Abstract: The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the historical experience of the participation of gendarmerie police officers in ensuring sanitary order on the railways of the Russian Empire. The purpose of this article is to study measures to prevent the spread of dangerous infectious diseases taken by the railway gendarmerie, both in cooperation with medical and sanitary services, and independently. The object of the study is the historical experience of the official activities of the gendarmerie railway police of the Russian Empire. The subject is the role of gendarmes in ensuring sanitary standards on railways. Along with general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction and concretization, the author used historical-systemic and historical-genetic research methods. The theoretical basis of the study, along with the published materials, were the office documents of the gendarmerie railway police, which are stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation. It is concluded that the ranks of the gendarmerie railway police performed a significant role in ensuring sanitary standards by bypassing the entrusted sites, assisting doctors in veterinary examinations, inspections of premises for the detention of prisoners of war, preventing outbreaks of epidemics on the railways that would pose a threat to the health and life of the population on a global scale.