The porch had a handsome gable. The south wall of the church had no windows at all, as it served as part of the town wall. On the west side, a massive tower rises directly out of the church building, and only on this side are there buttresses. Inside, the church has a painted wooden ceiling.
The pulpit and altar date from 1729. The organ was built by Mosengel of Königsberg in 1690. The altar furnishings date from the 16th to 18th centuries.
In 1914 the church was damaged in the fighting of the First World War, but was later restored. The Second World War passed this church by, and until 1961 it was in almost perfect condition.
Then came the familiar story: the roof tiles were damaged and the rafters rotted, and the roof and part of the east gable collapsed (in the 1970s). The gable above the porch was destroyed in 1988. The brickwork began to crumble.
As of 1990, only the tower and the walls of the church remained intact, along with parts of the porch and the sacristy. A collection point for empty glass bottles had been built onto the south-west side. In the late 1990s the church was conserved with German funding. The tower roof was repaired and a viewing platform was installed. By 2008 the tower roof had fallen into disrepair again, and the remains of the church were abandoned.
In 2020 a sweeping overhaul of the housing stock began in the village of Zheleznodorozhny. The builders of a bright future only got round to the local church in 2025. In 2026 an exhibition of 18th–19th-century icons from the private collection of Andrey Balyko opened in the nave.
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
