipment, which means the workers need to be trained engineers. About 500 workers are studying at higher educational institutions on-the-job, including some who are majoring in their profession.