Around the World in Northern Climes
July 11^th to August 14^th, 2008

Don Winter

This report documents two separate group tours that we just happened to take on the same trip away from home, with some bridging events between them. Their common factor was that both tours took place north of 50ºN Latitude (with much of the time spent north of 55ºN Latitude), and for us the result was a trip completely around the world, leaving Los Angeles in a generally (north-)westerly direction, and returning from the (north-)east. For those who may only be interested in a group tour, go directly to:

Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express (7/14-7/28)

Mountain Outin' 'White Wales and Prarie Tales' (8/4-8/13)

Getting to Vladivostok (7/11-7/14)

Friday, July 11^th, 2008

Around 4 pm, we head south to Los Angeles, taking our usual route and parking in the lowest level of the MTA garage. We eat dinner at a Mexican Restaurant in the Plaza, and then take the FlyAway bus out to LAX with our luggage. Once there, we check in with Korean Airlines, have our baggage inspected by TSA, and go through security to the departure level, where we acquire some Russian roubles and settle down to await our late night flight.

Saturday, July 12^th, 2008

We board the flight to Seoul shortly after midnight, for scheduled departure at 12:30 am. On departure, we initially head out over the Pacific Ocean (as always), and then turn north, making landfall near Point Mugu and remaining over the USA until Washington State, crossing the Gulf of Alaska, and passing over Seward into Alaskan airspace, and heading west north of Nome, passing just south of the Diomede Islands, directly from the USA to Russia and from Saturday to Sunday, about 6:45 am (Los Angeles time).

Sunday, July 13^th, 2008

The flight continues in Sunday, in the eastern hemisphere, heading generally southwest over the Russian mainland, the Kamchatka peninsula, the Sea of Okhotsk, and then Sakhalin Island and the Sea of Japan, before turning west across South Korea and turning east again for the landing at Inchon International Airport, around 5 am (Korean Time). We take a taxi over to the nearby hotel at which we have booked a room for Saturday and Sunday nights, get into the room by 6 am, and get to bed by 6:30 am.

We arise before 2 pm, and have lunch in the American-style cafe in the hotel. At 4:30 pm. Sung Yo comes by to visit, and after checking that it's alright with us, drives us east into Seoul for a sightseeing tour around the city, including dinner at a traditional Korean restaurant in the Insadong area of the city center. We see the fairly wide Han River through the city, with its many (14) bridges, and most of the sights of the central city. As dusk falls, Sung drives us back out to the hotel, and then heads home. We go to bed anticipating our onward travel in the morning.

Seoul

Over 22 million people live in greater Seoul, located about 37° N latitude and 127° E longitude, ten million within the city itself, which is South Korea's capital and largest city. Located on the Han River, Seoul is only 50 km south of the North Korean border. The city was overrun twice during the Korean War of 1950-53, with great destruction, and so most of the major buildings post-date that time. Much of Seoul is taken up with tall apartment buildings that are the main residential stock. The tallest building is a 63-storey office building, but most of the business center of the city comprises high-rise office buildings. Some of the 14 bridges across the Han are road bridges, some rail, some both. All are illuminated at night. The center is surrounded by hills or mountains, one of which has the "Seoul Tower" built on it. There's a railroad line connecting the Inchon airport directly with Seoul's other airport at Gimpo.

Monday, July 14^th, 2008

This morning, we arise, check-out, and check-in with Korean Airlines' desk, where we first meet one of our fellow passengers on the Trans-Siberian tour, Dr. Gene Edynek (whose wife, Marea, is still in their room), and then head over to the airport for our 10 am flight to Vladivostok, where it's already noon by flight time. (one time zone east, plus DST, which South Korea does not observe). On arrival in Vladivostok, we pass through Passport Control, Immigration (a separate step), Baggage Claim, and Customs, before reaching the International Arrivals hall. This process takes more than an hour for us, with the last people through taking almost another hour.

Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express (7/14-7/28)

Monday, July 14^th, 2008 (cont.)

A guide named Olga is representing GW Travel in the Arrivals Hall, and when we check in with her, checks our name off on her list and directs us to a  bus outside. It's quite warm in the parking lot, and it's not the practice in Russia to run the bus's engine so that the air-conditioning can operate, so it's even warmer on the bus. Eventually, we have a dozen tour members arriving on this flight, all present and accounted for, and the bus heads for Vladivostok, some 42 Km to the south. We soon discover that some of the "tour members" (including the Edynaks) are part of a secondary group of Johns-Hopkins alumni, hosted by "MIR Tours", while those of us who booked directly through GW Travel (or its agents) are listed as "independents".

At the hotel, we get our room key and an introductory packet, which tells us more about where we'll be riding on the train, which of the excursion buses we'll be riding and the like. Soon afterwards, we run into Jack Swanberg, a well-known rail historian and author, who will be traveling in the next room to us on the train, and we exchange credentials and interests in short order. Jack is a member of the Western Connecticut Chapter of NRHS, but is not active in the organization. Jack had been planning on traveling with Bill Middleton, whom we already know from R&LHS Annual Meetings, but Bill was unable to travel so Jack paid the single supplement to come alone.

Later, at dinner (in another hotel, in an ornate dining room), we meet Don and Ursula Ashton, who are also in our car on the train and who live in Dubai(!), as well as Luba Diasamidze, the guide for the Johns-Hopkins group, who sits at our table, next to Jack and me. This is also where we discover that some thirty-plus of the tour members on our train comprise a group from Turkey, who will generally be segregated into their own language group, while the rest of the tour will run in English.

In the room, we have discovered that Russian ideas about room ventilation and cooling do not accord with American ideas, so we open to window to ventilate (and, eventually, cool) the room. Our room has a view of the harbor, as does the other side of the hotel.

Vladivostok

Vladivostok, located about 43° N and 132°E, is located on a peninsula projecting south into Petra Velikoga Bay on the Sea of Japan, not far east of the North Korean and Chinese (Manchurian) borders), has a population of 650,000, and was once one of the most strategic cities in the world, and was a closed city from 1958 to 1992. As Russia's only ice-free port with access to the Pacific Ocean, it is home to Russia's pacific fleet and is the port of communication and trade with Japan as well as the east end of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The city dates only from 1860, becoming a naval base in 1872, but didn't become crucially important until Russia lost control of Manchuria, and thus access to Port Arthur (Dalian) on the Chinese coast  west side of the Korean Peninsula, in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. This led to the building of a new segment of the Trans-Siberian Railway to reach Vladivostok without passing through Manchuria, now held by Japan. The center of the city, located on Golden Horn Bay (so named, because of its resemblance to Istanbul), has often been compared to San Francisco in both location and appearance.

An area of the city, developed in the 1960s, has many 5-storey apartment buildings (the legal upper limit for buildings without elevators). Then, there are high-rise blocks that remind me of Bratislava, on the hills. Many people have secondhand Japanese cars (imported from Japan), which are thus right-hand drive even though traffic in Russia drives on the right.

Tuesday, July 15^th, 2008

At 7:30 am, there's thick fog outside our 7th floor window. Even at 10 am, we can't see the nearest part of the harbor (three blocks). At that time, tour members leave for the tour of Vladivostok, separating into those on Bus 1 (the Turks), those on Bus 2 (the Johns Hopkins folks, or more correctly, those who booked with MIR Travel), and those on Bus 3 (the "independents", like ourselves). This narrative will, of necessity, cover the things seen and done by the group on Bus 3, throughout the next two weeks. For the start of the day, Bus 3 has only five people on it: us, Jack and the Ashtons, along with our local guide Tatyana, a world-class entomologist.

We go to the railway station, where there's a stuffed-and-mounted steam locomotive on the platform (2-10-0 E^A-3306), and then the Arseniov Museum (history and natural history), where we see exhibits covering the indigenous peoples and animals of the Russian Far East. While we're here, two more members of the "Bus 3 group" arrive—Paulo Burata, a photographer, and Riccardo Rodriguez, a writer—two journalists from Lisbon who will be producing an article on the trip for a Portuguese travel magazine. We have lunch at a Ukrainian restaurant in a shopping center, where we are joined by Anna, our Tour Manager for the next two weeks,, and then head for the Vladivostok Fortress, dating from 1911 and re-equipped in 1959-60 (and is now a museum). We reflect on how strange it is to be visiting an erstwhile cold-war military installation it what was, until the collapse of the Soviet union, a closed city. Then we go to an overlook next to the St. Cyril and St. Mephodii monument, but the fog is too thick for us to see much of Golden Horn Bay, followed by the WWII Memorial Chapel, Triumphal Arch, and a retired (stuffed-and-mounted) submarine, which we go through, walking along the waterfront here, and then heading for a different part of the waterfront, where we have to wait for the appointed time for our boat cruise. What seems like long distances on the bus are, in fact, between locations quite close to one another, as we have been driving in large circles around the quite small center of town.

Tatyana tells those who do not wish to walk that they must stay on the bus, but when we get back, we see that Jack, Paulo and Riccardo are at a waterside cafe, having a beer. They're promptly dubbed 'the bad boys'. The boat ride goes both ways out on the water, allowing us to see most of the places we have been to during the day, and we then head for the railway station to board our train, which is waiting in the platform.

Consist::

Locomotive
Generator         018    85730
Service             023    10897
Silver Class 1    018    81044
Gold Class 2     002    80230
Gold Class 3     001    81941
Gold Class 4     002    80206
Gold Class 5     002    80222
Gold Class 6     002    80214
Gold Class 7     001    81503
Bar                   018    81036
Restaurant        018    86043
Kitchen             018    86050
Restaurant         018    86068
Silver Class 8    001    00180
Silver Class 9    001    00206
Silver Class 10   001    00198
Silver Class 11   001    00172
Heritage      12   033    12809
Heritage       13  033    12998
Heritage       14   033    12888
Staff Car             018    81010
Storage               017    51528

Arriving at the train, and finding our room, brings to a head a question that I had had since reading the preliminary materials handed out at the hotel the previous day—we booked a Heritage Class space, but have been assigned a space in a gold Class car! A little investigation shows that the same thing has happened to Jack, and to the two Portuguese journalists, while we later find that others have booked Heritage Class spaces only to be accommodated in a Silver Class room. All of the actual Heritage Class room are occupied by people in the Turkish group, so GW Travel must have made these decisions for their own convenience.

Vladivostok station has a central island platform, located below the adjacent street level with US-made (Baldwin, 1944) E^A 2-10-0 3306 stuffed-and-mounted on it, plus a pair of tracks on either side with a side platform on the west side, below a retaining wall, and a second island platform on the other side, with a track beyond it. The main station building is on the more westerly island, with a second storey at street level above. There is also a footbridge connecting street level with all of the platforms, outside of the buildings (to the north). The station is located just south of the main square, on the west side of Golden Horn Bay. All tracks are electrified with overhead catenary at 25 kV AC. There is a short tunnel under the city, north of the station, a 'suburban' station less than ten minutes north, a freight yard on both sides, and another freight yard on both sides about a hour further north, after which the line speed increases.

Dinner is on the train, starting before departure. While we're at dinner, car attendants Alexei and Anna (a different person from the Tour Manager) make up the beds in the room, and we go to bed soon after returning from dinner. Others, we understand, repair to the bar car before going to bed. :-) 

The Trans-Siberian Railway

In the 1880s, Tsar Alexander II swore to defend Russia's territorial claims in the far east. In support of this,m in March 1891, the tsar proclaimed the undertaking af a Trans-Siberian railway, with the first stone laid by his son, the future Nicholas II, at Vladivostok. However, the initial line was not built  around the northern bend of the Amur, but in a 560 km territorial concession across Manchuria, with a southern Manchurian line to Port Arthur, a warm-water port.

Construction of the line began at Chelyabinsk, in the southern Urals, and ran parallel to the old post road as far as Irkutsk, with modifications to serve Perm, Yekaterinburg, and Tyumen, and then through virgin territory in the Baikal, Amur and Ussuri regions. The line was constructed in different segments, in parallel: through western Siberia from Chelyabinsk to the Ob River (present site of Novosibirsk) from 1892 to 1896; through central Siberia, from the Ob River, through Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, from 1893 to 1898; through the Ussri region between Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, from 1891 to 1897; across Lake Baikal, east of Irkutsk, between 1895 and 1900, and then around Lake Baikal's southern end, past Ulan Ude and Chita and on to Sretensk, on the Shilka River (from which a boat could be taken to Khabarovsk), between 1901 and 1904; across East China, through Harbin to Vladivostok, from 1897 to 1901, and across the Amur region, mostly after the Russo-Japanese war, from 1901 to 1916.

The line was built as single track, and doubled in the 1920s. It  was electrified after WWII, starting from the western end, with electrification completed through to the far east only in the 1970s or 1980s. On parts of the line, traction went directly from steam to electric operation.

Since 1991, the railways in Russia have been at least split up into separate companies, if not privatized, and the Trans-Siberian line is now operated by the following companies:

• Far Eastern Railway, from Vladivostok through Khabarovsk to Arkhara

• Zabaikalsk Railway, from Arkhara through Amazar and Chemyshevsk to Petrovski Zavod

• Eastern Siberian Railway from Petrovski Zavod through Ulan Ude and Irkutsk to Yurty

• Krasnoyarsk Railway from Yurty through Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk to Nazyvayevskaya

• Sverdlovsk Railway from Nazyvayevskaya westward through Yekaterinburg and Druzhnino

As time has passed since the separation into different companies, some locomotives and carriages allocated to these companies have been painted in new, often quite bright, paint schemes replacing the previous drab sameness in (mostly) overall green.

Various details of our train's distance traveled, schedule, and performance along the way are captured in the table below:

Date	Location	Distance	Scheduled	Actual	Event	Locomotive
7-15-08	Vladivostok	-	2027 (Moscow+7)	2038	Departure	ЭП1 (EP1)
7-16-08	Vyazemskaya		0620-0630	0720-38	Crew change?
7-16-08	Khabarovsk	476 miles	0830	0946	Arrival
7-16-08	Khabarovsk		1145	1245	Departure	ЭП1 (EP1) 168
7-16-08	Obluchye		1702-17	1814-29	Crew change?
7-16-08	Arkhara		1808-20 (+6)	1920-22	?
7-16-08	Belogorsk		2127-2219		Crew change	ЭП1 (EP1) 168
7-17-08	Skovorodino		0654-0729	0713-31	Crew change?
7-17-08	Yerofey-Pavlovich		1051-1112	1050-1118	Crew change	ЭП1 (EP1) 168
7-17-08	Amazar		1301-21	1302-24	Crew change?
7-17-08	Mogocha		1450-1518	1445-1518	Crew change?
7-17-08	Chernyshevsk		2108-33	2108-39	Loco change	ЭП1 (EP1) 152
7-18-08	Khilok		0820-35	0744-0805	Crew change?
7-18-08	Petrovski Zavod		1200 (pass)	1224-30
7-18-08	Ulan Ude	1,792 mi.	1307-1420 (+5)	1431-1607	Reverse/loco	(2)ТЭ10ч 0281
7-18-08	Naushki		1933-0029	2030-?	Russian border	2M62 M026
7-19-08	Ulaan Baatar	409 miles	1000 (+4)	1006	Arrival
7-19-08	Ulaan Baatar		2250	2250	Rev./Depart	2M62 M026
7-20-08	Sukhe Baator		0605-0730	0708-0830	Mongolian border
7-20-08	Naushki		0915-1215 (+5)	0918-1215	Russian border	(2)ТЭ10ч 0283
7-20-08	Ulan Ude	409 miles	1705	1716	Arrival
7-20-08	Ulan Ude		2145	2217	Departure	ЭП1 (EP1)
7-21-08	Slyudyanka		0340-0635		Loco change	ТЭМ2А 6550
7-21-08			1010-1300	0948-1306	Barbecue
7-21-08	Port Baikal	111 miles	1430	1501	Arrival
7-21-08			2120	2122	Departure
7-22-08	Slyudyanka		0240-0710		Loco change	ЭП1 (EP1)
7-22-08	Irkutsk	288 miles	0915	0920	Arrival
7-22-08	Irkutsk		2120	2135	Departure	ЭП1 (EP1) 161
7-23-08	Nizhnedinsk				Loco change	ЭП1 (EP1) 039
7-23-08	Krasnoyarsk		1506-1528 (+4)	1515-1535	Loco change	ЭП1 (EP1)
7-23-08	Mariinsk		2149-2216	2140-2235	Loco change	ЦС2 (US2)
7-24-08	Novosibirsk	1,149 mi.	0330 (+3)		Arrival
7-24-08	Novosibirsk		1727	1811	Departure	ЦС2 (US2)
7-24-08	Barabinsk		2119-30	2123-49	Loco change	ЦС2 (US2)
7-25-08	Yekaterinburg	947 miles	1611 (+2)	1618	Arrival
7-25-08	Yekaterinburg		2012	2013	Departure	ЦС7 (US7)
7-25-08	Druzhnino		pass 2212	2136-2212	Loco change	ВП60 (VP60)
7-26-08	Kazan	544 miles	0945 (0)	0948	Arrival
7-26-08	Kazan		1825	1831	Departure	?
7-27-08	Moscow (Kaz.)	493 miles	1158	1143	Arrival	ЦС2к (US2k) 694
Total		6,618 mi.

Wednesday, July 16^th, 2008

When I awake in the morning, the train is still heading north, on the line running a few miles east of the border with China. During the night, there have been occasions on which it has seemed like our train was waiting for trains coming in the other direction, but since this is a double-track line, that could only be the case if track segments have been shut down for maintenance purposes.

South of Khabarovsk, the line, still heading north, crosses the Khor River on a multi-span through-truss bridge, with another, similar, bridge, just a few miles further along. A small wayside station is followed by a freight yard on both sides and a maintenance-of-way storage yard on the east side, a large wayside station, another small wayside station, then a freight yard on the east sidw, and then on the west, a small wayside station, a locomotive depot on the west side, and two more small wayside stations.  The line expands to four tracks, with yards on both sides, and enters Khabarovsk station, which has a main platform and depot (station buildings) on the east (or north) side, and two island platforms, with a footbridge overhead connecting the platforms.

There are two types of wayside stations along the Trans-Siberian Railway: small wayside stations have just a side platform on each side of the line, with at least a shelter on one platform, and perhaps both, up to a full depot on at least one side;  large wayside stations are located on refuge tracks, where the line is briefly four tracks wide, to permit faster trains to pass slower trains, with the side platforms located along the outer sides of the refuge tracks. Typically, large wayside stations are more likely to have a full depot on one side of the line than are the small ones.

At some places, a somewhat larger station will have, instead of two side platforms along the outside of the additional tracks, two island platforms between the additional tracks and the main tracks, permitting trains on the main tracks to stop and, potentially, interchange passengers with trains stopping on the outer tracks. Such stations will have a larger depot, on one side of the tracks or the other, and typically a footbridge connecting the depot and the platforms.

The time for breakfast on the train vary over the course of the trip, depending on when a day's excursions off the train might start, but breakfast differs from the other two meals in that it is acceptable to go to the restaurant car at any time between the hours shown on the daily schedule, whereas both lunch and dinner are fixed-sitting meals at which kitchen and serving crew efficiency requires that all passengers come to the restaurant car at the beginning of each meal. The breakfast menu provides items for both 'continental breakfast' and 'full breakfast', but Chris and I find ourselves eating everything that is on offer (only one item of each set of selections, of course), and enjoying every dish.

For the purposes of kitchen efficiency, passengers are asked, during breakfast, to check off which of the alternative items (one alternative is always vegetarian, but sometimes that may be the majority selection) shown on the menus for lunch and dinner they will choose to eat at those meals.

Not long after breakfast, the  train arrives in Khabarovsk, an hour or so late due to those stops during the night, and the passengers depart for the buses for this morning's excursions  At the close of the tour of Vladivostok, which today in a bustling, untidy, city, in which many of the younger women workers (for example) are very stylishly dressed, with high-heel shoes competing with the most stunning in the world for sheer heel height, but in which there is litter in the streets resembling that in any untidy US city, Tatyana, the local guide on bus 3, has apologized for the untidiness of her city, but suggested that this was a side effect of its vibrancy, and asked us to make a close comparison with Khabarovsk. We do so, and conclude that Khabarovsk, as a provincial capital, still bears many of the hallmarks of a communist-era governmental  center, with a much more strait-laced working population in those government facilities. It is tidier, but much less vibrant, than Vladivostok.

As we drive around town, the local guide, addressing us as "ladies and gentlemen of bus 3", using the microphone on the bus and the special walkie-talkie devices handed out to passengers each day we're off the train (only the guide's device can talk) when we're off the bus, describes the history of the "Russian Far East", disclaiming  this being any part of Siberia, and, for the first of what will be many times, explains to us the advantages of the democratic system of government adopted after the fall of the Soviet Union (and partly, during the Gorbachev era before that), with none of the guides who do this seeming to see the irony in 'selling democracy' to an audience that is largely from a country that has had democratic government for over 200 years, and all of whom, even later in the trip with an expanded ridership on bus 3, live in countries that have been fully democratic, in the liberalized sense being extolled, for much longer than Russia (or Mongolia) has!

In Khabarovsk, we pass a stuffed-and-mounted 0-6-0T and carriage, alongside the road, at the south/east end of the station (but not alongside the main line), and then pass the Railway Academy, which trains maintenance people for the Trans-Siberian and BAM railways, and the headquarters of the Trans-Siberian Railway, in downtown. We visit the WWII Memorial, the "Black Tulip", the reconstructed orthodox cathedral. Today is the 90th anniversary of the execution of Nicholas II in Yekaterinburg, and the guide points out memorial icons to the Tsar and his family. We visit the Lenin Square, the museum with the ethnography department covering the indigenous peoples, and the local natural history. We return past Lenin Square and down a street lined by Stalin-era buildings in the monumentalist style.

Back on the train, we have lunch in the restaurant car, and later, dinner in the same car. Jack shares our table for at least half the meals on the train over the next twelve days.

Leaving Khabarovsk, the number of tracks drops to four again, with a parcels depot on the east/north side, then to two, with carriage sidings to the east/north,  There is a tunnel, a station with two island platforms (Priamurskaya), and as the line turns definitively west, the 2.6 km long multi-span through truss Amur River bridge, followed by a station with two island platforms, several small wayside stations with some large wayside stations interspersed, and a freight yard, followed by a stretch of open grassland with lines of trees.

The line passes through Birobidzhan, where the station buildings are to the north and a freight yard to the south, crosses a river on two separated stone arch bridges, with mountains off to the north, passes a rail-served quarry on the north side, entering wooded hills, an industrial facility on the south side, belching smoke from tall stacks, a large intermediate station (Izvestkovaya), with depot to the south, a large wayside station, and an area with yard tracks, with both blue-colored diesel locomotive and green-colored electric locomotives, as rain falls.

There is a small yard on the north side, then an embankment built up above the surrounding meadow, a cement plant and stacks of concrete ties off to the north, a location with one tunnel on the north side, without track, and another through which the train passes, another tunnel, eight yard tracks on the south side, the station at Obluche, where the line turns generally  northwest, with the depot off to the north at a higher level, eight yard tracks on each side of the line, railway offices, and a coal depot, on the south side, and a tunnel that was the first tunnel to be built through permafrost, after which the line runs through birch forest on either side.

There are more tunnels before the line reaches Arkhara, which has its depot on the south side, with a side platform there and an island platform to the north., with yard tracks to the north of that, and Bureya, with depot to the south, side platform to the south, island platform to the north and ayrd tracks north of that, followed by a junction with a non-electrified line, a through truss bridge over a river, and then seven yard tracks on the north side, before dark.

Once we have crossed the Amur River and turned generally northwest and then west, the train will spend several days in the boreal forest , running at latitudes between 52°N and 54°N.

Siberia and the Russian Far East

Most westerners think of "Siberia" as being the whole of Russia, east of the Europe-Asia divide at the crest of the Ural Mountains, but all of our guides in the more easterly parts of this area stress that "Siberia" does not extend east of Lake Baikal, and that Vladivostok and Khabarovsk are in the "Russian Far East". This whole area is mountainous, with mineral resources, vegetation is largely birch forests, and east-flowing rivers (at least along the rail line), whereas the land west of Lake Baikal is flat, has coal mines and large agricultural areas used for wheat growing, interspersed with cities which have had heavy manufacturing facilities since the early 1940s, and has north-flowing rivers.

Friday, July 18^th, 2008

There are no off-train activities of any variety, today, although there is much scope for taking walks on the platform or into the station buildings during the stop at Ulan Ude. During the night, we have crossed the Cherskogo Range, leaving behind the Amur River watershed, passed through Chita and Moqzon, and are heading west-southwest down the valley of the Khilok River. The continuation of the Russian lessons seem designed just to be able to get people to sight-read verses in the Russian language (so as to sing some songs), so neither of us attends any more of them.

Along the way, we pass five or six rail-served lumber/logging mills, at least two on each side of the line. We meet eight westbound freights between 8 and 8;40 am. Approaching Khilok, there is a railway carriage and wagon works on the south side, a locomotive depot on the south side, and 4-6 freight sidings, with depot and side platform to the north and island platform to the south, and locomotive shops on the north side. There is now a broad valley to the south, and the line descends to the valley floor and then climbs out again, still on the north side, followed by an intermediate station, and two rail-served industries on the north side. The line repeats the change from north side of the valley to valley floor and back again, twice more, passing another intermediate station.

There are several maintenance-of-way and track-laying trains on side tracks along here, another lumber/logging facility on the north side and then one one the south side, and then a small wayside station on the north side of the valley. There is a through-girder bridge over a stream, a lumber/logging mill on the south side, a track relaying train on the north side, and two more logging facilities on the north side, before passing a settlement with high-pitched roofs (like Swiss ski-area buildings), differing from the style of the typical community we've passed, a large wayside station, a rail-served logging facility on the south side and two on the north side, and a through-truss bridge over a stream.

There is a community with five-storey apartment buildings, eight yard tracks on the north side, a lumber facility beyond, two or three derelict factories on the north side, then another one with pipelines, before the line turns north, out of the Khilok River valley, over the Zaganskiy Range, and then passes a yard with many tracks and a locomotive stabling point on the east side. An intermediate station has its depot and main platforms to the west, with a footbridge overhead, with the diminishing yard continuing on the east side, and then the station at Petrovski Zavod has depot and platforms to the east. The line climbs over the Tsagan-Daban Range, passing another lumber/logging facility, and then turns west down the Uda River valley, with the line running along the south edge of a very broad valley. Another line trails in from the east.

There were once large steam locomotive strategic reserves stored along the Trans-Siberian. The one at Amazar, which we passed yesterday, appears to have been cleared away (although we could see where it likely had been), but the one on the north side at Onokhoi, about 20 miles east of Ulan Ude, is still there. The locomotives appear to be in an advanced state of decay, and it seems quite unlikely that any of them could ever be steamed again. Their location, behind rows of stock in much better condition, makes it impossible to identify any of the steam locomotives.

There are two small wayside stations, what looks like a temporary maintenance-of-way depot on the north side, signs of track construction or removal on the north side, a yard with six tracks under construction or removal on the north side, then four electrified yard tracks on the north side. A small wayside station is followed by more yard tracks on both sides, a small wayside station, a through truss bridge carrying the flying junction with the line south to Ulaan Baatar, a large wayside station with depot on the north side, a through truss bridge over a river, a derelict yard on the north side, a small wayside station, industrial spurs curving in from the north, and the line turns north, with carriage yards to the east and west as the line enters the station area at Ulan Ude, which has two stub-end tracks on the east side at the south end, a main side platform with station buildings on the east side, a footbridge connecting all platforms, and two island platforms to the west, with four through freight tracks and six freight yard tracks west of the platforms.

At Ulan Ude, I get off the train to spend some time at the north end of the platform, watching the railway operations. There is a stuffed-and-mounted 2-6-2, Су (Su) 205-91, on the north end of the easternmost platform, as well as electric and diesel locomotives entering and leaving the motive power depot on the northeast corner of the station. Since the train is reversing at this point, and heading south on a non-electrified line, our new motive power is a diesel locomotive, which attaches to the other end of the train from where I'm standing. Once we leave Ulan Ude, headed south through that flying junction, there is a documentary this afternoon on Genghis Khan, which Chris goes to watch but I don't.

The single-track, non-electrified, jointed-track line now runs up the Selenga River valley, out into the countryside on an embankment, and then, following a deck girder viaduct over derelict land, curving southwest, climbing up on a ledge on the hillside above the river to the northwest. A large wayside station is followed by a multi-span through-truss bridge over the river, after which the line runs on the west side of a broad valley, with a couple of passing sidings, at one of which we overtake a freight train. Two villages have small wayside stations, one of them with a logging facility west of the track. During dinner, we pass along the north, and then the west, side of a large lake (whose name translates as 'gooseneck lake') that extends for many miles along the line. We stop in a passing siding for ten minutes, waiting for a northbound freight train to pass.

There is a small wayside station with depot to the east, a passing siding, a logging facility on the east side, as the line passes through rolling grass-covered hills. Where are the forests for the lumbering? A passing siding has a small wayside station with depot to the east, the line runs on an embankment above a broad valley to the east, crosses a multi-span through-truss bridge over a river, passes rail-served grain silos and a (former?) lumbering facility on the east side, and reaches the station at Naushki, which has spurs to unloading tracks and freight houses on the east side, a side platform and station buildings to the east, an island platform to the west, an eight-track freight yard on the west side, and a locomotive depot on the east side, south of the station. Beyond the locomotive depot is a fortified area in which an entire train can fit, just north of the actual Mongolian border fence.

At Naushki, the Russian Passport Control people collect our passports and disappear with them. We're then allowed off the train, and I walk to the front end to see what's going on. The Russian diesel has already left, and the Mongolian one doesn't appear before dark. I notice Anna, the Tour Manager, making voluble phone calls on the platform, and it later transpires that Lindsay Ward, the train doctor from England, had received an exit stamp in her passport on entering Russia, so can't leave Russia at this point, since that would conclude the eligibility of her double-entry visa, while the Japanese videographers are carrying equipment that's too expensive to take into Mongolia without commercial permits, so Lindsay and her husband, Robert Turner,, the three Japanese, and their interpreter, Marina, all stay in Naushki.

Chris and I go to bed while the train is still stopped in Naushki, and some time later, the Russian woman returns our passports, and after that, the Mongolian border people pick them up, stamp them out in the corridor, and return them to the table. 

At dinner, the bus 3 local guide sits with Jack, Chris and me, and since he's much more articulate than the bus 3 local guide, I ask him what impact the transition from communism to democracy, in 1991, had had on him. He says he was too young (less than ten years old) to remember what it was like in the communist era, an answer I will remember later when the tour managers discuss life in today's Russia and life in Soviet Russia before that. I also comment to this guide how odd it seems to many of the passengers when our local guides extol the virtues of their new democratic system to passengers from long-time democratic countries (as our local guide had done this morning). He hadn't thought of it before, but now that it has been  mentioned, he can see the irony in it.

After dinner, a small group of tour members takes a guided ride on horseback, down to the fork in the road at which we had turned away from the main road through the park. The rest of us wait for them to return, until a half hour after scheduled departure Anna says we must board the buses and head down the side road towards the turnout. It transpires that the locals with the horses expected the buses to meet then at the turnout, but our guides had not received that message!

On the way back into Ulaan Baatar from the National Park, bus 3 suffers a broken rear suspension or shock absorber, and cannot continue (certainly, on these rough roads). Fortunately, bus 1 is still behind us, and stops to help. There is (just) room on bus 1 for the bus 3 inhabitants to take up the spare seats (requiring some of the Turks to move their stuff from those seats), so we're able to return to the train with only a small delay. However, this does mean that we're immersed in the Turks' bus culture for the next couple of hours, including pressuring passengers to sing on the microphone, etc. Unlike some, I don't find this either amusing or entertaining. My enforced seatmate is uncommunicative, again, unlike some others.

Back on the train, we go to bed as the train heads back towards Russia.

Mongolia/Ulaan Baatar

Mongolia is the most sparsely populated country in the world, with only 2.6 millions people, 1.6 million of whom live in Ulaan Baatar. Most of the rest are nomadic herders. For many years, the country was known as 'Outer Mongolia' (to differentiate it from the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia). From the 1920s to 1990, Mongolia was basically a dependency of the Soviet Union.

The city was established in its present location by 1778, and was given its present name (which means 'Red Hero') in 1924. From the 1930s, the city was built up as if it were any other Soviet eastern city, with lots of ugly apartment building and monumentalist civic buildings. The Gandan Khid is the only monastery to have survived the Soviet period.

Gorkhi-Terelj National Park is about 80 km northeast of Ulaan Baatar in Alpine-like surroundings, at a altitude of 1600 m (over 5000 feet).

Mongolian Railways were run as an adjunct to the Soviet railway system for  around 70 years, and thus share the same broad gauge and many of the same diesel locomotives. Although the newest Mongolian freight locomotives are from General Motors, and look similar to those found in the USA and Canada, the passenger locomotives that hauled our train in Mongolia are older Soviet passenger M62 types, like those once found throughout the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites.

Sunday, July 20^th, 2008

Again, I awake in the Mongolian countryside. There are rail-served industries on the east side of the line, including large grain elevators, as the line approaches the border town of SukhBaktor (named for the same Mongolian hero as the central square in Ulaan Baatar), there is a freight yard to the west, with the station platforms and depot to the east. The line then runs through lightly wooded hills towards the border itself, where there is a Mongolian customs post on the east side of the line, just south of the border fence.

We stop at the Mongolian border crossing, and the Mongolian authorities check our passports before we're permitted to go to breakfast in the restaurant car. After 90 minutes, the train continues to the Russian border, where it stops again in a tightly-fenced high-security area, where it is inspected and the Russian authorities pass through the train collecting passports and visas.

After all the passports and other documents are surrendered to the Russian border authorities in a security-fenced compound right at the border, the train pulls down to Naushki station, where we're allowed off the train, and the passengers who did not get to go to Mongolia rejoin us. Since there will be a long wait here, Jack and I head down to the locomotive depot, just south of the station, and spend some time looking over the Russian locomotives present there. A crewman, technical manual (with an English-language cover, at the very least) in hand, nods hello before starting his locomotive. Other personnel walk by us without any apparent interest in what we're doing there. After getting photos of all the locomotives and most of the facilities, we walk back to the station.

Some three hours after first arriving at the border, the train departs from Naushki, the same way it had come two days earlier, and we all head to lunch in the restaurant car. We stop at the next siding north of the station for a southbound passenger train to pass. This afternoon, there is a talk, by Tour Manager Anna, about the Trans-Siberian Railway, which provides much information about the line to passengers on the train. Anna has previously provided me with a copy of one of the data sheets used in this presentation, showing which segments of the route are electrified at what voltages, where we change locomotives, etc., so much of this information is included in this report.

Among the new passengers is Steve Sandberg, leader of the "Friends of the 261", and engineer for that steam locomotive when it goes out on the main line, along with his wife and daughter. I introduce myself to Steve when I walk by him videoing out of one of the two open vestibules on the train (in the kitchen car) after the talk on the railway. After I've told him about my activities in railroad history, Jack Swanberg walks by, and I introduce the two of them also, telling Steve who Jack is and what he does. Steve is very welcoming of our introductions.

In late afternoon, we arrive back at Ulan Ude, where we leave the train for a visit to the city and surrounding mountains. Bus 3 has many more "independents" this afternoon and evening, including a family with small children (one still requires a stroller, which they carry with them), and a couple that sits in the front seat of the bus every day, where the man addresses questions almost amounting to an interrogation to every local guide we have.

On the way out of Ulan Ude, we pass a large locomotive factory. We head out east of the city, along a anrrow road that is said to be the "transcontinental highway", to a secluded hollow containing a village of 'Old believers', descendents of people who defied Peter the Great's orders to make changes in Orthodox religious rituals in the late 17th-century,, who had been sent into exile east of Lake Baikal as a result (requiring a 7,500 km walk—about 5,000 miles—from their previous settlements in what is now Belorussia) and who still maintain those beliefs today. At a house in the village, we eat local food and are treated to an amateur (very) theatrical on the traditions of old believer weddings, featuring two of the MIR Travel folks (Americans) as the protagonists. (The participants were selected by Luba, that group's interpreter and guide.) Our hostess's speeches are translated by Luba. This process goes on too long, and is not as educational as some in the audience seem to think. The proceedings are interrupted when the family's cattle try to walk through to get to their shed at the back of the small yard we're sitting in.

Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world (with 20% of the worlds fresh, unfroze, water), formed in the expanding gap between two tectonic plates. At its deepest point, its around 5000 feet deep, and its water is crystal clear throughout much of its 400 miles length (but only 40 mile width). Some 80% of the lake's flora and fauna are found nowhere else in the world. The water never rises above 60°F.

The Limnological Museum has geological exhibits on Lake Baikal, including three-dimensional models, and an aquarium with examples of Lake Baikal fish, including the salmon-like omul, and freshwater seals (nerpa), with comparative examples of fish from Lake Tanganyika.

Tuesday, July 22^nd, 2008

When I awake, we're still on the way into Irkutsk, reaching there shortly after breakfast. Along the way, we pass through mountains with coniferous forests a tunnel, a deep valley to the northeast, a tunnel, a forest of birches and beeches. There's a rail-served industry to the northeast, in the mountains/forest, with a small town nearby Having passed Lake Baikal, we are now in eastern Siberia. We pass through a couple of communities with large wayside stations. As we descend the valley towards Irkutsk, the valley floor is occupied by small communities, with many vegetable allotments, all with small 'dachas' on them. (Not an official's vacation house, by any means!) A couple of times, along the way, thick fog patches appear.

Nearing the valley floor, there are yard tracks to the south/west, a spur trailing in on the east side, a small wayside station, and then another, an 8-10 track freight yard, a spur curving away to an industry to the north, a wayside station in an urban area, with socialists realism apartment blocks bestriding the city along the tracks. After another suburban wayside station, the line reaches the riverbank (on the southwest side of the river), with an extra track below nearer the river level. At the main Irkutsk station, there are six total tracks, served by three island platforms, with refreshment stalls on the platforms and the large station buildings to the southwest, connected to the platforms by a footbridge.

In the adjacent platform is a train whose carriages say Moscow to "Peking"! We leave the train to board the usual three buses, with bus 3 now quite full, and head across the Angara River into the main part of the city, turning east along the Gagarin Embankment on the right bank, with a grassy, tree-lined sward between street and river. At Karl Marx Street is the monument to tsar Alexander III, who created the Trans-Siberian Railroad. We're invited off the bus here to visit one or more souvenir stands down by the river, and then to cross the street so a museum, where we don't go inside but are invited to patronize the souvenir shop!

We then go to the old center of Irkutsk, which now comprises three churches, two orthodox and one catholic, a WWII memorial with an eternal flame, a monument to the general who led the Siberian troops, and many trees and grassy parks. One Orthodox church is the oldest stone building (1725) in Irkutsk. The churches survived the Stalinist period because they were put to other uses, such as warehouses or an organ concert hall. At one end of the park, is a bridge across a highway to a park on the bank of the Angara River. We next pass a monument to Admiral Kolchak, the White Army leader in the war following the October Revolution, and visit the convent of the "Seym", with the cemetery containing the graves of the Decembrists of 1825, who were exiled here, and stop outside the former house of the governor, with carvings and "lace", an excellent example of the architectural style.

At lunch, Chris and I sit with Lindsay and Robert. Lindsay has spent the morning at a hospital, with one of the Turks, who had fallen from an upper bunk and broken some ribs. She is quite disparaging about the quality of Russian hospitals. Then, I chat with Steve about how 'a friend of mine' would have gone looking for the 'shed visit' by now, and he says " you must be taking about Bruce [Anderson]!", to which I laughingly agree.

After lunch, we visit the Prince Volkonsky family museum, in the house the prince and his family lived in while exiled after the Decembrists' attempted coup, with material from other Decembrists. Our local guide described the Decembrists on the bus, before we got here, and Jana felt the need to take the microphone and give an alternate view, suggesting that the Decembrists had the right idea in resisting the tyranny of the tsars of the time. And the end of the house tour, there is a concert of classical songs and arias, or the types that were played during the Volkonskys' time here, in the Volkonsky salon. While we're waiting for this concert, the couple from the front seat suggest skipping the concert and going directly to the shopping area.

After the house visit, the bus is parked near the Central Market, for the "shopping" visit. After Chris ad I have left the bus, the 4-year-old girl goes running off into the crowd, completely disappearing from sight, while her parents are still on the bus dealing with their infant. If there had been a pedophile present, the girl might never have bee seen again. Visiting the Central Market, which doesn't seem to me to differ much from Reading Terminal Market, or even Los Angeles' Grand Central Market, the police stop the Japanese camera crew and a couple of other people for taking photographs, with or without permits, and bribes have to be paid to get cameras back. (My camera remains on the bus at this time, but I take a photograph of a tram after we return to the bus.)

Finally, we go to photograph houses on the "street of wooden houses", and some 18th-century wooden houses with the streets built up next to the "low" windows, which the guides say will likely not last long, due to their propensity to be destroyed by fire, which will be news to those many North Americans who live in wooden houses today. We then head out of the city, eastward, to the spot where the first icebreaker on the Angara River, built in Britain at the end of the 19th-century, is moored, near the dam on the Angara River. Leaving this area, Steve is seen with a large container of Pringles, which he says are 'emergency supplies', but on which the woman in the front seat comments 'what do you expect, they're Americans!

Dinner is at a restaurant outside of town, where there is also singing and dancing before we return to the train in the rain. At the station, after the rain has stopped, the "Baikal Cruise Train" is in the platform across from ours as we board, shortly before departure. Passengers greet Tour Manager Anna on her return, as we return to the train, here.

Heading northwest from Irkutsk, the line runs alongside the river, and passes a signal tower on the northeast side, freight loading sidings and a goods station on that side, then sidings storing lines of carriages. Beyond the road bridge that we had driven over in the morning, spurs curve away northeast, and there is a through truss bridge over a side river, followed by a rail-served coal unloading dock on the northeast side, an intermediate station, a ten track freight yard on the southwest side, a flying junction with a goods line joining from the south with connections to both side of the line we're on, an industrial plant on the northeast side, an intermediate station, several storage tracks on the northeast side with gondolas and open hoppers, becoming six or seven extra tracks on the northeast side, and another intermediate station.

There are eight additional tracks to the northeast and twelve to the southwest, a former water tank on the northeast side overlooking a signal tower, a maintenance-of-way yard on the northeast side, an intermediate station, two groups of four tracks on the northeast side, a three-track line trailing in on that side, with freight loading tracks beyond it, a ten track non-electrified freight yard to the northeast, which becomes electrified further northwest, a four-track freight loco. depot to the northeast, between the main line and the freight yard, then a four-track locomotive maintenance depot.

Leads from the freight yard bridge overhead, forming a flying junction with tracks connecting in on both sides. There is a prison camp on the northeast side, with a rail connection, and a small wayside station (albeit on a four-track line). The line speed along here is faster than anything the train traveled at further east. The landscape is flat, with large grain fields bordered by trees, except where industries intrude. There is a 'village' on the northeast side, a small yard,  ending at crossovers, another freight yard northwest of the crossovers, a line converging at a flyover junction with a deck girder bridge carrying one track overhead, then a 5-6 track yard on the northeast side with at least two non-electrified tracks, then from the northwest end of the yard, tracks move away to a power plant just off to the northeast.

There is a multi-pipeline bridge overhead, then a deck girder bridge carrying two electrified freight tracks at right angles to the main line, then an even larger power plant off to the northeast, with eight-to-ten tracks with tank cars northwest of the connection, another large power plant or factory a bit further away to the northeast, beyond the trees, then another smaller plant somewhat closer to the northeast. Electrified spurs curve away, then one trails in, with three extra tracks on the northeast side. The line crosses a multi-span through-truss bridge over a river, and passes a small wayside station (even though this is a four-track line). Then, it's finally too dark to see.

Thursday, July 24^th, 2008

I awake this morning with the train already parked in an unelectrified storage-area on the north side of the lower-level electrified tracks into Novosibirsk station. From the east end of the area, a stuffed-and-mounted 2-10-2 steam locomotive can be seen, but not identified. Many suburban-style electric multiple-units (EMUs) are seem heading from the east side of the city into the station area, which is, itself, not visible from our location. When the passengers depart the train for the day, we walk forward, along the north side of the train, and turn north, across some other storage tracks and down a dirt path to a street on which the buses are waiting. One of the local guides says something about buses not being able to park and wait in front of the station itself.

Bus 3 pulls around to the square in from of the station building, where we are shown that the building itself is in the 'constructivist' architectural style, resembling the proportions of a steam locomotive, with a chimney to the east, a long lower portion, then a higher portion left of center representing the 'cab' area, and a shorter lower portion to the left (west) representing the tender. The station serves 70,000 people on 450 trains/day.

In the center of the city, we see an orthodox church, and then the interesting-looking opera house, but cannot visit it because it is closed for the summer. (This greatly irritates the usual couple in the front seat.) Nearby, we visit the natural history museum, where the local guide goes very slowly through the opening portions of the museum, while some of us walk through more quickly and see it all, at a pace attuned to our interests rather than hers. (of course, we don't get a English-language commentary on what we see.) Heading out of town, we see the long multi-span through-truss bridge over the Ob River that was the wellspring of Novosibirsk (originally, Novonikolayevsk), which grew at the place the bridge was started in 1893. There is one segment of the original bridge preserved.

We head out of town to the south, passing beneath a bridge carrying a freight bypass line around the city, out to Akademgorodok, some 30 km to the south, where there are a number of scientific institutes, including one that was instrumental in the Soviet union's nuclear developments after WWII. We visit the Mineralogy Museum, in one of the institutes, where we have an excellent tour by one of the researchers. Standing in that museum, I reflect on being inside one of the institutes in what had been, during the Soviet-era, a closed city, totally forbidden to foreigners, which I had ever expected to be able to visit.

We have lunch at the House of Scientists, a conference center that has recently been used for an IEEE International Conference (!), and afterwards go to the West-Siberian Rolling-Stock Railway Museum, which is alongside the road out from Novosibirsk to Academgorodok. We're given a couple of hours to visit this museum, to the intense displeasure of the couple in the front seat. While the railway enthusiasts are going around photographing and noting down the exhibits, and the local guide takes some others around the few passenger cars present (including a WWII hospital train), heavy rain starts to fall, and while the one group stays in the hospital train, others return to the bus to wait out the storm. (The woman in the front seat reportedly throws a screaming fit at one of the Tour managers because we don't immediately return to the tour train when the storm breaks.) When the rain stops, at least some of us go back out to continue our exploration of the museum. My camera eventually mists up and requires some careful attention from Chris the following day to restore it to useful light transmission through to the sensor.

The exhibits at the museum include, as noted on the ground (and in distinction to what is said in the brochure we were able to obtain):

Steam Locomotives

ЭМ	(EM)	725-13	0-10-0	1932
СО	(SO)	17-508	2-10-0	1936
Су	(Su)	213-42	2-6-2
ПВ	(PV)	0040
уЭА	(UEa)	3078	2-10-0	1944 Baldwin
Эр	(Er)	789-91	0-10-0	1958 Mawag
П-36	(P-36)	097	4-8-4	1955
9П	(9P)	2	0-6-0T
П	(P)	3393	2-10-0
ФП	(FP)	20-588	2-10-2
П	(P)	013	2-10-0

Diesel Locomotives

ТЭ3	(TE3)	7376	Co-Co	1971
2ТЭ10П	(2TE10P)	2110	2(Co-Co)	1966
ТЭ7	TE7	096	2(Co-Co)	1964
2М62	(2M62)	500	Co-Co	1981
2ТЭ10М	(2TE10M)	2670	Do-Do	1986
ТЭП60	(TEP60)	119	Co-Co	1975
ТГМ1	(TGM1)	2925	C	1969
ТЭМ15	(TEM15)	016	Bo-Bo
ТГМ4	(TGM4)	1676	Bo-Bo	1982
ТГМ23а	(TGM23a)	1026	C	1987
ТГК2	(TGK2)	8626	C	1990
ЧМЭ3	(UME3)	5452
ТЭП10	(TEP10)	082	Co-Co	1964
2ТЭ116	(2TE116)	037	2(Co-Co)

Electric Locomotives

ЧС3	(ChS3)	073	Co-Co-Co	1961
ВЛ23	(VL23)	501	Co-Co	1958
ВЛ60к	(VL60k)	649	Bo-Bo	1963
ВЛ80с	(VL80s)	005	2(Bo-Bo)	1980
ВЛ22м	(VL22m)	144	Co-Co	1958
ВЛ10	(VL10)	271	Bo-Bo	1970
ЧС2	(ChS2)	009	Co-Co-Co	1962
ВЛ8	(VL8)	1232	2(Bo-Bo)	1953
ЧС4	(ChS4)	023	Co-Co

Electric Trains

Ср3	Sr3			1953
Эр1	Er1	208		1959
Эр2	Er2			1969
Эр9	Er9

On our return to the main railway station, where our train awaits, we run into a massive traffic jam, which may or may not have resulted from the thunderstorm, that delays our return to the train by some 40 minutes. We eventually have to drive down a side street and walk through puddles and cross a wooden fence to return to the train, as, we later found out, had the folks in bus 2, some half hour ahead of us. Our train awaits in the southernmost main platform at the station, which is located on a north-south segment of line (with the southward being the overall westward direction), with the main station buildings to the east. There is an east side platform, at the north end of which that stuffed-and-mounted 2-10-2 is located, and two island platforms in the main-line section of the station, directly accessible from an extension of the concourse of the main station, and four r more additional island platforms to the west, accessible by a separate footbridge, for the suburban commuter trains, with the storage tracks in which our train had been parked at a higher level on the west side, towards the east bank of the Ob River. The station handles 70,000 people on 450 trains/day. As we saw in our tour of the city, there is a freight bypass line, completing bypassing the city center, some distance to the south.

Leaving Novosibirsk, the line passes a carriage depot on the west side, climbs up on the east side of the line heading south along the east bank of the river, and then turns west, bridging over that line, to pass over that multi-span through-girder bridge we had visited in the morning, continuing on an embankment above a wooded area, and then past allotments with 'dachas'. There is an eight track freight yard to the north, followed by a suburban station with two island platforms on a four-track segment.

The line now heads west roughly along the 55th parallel, out across the West Siberian Plain, with no more mountains until the Urals. A flying junction with a line coming from the south (with the northern line passing below) heralds the arrival of the freight bypass line that passed around the city to the south There are extra tracks west of this location, and then crossovers, followed by a large wayside station. An additional track parallels to the north, with some separation, past two small wayside stations on this now two-track line, there are more crossovers, refuge tracks on either side, and after they end a wayside station which may represent the end of some of the EMU service from Novosibirsk.

Dinner is on the train as we continue our westward journey. After dinner, we stop at the station at Barabinsk, which has a side platform and depot to the north, with two island platforms to the south connected by a footbridge, but only a single track between the first and second island. There are six to eight goods yard tracks on the south side of the station, a locomotive depot with two to three tracks and a three track building on the north side, then an eight to ten track maintenance facility, a two track EMU depot, six to eight carriage sidings, and freight loading sidings separated from the main line, all on the north side. An electrified track trails in from the north, but there is no sign of a flyover, followed by a small wayside station before complete darkness falls.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg is a city of 1.3 million people, located at 57° N latitude and 61° E longitude, at the east base of the Ural Mountains, and was known as Sverdlovsk from 1924 to 1991. This was a rich mining region in the days before the revolution (the city was founded in 1723), and there are still relatively more pre-Soviet buildings in the city than in the other cities we have seen. It is famous as the site of the executions of the Romanovs,  in July, 1918 (90 years ago), but its current prosperity is due mainly to the wholesale transfer of industry to this region during WWII, when factories further west were being overrun by the Nazis. The presence of many defense factories caused the city to be closed to foreigners until 1990. The railway station is on the north side of the city center, with the Urals beginning immediately west of the urban area.

Saturday, July 26^th, 2008

By morning, we're well within European Russia. I awake just before the line crosses a multi-span through-truss bridge over a river, and then passes a small freight yard on the north side. The line then runs on an embankment; beyond the trees to the north are fields with crops. After breakfast, the line is again on an embankment above a farming village. There are two small wayside stations, and then island platforms at the station named "804 km". A single line trails in on the north side of the four-track formation, then there's a station with island platforms serving all four tracks, and then the four tracks reduce to two. At a junction, double track goes off on the north side, three separate spurs head off into factories on the south side, and the line then passes through a deep cutting, a tunnel in an urban area, and another deep cutting.

The line has a local service, and the train's performance suggests it is following a local stopping service. There's a station with two island platforms at Onetbevo, with a footbridge connecting the platforms and signs alongside warning against crossing the tracks on foot. Then the line runs on an embankment above a valley with allotments, and then housing blocks and light industry. The line curves around from heading west to heading north, along the west side of the city center (and not far east of the east bank of the Volga River). The line passes over two broad streets with pairs of tracks in center reservations, but no trolley wire overhead. Two factories with loading docks on the east side have spurs trailing in, and the line passes a station with island platforms, a wayside station with side platforms only, but a footbridge connecting them, carriage sidings to the west, then depot and side platform to the east and three island platforms with a footbridge connecting them at Kazan and east side bays at the north end, with five tracks to the west.

In mid-morning, we leave the train in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, where there are crowds of visitors from the other direction for this afternoon's Moscow versus Kazan soccer match. Our buses take us up on the hills to the east of the station, to visit the city's Kremlin (a word meaning citadel), which overlooks the city and the rivers flowing through it (Kazanka to the north, Volga to the west). Within the citadel are a mosque, reconstructed in 2005, in which we visit a viewing balcony on an upper floor (with plastic wrappers over our shoes), as well as items on the ground floor, and an Orthodox Cathedral. Outside the citadel, we visit the St. Peter & Paul Cathedral, which has a huge iconostasis wall, and drive past Kazan's monument to the Victims of Stalin's Repression, located in a city-center park. As we drive among these places, I start to realize that we're actually driving around in circles in a relatively small area.

After lunch in a city-center restaurant, we walk along a shopping (pedestrianized) street, on which Chris buys a large porcelain cat, and then attend an excellent concert at a local hotel at which a singer from the Kazan Opera  sings works that Feodor Chaliapin, a native of the area, would have sung. The buses then take us to the port facilities on the east bank of the Volga River, where we board a boat for an hour-long cruise both up and down the Volga River, passing the city center and the harbor facilities. The river is at least a mile wide in this area, and the cruise is very enjoyable, easily the most relaxing event on the trip.

Leaving Kazan, the line heads north, almost immediately crossing the Kazanka River on a multi-span through-truss bridge, and then turns just north of due west, along the east bank of the Volga, past a rail-served gravel plant and then a container freight yard, on the north side, a small wayside station, a double track line bridging overhead on a through-girder bridge, with connections west to our line, on both the north and south sides, a parcels loading facility behind a wall on the north side, a small wayside station, some stuffed-and-mounted diesel locomotives on the north side, a small wayside station, an eight-track locomotive maintenance depot on the south side, a freight loading facility to the south with an eight to ten track yard, getting closer as we head west, beyond it, with a additional, separated, eight track yard beyond that.

A small wayside station precedes a track splitting off on the south side, to pass beneath as the main line climbs up on an embankment, and then connectors heading west join on both sides. There is a station with high-level island platforms serving four tracks, crossovers, extra tracks on both sides, a station with three island platforms, more crossovers, a station with low-level platforms between the tracks, a station with high-level island platforms, a spur trailing in from a facility to the north, extra tracks on the north side, a station with three high-level island platforms and a footbridge connecting the platforms, with a freight yard to the north of the station, more crossovers, six additional extra tracks on the north side, and a small wayside station (Voata).

The line climbs up on an embankment and turns almost due south to cross the Volga River on two parallel multi-span through-truss bridges, with signs of new bridge construction on the "north" side, turning west again and passing into a cutting on the southwest bank of the river.

On the train, after the day in Kazan, we have the 'farewell dinner on the train", at which the serving staff are dressed in traditional costumes. The food, of course, is the usual selection of traditional Russian dishes or vegetarian dishes, also in the Russian style. For once on this trip, we don't have an extended evening, since Kazan is in the same time zone as Moscow. The train stops twice more during dinner and afterwards, but darkness has fallen.

Moscow

Moscow is a city of 10.4 million people, located at 56° N latitude and 37° E longitude, dating from the mid 12th-century. It was the capital of Russia until 1712, and of the Soviet Union from 1917, reverting to capital of Russia in 1991. As with many other capitals, most railway lines enter the city, but do not pass through it, ending at stub-end terminal stations on the fringes of the city center. The Kazansky station is on the same square as the Leningrad station and another terminal, east-northeast of the city center.

Apart from the distinctive architecture of Orthodox Christian churches, Moscow resembles large European cities much more than it does the cities of Siberia and the Russian Far East. Many of the buildings and features of central Moscow are much more familiar to westerners than those of any of the cities further east. Moscow has a comprehensive metro (subway) system, that we don't have time to patronize. In addition to the Kremlin (whose buildings are described above), on the north bank of the Moscow River on the southwest corner of the city center, many of the famous buildings of Moscow are located close by: the GUM department store is on the east side of Red Square, north of St. Basil's Cathedral and across from Lenin's Mausoleum, the Lubyanka building, site of the notorious prison and still used as the headquarters of the successor to the KGB, is just a few streets east, the Bolshoi Theater fronts on the main square, just a couple of streets north, and the ZUM department store is just behind that, on the east side of the street up the east side of the theater. The main shopping street is just two streets to the west of ZUM, also extending north from the main square just north of the Kremlin.

Monday, July 28^th, 2008

We've some hours to spend in Moscow today, before leaving, so together with Jack, we walk over to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior/Redeemer (the one that had been rebuilt in the late 1990s, that we passed by yesterday), where we say goodbye to him, then walk back by the riverbank, under the river bridge, and again through the gardens along the Kremlin wall to the shopping center under the street. Here, we have lunch and buy a replacement battery for the one in my blood sugar meter, which had died this morning. We then walk under the street (still in the shopping center), and back past the front of the Bolshoi Theater to the hotel, as rain starts to fall. A little while later, with luggage in hand for the first time in two weeks, we return to the lobby, checkout, say goodbye to Jana and Anna (and some other people), and climb in our appointed car for the ride to the Leningrad station (across the square from the Kazansky station).

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
8-28-08	??	1630	Moscow-St. Petersburg	Inter-City	ЧС6-015

The line from Moscow to St. Petersburg is a four-track line out of the end of the odd-numbered platforms, while three tracks from the 'local' platforms curve away on the east side immediately north of the station, with a carriage maintenance depot in the vee of the junction. There is a carriage depot on the west side of the long-distance lines, with 11-12 carriage sidings beyond that. There is a suburban station (two side platforms and an island), eight to ten track carriage sidings on the east side, followed by a carriage maintenance depot, a suburban station (two side platforms and an island), a suburban track trailing in on the east side and bridging overhead, two suburban stations with two side platforms, eight to ten sidings with parcels cars on the east side, with carriage sidings beyond them, and a suburban station with two island platforms.

There are three to four freight sidings to the west, a suburban station with two side platforms, a locomotive depot to the east, then spurs going off, a suburban station with two side platforms, a through truss bridge over a river or lake, a suburban station with two side and a center island platforms, a parcels loading platforms to the east, and a suburban station with two side platforms, after which there is, for the first time, a break in the urban landscape as we're out in the fields. There is a suburban station with two side platforms, followed by another, an embankment above a valley, a suburban station with two side platforms, extra tracks and a goods loading platforms to the east, a suburban station with two side platforms, and two to three carriage sidings to the west. All this way, the train has been traveling at about 100 mph, and continues to do so.

We pass a suburban station with two side platforms, crossovers, extra tracks to the east, carriage sidings to the west, crossovers, and a suburban station with two island and two side platforms. The line reduces to only two tracks, on an embankment, in a cutting, on an embankment in a forest, past crossovers, then two extra tracks to the east, an embankment in the forest again, then a cutting, a track trailing in on the east side, crossovers, a station with two side platforms, extra track on the east side, an embankment, a station with two side platforms and then another, a cutting, a station with two side platforms, fields lined with trees, a station with two side platforms, a spur trailing in on the east side, crossovers, a freight yard on the east side, a rail-served factory to the east, a station with two side platforms, a maintenance-of-way depot to the west, a station with two side platforms, crossovers, three extra tracks on the east side, and a station with two side platforms, just about one hour from departing Moscow.

As we head north, it becomes apparent that we're to be served diner at our seats. An attendant comes through asking about choice of entree and choice of drink. These are served quite soon, and the whole meal process is concluded before the express train makes its first stop, about a third of the way to St. Petersburg.

Just over that hour from Moscow, a large body of water appears on both sides, which we then cross on a multi-span through-truss bridge. It appears to be the Volga River, much upstream from when we had last seen it, but still quite wide. There are two sets of crossovers, extra track on the east side, an embankment, a station with two side platforms, and then another, a cutting, a station with two side platforms, a goods siding, separated, to the east, then a goods loading facility, crossovers, five or six extra tracks to the east, EMU carriage sidings to the west, and a station with a large island platform and an EMU maintenance depot to the west of the station (Tver?) where we make that first stop from 5:50 to 5:53 pm.

There is a stuffed-and-mounted 0-10-0, Em 725-39, on the west side, north of the station, three-to-four  EMU sidings to the west side, a nine-to-ten track freight yard to the east, and the tracks reduce to two, again, past a station with two side platforms, a multi-span through-truss bridge over a river, a station with two side platforms, rail-served plants on the east side, a four-to-six track freight yard to the east, non-electrified sidings with a rail-renewal train to the east, a station with two side platforms, an embankment, a deck girder bridge over a river, a station with two side platforms, as the train is running slower than it had been before the stop, three stations with two side platforms each, extra track on the east side, a station with two island platforms, crossovers, a track maintenance train on an extra track to the east, spurs, a station with two side platforms, as the train speeds up again, two more stations with two side platforms each, extra track to the east, a station with two side platforms, a cutting, and embankment, and crossovers.

Extra tracks on the east and west sides lead to a station with two island platforms, after which the extra tracks end as the line runs through a cutting, a station with two side platforms, crossovers, extra track, a station with an island and two side platforms, crossovers, a station with two side platforms, extra track on the east side, a station with two side platforms, a spur trailing in on the east side, a spur heading away, extra track to the east, a station with two side platforms, a brief second extra track to the east, a deck girder bridge over a river, a station with two side platforms, extra track to the east, a station with two side platforms, an embankment, three extra tracks on the east side, a station with two island platforms, with additional tracks between the east side platform and the depot, an embankment, extra tracks below and to the east, a six to eight track freight yard to the west, more extra tracks to the east, and a station with two side and center island high-level platforms (Bolonoye), where we stop from 7:19 to 7:25 pm.

There is an extra track to the east, a connector and the extra track head away east, a cutting, a station with two side platforms, extra tracks on the east side, crossovers, more extra track on the east side, a spur on the east side curving into a facility, an embankment, a cutting, a station with two side platforms, an embankment, a cutting, a station with two side platforms, a cutting, a spur trailing in on the east side, two extra tracks to the east, a station with two island platforms and a depot to the east, with two east side extra tracks, crossovers, an embankment, a cutting in thick forest, a six track yard on the east side, a station with two island platforms, a maintenance depot to the west, a cutting, and embankment, and a deck girder bridge over a river.

The line passes through a cutting and over an embankment, past a station with two side platforms, extra track on the west side, a station with two side platforms, a log-loading facility to the west, two stations with two side platforms each, a cutting an embankment, a bridge over a stream, a station with two side platforms, a cutting, an embankment, a viaduct over a river in a valley below, that requires slower running from the train, a station with two side platforms, extra track on the west side, two stations with two side platforms each,, extra track to the west, four extra tracks serving a facility on the west side, a four-track freight yard, a spur heading away east into a lumber yard, a station with two side platforms, extra track on the west side, and then forest again.

There is a station with two side platforms, extra track to the west, a station with two side platforms, a through truss bridge over a river (the Neva), a station with two side platforms, a four-track freight yard to the west, crossovers, extra tracks on both sides, a wye on the east side, crossovers, a station with two island platforms, four stations with two side platforms each, three extra tracks on the west side, four stations with two side platforms each, a spur trailing in on the east side, a station with two island platforms, extra tracks on the east side, a rail-served petrochemical facility to the west, a bridge over a river that requires the train to go slower, extra tracks to the east, a station with two island platforms, two additional extra tracks to the east, serving a repair facility, and an eight track freight yard to the east.

Crossovers precede a line heading away on the east side, a line trailing in on the east side,  and there are four extra tracks, a double-track line to the west has a station on it, and then another, an embankment, a bridge over a river that requires the train to go slower, a station with two side platforms, crossovers and then extra tracks on both sides, a station with two island platforms, railway workshops for carriages and EMUs to the east, four extra tracks on the east side, a station with two island platforms, a through truss bridge over a river requiring the line to rise and then descend again, a through truss bridge overhead comprising a flying junction, a twelve track goods yard to the east, a station with two side platforms, many freight loading tracks to the east, a station with two side platforms, a ten to twelve track freight yard to the east, carriage sidings to the east, and a station with two side platforms.

A through truss bridge crosses tracks passing below, and then another, there is a ten track freight yard to the east, carriage sidings to the east, two extra tracks to the east and four to six to the west, a platform to the east with tracks beyond it, and the same on the west side and we reach St. Petersburg's Moscow Station, which has seven total platform tracks, with five of them (1 to 5) full length, on the west side, and 6 and 7 shorter, on the east side. The Moscow Station in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Station in Moscow have identical-looking Great halls (waiting rooms) in modern rectangular buildings arranged long-axis parallel to the tracks, with the whole building located with the narrow end beyond the end of all the platforms. 

We arrive in St. Petersburg at 9:59 pm, as twilight is falling. There's no sign of the car driver who's supposed to be meeting us, anywhere on the platform, at the end of the platform where other people with signs are waiting, or in the main waiting room at the location which one of the people with signs, but not yet the people she's meeting, says is a standard meeting place. Eventually, when darkness has almost completely fallen (a long process, at this latitude in late July), I go back out to the platform, and find a man with a sign bearing our names, who definitely had not been there when we were waiting there earlier. He drives us west on Nevsky Prospekt, and then north to the Kempinski Hotel, alongside the first canal around the city center, just to the east of Palace Square, where we check-in and they make copies/records of our passports. It's quite late, so we go right to bed.

Tuesday, July 29^th, 2008

We start out this morning by walking to the indoor Railway Museum, located in the Headquarters of the Russian Railway Institute. The walking distance is a bit further than I might have wanted to walk, but there's no obvious public transit method for getting there. We start out by walking back along the side of the first canal to Nevsky Prospekt, the main street on which we had come in from the Moscow Station the previous night, and discover that there's no way to cross that street at the canal, to continue walking along the canal. So, we turn northwest, to the next street corner, and cross there at the traffic light, continuing down that side street, which takes us past a McDonald's, where we stop to buy coffee and a drink for Chris. We continue, taking the next cross street back to the canal and then out to the second canal, walking along it out to the next radial street and then past to a short street which reaches over to the street where the museum is located. We cross that street and turn west to the museum. We're too early for its 11 am opening, so we have to wait outside for awhile, in a threatening rainstorm.

The main floor of the institute is given over to excellent exhibits and models covering the history of railways in Russia, with an annex covering the history of (railway) bridges in even more detail. It's interesting to see the models of the full range of locomotives and rolling stock, both to see how similar they are to the ones we're uesd to, and how different in some respects. There's even a model of a dome observation car, very similar to those developed in the USA, that apparently ran somewhere in Russia. It's disappointing that even here, where the ticket office has a number of issues of what appears to be a rail enthusiasts' magazine, there's no book covering the classes of locomotives currently in use on the railways of Russia.

On leaving the museum, we find that the rainstorm has transpired while we were inside, but now the air is dry again, so we walk towards the River Neva up the west side of the city center, taking care to avoid the puddles resulting from the rainstorm. Eventually, we reach and photograph the Cathedral, the former Senate building, a statue of a mounted horseman in a park, and the riverbank, with clear views across to the other side, the cruiser Aurora (a shot from which started the October Revolution), and more views across the river as we walk east to the Winter Palace. At the latter, we find that entry to the Hermitage Art Museum is from Palace Square, behind the palace, and in that square we find a long line for entry, so Chris goes off to buy some sausages for lunch, while I take up a place in the moving line.

Two-and-a-half hours later, we finally make it inside the museum, with just over two hours of opening time left. That's plenty for us if we plan our visit correctly, so we take the time to peruse the layout before starting around. We want to visit Catherine the Great's painting collection, especially those from the Dutch and French schools. We can pass on the modern paintings, since those we would be interested in we have seen on a visit to Chicago a few years ago. Not far into our exploration of the paintings, we run into a couple from the Trans-Siberian trip (the Indians who live in Massachussetts), who had arrived this morning (by air) and are touring with a personal guide. We greet them, and then continue on our way. We're duly impressed by some of the paintings, especially the very large ones, and less impressed by some others. After a couple of hours, we've seen what we wanted to see, and are walked off our feet, so we leave, and walk across Palace Square towards the hotel.

On the way, we're accosted by a couple of men who appear to be trying to sell us things, but may actually have been trying to steal things out of my camera bag and Chris' purse.  Perusing the city map, after getting back to the room after 5 pm, I notice that there's also an outdoor railway museum, south of the Old Moscow Station, some distance southwest of the indoor railway museum, but it's too late to get there now.

Later, when it's time to go out again, Chris can't decide whether to take her passport or not, and keeps moving it between a pocket in her purse and the credenza in the room. We walk back to the bridge over the Neva, next to the Winter Palace, where I take some photographs of the facade of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, the Peter and Paul Fortress, and around to Strelka, and the other end of the cruiser Aurora. Then, not being very hungry, we walk down Nevsky Prospekt and up the side street to McDonald's for something to eat, walking back through the big arch in the military offices and the Palace Square before going to bed.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
7-30-08	??	0725	St. Petersburg-Vyborg	Sleepers+Second Class	ЧС2

The Finland Station has one west side and three 'island' platforms, all stub end, for a total of seven tracks, numbered 2 to 8, and s short stub platform on the west side for track 1, with the station buildings across the stub end with no concourse outside the building towards the tracks other than walkways to and from the platforms. There's no obvious waiting room inside the building. The train is the overnight sleeper from Moscow, which has run around town on some orbital track, and comprises three or four sleeping cars, a restaurant car, and two coaches. We're in coach. The train reverses here, so the locomotive on the sleeping car end is not the locomotive hauling us out. The train departs at 7:27 am (on time).

The line north from St. Petersburg passes through a seven track wide station throat, with six freight tracks on the east side. The formation reduces to four tracks, and then two. There is a station with two side platforms, and the line heads out into the forest, past a station with two side platforms, extra tracks to the east and west, a station with two side platforms, with two goods tracks to the east, three more stations with two side platforms each, four extra tracks to the east, two more stations with two side platforms each, a spur heading away to the east, extra track to the east and west, a deck girder bridge over a river, and three more stations with two side platforms each.

There are two extra electrified tracks to the west extra track to the east, two stations with two side platforms each, a forest with tall evergreens, two stations with two side platforms each, a line departing on the west side, extra track on the east side, extra track on the west side, eight to ten tracks on the west side beyond the trees, a locomotive depot below and to the west, a bridge over a single track, goods sidings beyond the locomotive sidings to the west, an urban area, carriage sidings to the west, extra track to the east and west, crossovers, and the station at Vyborg, with depot and side platforms to the west and three island platforms to the east.

Not long after departure, the car attendant comes around to take our tickets and passports. I hand her my passport and the tickets, but Chris can't find her passport. This generates a lot of discussion, thankfully helped by a Finnish man named Igor in the seats in front of us, who speaks both excellent English and excellent Russian. After we go through a lot of discussion, with other train officials getting involved, it is concluded that we'll have to get off the train at Vyborg (the first stop, and the last stop in Russia) and go back to St. Petersburg to go to the US Consulate, there. When we get to Vyborg, this is confirmed with a lot more discussion with the Russian border officials, and a lot more interpreting by Igor, as we stand on the platform with our luggage, next to the train. The officials tell me, through Igor, that of course I can continue, but quite apart from the fact that our luggage isn't packed as 'his' and 'hers suitcases, we know that Chris would never find her way around without me.

The next complication is that there will be substantial delays to trains heading in the direction of St. Petersburg, since (as we had seen from the train), track maintenance forces are going to be replacing a bridge over a river, a few miles south of Vyborg, today. So, we're directed to a bus terminal a couple of blocks away. There's a bus every 20 minutes to St. Petersburg, and the trip takes a couple of hours along some very poorly maintained roads. I'm envisioning a bus terminal somewhere in the center of St. Petersburg, but instead the bus terminates at the northern terminus of the Metro Blue line. To get to the US Consulate will require two changes of train at interchange stations along the way, and we need some kind of special ticket to get us through the barrier with our luggage. This takes a lot of help from a passer-by who speaks some English, before we're on our way.

The St. Petersburg Metro is most decidedly not accessible for level boarding, so we have to drag the luggage up and down many flights of stairs. Finding running-in nameboards at stations is almost impossible, so we have to count the stations along the line to get to the one we want. One hitch is that an extra station has been added since the large maps were created, so we initially get off the first train one station too early, but its immediately obvious that this isn't an interchange station! At the interchange stations, we have to navigate by a sort of dead-reckoning to find our next train, taking note of which direction the arriving train is heading, and then which direction we're facing at each turn, to ensure getting on a train going in the correct direction. Eventually, we succeed in all of this, and drag our bags west from the exit station along the street to the US Consulate.

At the latter, the guards won't let us inside, and I have to talk on a house phone to someone who tells me that "Citizens' Services" is closed for the day (it's all of 1:30 pm!). I protest and explain what has happened, and eventually, Chris is allowed inside, but I have to stand, with the luggage, in the under-construction dirt median of the street while she's in there. At about 2:30 pm, she reappears, and says she has an appointment for 9:30 am the following day to get her temporary passport. This means we need a hotel for the night (as well as passport photos), and as we're discussing this, the consul himself (with whom Chris had been dealing) appears, heading for lunch, and recommends a small hotel 'nearby'.

We head off to find this, but before getting there, dragging the luggage, Chris encounters a Russian travel agent, who tells her that no hotel is going to let her in without a passport. Now why hadn't the Consulate told her that, and helped with the matter? The travel agent helps us get a taxi to go back to the Kempinski, the one hotel that has a record of her passport, and fortunately they have an available room for the next two nights.

Next, we have to work on revised travel arrangements, since even though our train tickets are good for two months, we can't catch up with our itinerary by taking those trains. We also have to deal with the issue that both Chris' Russian visa and her entry stamp disappeared with the passport, so if the passport doesn't turn up by 9:30 am, we'll have to replace them too. So, we call the GW Travel Emergency Telephone, and are connected with a lady named Melanie who will help us for the next 48 hours. We can't meaningfully cancel even the ferry reservation for tonight, since it's less than 48 hours ahead, and we shouldn't make flight bookings to catch up with the itinerary until we have a functioning passport in hand. Melanie asks us to call her back when we have the passport, to start the process of getting a substitute visa/entry-stamp so Chris can exit. (My existing Visa is good until August 2nd, so that's one less thing to be concerned about.)

Now, we have to get the Passport Photos, so we ask the location of an appropriate facility, and are directed to one on Nevsky Prospekt. We go over there, and with some difficulty, convey what we want, get the photos taken, and are given a time in two hours when they will be done. We then head for McDonalds to get something to eat for the first time, today (finally), where we run into the Sri Lankan couple from the Trans-Siberian train. Later, we get the photos, which will do, and later still, eat at a restaurant just beyond the big arch in the General Staff building.

Thursday, July 31^st, 2008

I allow an hour to take the Metro over to the US Consulate for Chris' 9:30 am appointment. Photos and forms in hand, we set off, walking east on Nevsky Prospekt to the nearest Metro station to the hotel, which is in the vicinity of the Kazansky Cathedral. Unfortunately, the dead-reckoning that works when changing trains doesn't work at the originating station, and we get on a train on the wrong line, and realizing the error, go back, thinking we've just gone the wrong way, past the originating station. Finally realizing the true error, we return again, and this time connect to the correct train(s) and make it to the Consulate only 20 minutes late.

Chris is allowed inside, but I'm not, and again, I have to stand outside on that under-construction dirt median for an hour, watching the same thing happen to prospective visitors to the US, both business and tourist, who all suffer the same indignity after arriving and while waiting for their appointments inside. When Chris reappears, she has a replacement passport, good for one year, but nothing has been done about either visa or entry stamp, not even assistance offered!

Not wanting this to be an entirely wasted day, and since it isn't yet 11 am, I decide we should try to visit the outdoor railway museum, so we take the Metro down to a station in that vicinity, and after a couple of false starts, find our way to the Old Moscow Station, and then to the railway museum behind it, which appears t have even more locomotives than the one we had visited in Novosibirsk.

The exhibits at the museum include:

Steam Locomotives

СО17	(SO17)	243	2-10-0	1949
П-36	(P-36)	0251	4-8-4	1956
	(LU18)	002	2-10-2	1953
Су	(Su)	253-15	2-6-2	1940
Л-2	(L-2)	298	2-10-0	1953
Т7	(T7)	1770	2-6-0T	1913
9П	(9P)	15387	4-6-0	1963
ТК3	(TK3)	1105	2-8-0	1941
ТЭ	(TE)	6769	2-10-0	1943
ЭА	(Ea)	2201	2-10-0	1944 Baldwin
Э1	(E1)	534	2-10-0	1917 Alco
	Fireless	9305	0-6-0	1928
Эр	(Er)	750-04	0-10-0	1943
ССм17	(SsM17)	945	2-10-0	1938
ЭЧ	(ECh)	4444	0-10-0	1921-24
ФД20	(FD20)	1103	2-10-0	1936
ОД	(OD)	1080	0-8-0
Со	(So)	68	2-6-2	1960
БВ	(BV)	6640	0-6-0	1902
Эм	(EM)	730-31	0-10-0	1930
СО	(SO)	1137	2-10-0
Ь	y	2023	0-6-0T	1897

Diesel Locomotives

ТЭП80	(TEP80)	0002	Bo-Bo-Bo-Bo	1960
ЛжС200	(LhS200)	002		1975
МЛСА1	(MLSA1)	719-3		1984
ТЭП70	(TEP70)	0007	Co-Co
ТЭП60	(TEP60)	0190	Co-Co	1969
ТЭП10	(TEP10)	163	Co-Co
ТЭ7	TE7	013	Co-Co	1957
ТЭМ1	(TEM1)	0026	Co-Co	1959
ТГМ3	(TGM3)	012	Bo-Bo	1960
ТГ	(TG)	016		1960
ТГМ1	(TGM1)	575	C	1962
ГжМЭ3	(ChME3)	001		1965
ЧМЭ1	(UME1)	043		1956
МГ2	(MG2)	1	Co-Co	1964
ТГ102	(TG102)	153/169		1963
ТЭ3	(TE3)	1001	2(Co-Co)	1956
ТЭ1-20	(TE1-20)	135	Co-Co	1949
ДА20	(DA20)	09	Co-Co	1945
ТЭ2	(TE2)	414	2(Bo-Bo)	1954
ТЭ5-20	(TE5-20)	032	Co-Co	1948
М62	(M62)	1731	Co-Co	1983
ГЭИО	(GEIO)	001	10 axles	1924

Electric Locomotives

ЧС2	(ChS2)	023	Co-Co-Co	1962
ЧС200	(ChS200)	002	Co-Co-Co
ЧС1	(ChS1)	041	Co-Co-Co	1960
ЧжС4	(ChS4)	012	Co-Co	1960
ВЛ41	(VL41)	060		1964
ВЛ60к	(VL60k)	065	Bo-Bo	1960
ВЛ23	(VL23)	001	Co-Co	1956
ВЛ22м	(VL22m)	1729	Co-Co	1957
Фк	(FK)	07		1959
ВЛ8	(VL8)	1522	Bo-Bo	1953-67
СсМ	(SsM)	14		1933

Electric Trains

Эр10	Er10	002		1969
СМ3	(SM3)	1024		1934
СМ	(SM)	1027		1932

It takes us about 90-minutes to go around the museum, and we then take the Metro back to the Nevsky Prospekt station (which requires a change), stopping at a Subway restaurant to buy lunch, which we then take back to the hotel room to get started in the Visa/Entry issue and the travel arrangements issue. Several phone calls with Melanie and others in different places and organizations ensue (two different attempts to locate our 'sponsor', for example), until finally we're given the name and number of someone at the US Embassy in Moscow who is alleged to be able to help, but by then its just after 6 pm, and the office in Moscow has closed for the day.

We eat at a pizza restaurant, next to the Subway restaurant on Nevsky Prospekt, and walk back past the Cathedral on the Blood, which is visible out of the rear of the hotel, and which we had passed in the taxi the day before.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
8-1-08	Netherlands Rail	2125	Schiphol-Centraal	Double-deck EMUs	N/A

Manipulating the luggage on the stairs of the train is a minor difficulty, and 20 minutes later we're in Amsterdam Centraal. The forecourt of the station, where all the tram stops are, is under major construction, so the view from the station doesn't resemble what I expect. We walk beyond the tram stops, and at the first hotel, Chris asks for directions to our hotel. (Darkness has completely fallen, since we're more than 6 degrees of latitude further south than this morning.) We're told "walk a hundred meters south, turn left (across the street), and the hotel is behind the big red building. This works just fine, and we find the hotel just as rain begins to fall.

The hotel is on the edge of (but outside) the red light district, and the streets are full of celebrating crowds in town for the Gay Pride festival this weekend. The noise threatens our ability to sleep, since we must have the room window open to cool the room. We don't care! What a contrast in lifestyles and freedom! From Russia, where the citizens need passports to move around their country (yes, in 2008), every visitor needs an EXIT visa to leave the country (never mind what the citizens need), and everyone pays bribes to get things done, we have wound up in the maelstrom of the very epicenter of freedom in the western world. To me, just the freedom to drink the tap water and rinse my toothbrush in it is something to celebrate. Russia is truly "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma", as Winston Churchill wrote in 1939.

Saturday, August 2^nd, 2008

Rain is falling when we awake this morning, but not enough to keep us from our day's activities. We walk over to the storefront serving as the base for the "Hop On, Hop Off" buses around town, which also provide a one-hour guided tour around town, and buy tickets for the "Hop On, Hop Off" service, and for entry to the small segment of the Rijksmuseum (known as "Masterpieces of the Rijksmuseum") that is operating while the rest of the building is being renovated. While we're waiting for the bus to arrive, we chat with a Canadian couple who are just doing the one-hour city tour (on the same bus, it transpires).

The bus takes us north, past the station, and then east, along the harbor area, turning south and then west, past the zoo, to a stop at a diamond factory. Tours are available for those who wish, or the bus continues on after ten minutes. The bus then heads out to the one remaining windmill in the area and an inner ring-road, along the Singlegracht waterway, where it heads clockwise, around the city, across the Amstel River, past a stop at the Heineken Brewery, where again, tours are available, and then a stop at the Hard Rock Cafe that serves as the stop for the Rijksmuseum. We get off, here, and walk across the street and then back a couple of blocks to the museum, where there proves to be no line that would have prevented us from getting right in even if we hadn't bought the tickets already.

Highlights of the "Masterpieces of the Rijksmuseum" include the Vermeers and the Rembrandts, including the magnificent "Night Watch", but the many Dutch School landscape paintings are also very interesting. When we get to the Vermeer paintings, their apparent lighting puts them in a class by themselves. We already have a big book on the Rembrandts (as we do on the Paintings of the Hermitage, from St. Petersburg), but I buy books on Vermeer and on the highlights of the Rijksmuseum collection. Then, we go back outside and reboard the bus at the same stop, continuing on around the ring road, and then turning inward, past a church (the Westerkerk) that serves as a stop for the Anne Frank House, located just behind the church, and then turns south, after crossing the various rings of canals, to the south end of the city center, and back north again, through Dam Square, the center of the city, to our original boarding point, one block from our hotel.

We drop off the books at the hotel, and then head back towards Dam Square, where we have lunch in a restaurant featuring local cuisine. Our guide book for the city describes a walk along segments of four of the canals around the city center. We decide to follow this walk, so we head west from Dam Square, south along Singel, west on Wolvenstraat to Keisersgracht, on which we walk south and then southeast, northeast on Koningsplein, southeast and then east on Herengracht, stopping at a sidewalk cafe for an apfelsap along the way, south along Reguliersgracht, alongside a cross-canal, and east on Prinsengracht to the Amstel. By the last couple of these, we're into the crowds and entertainment for the Gay Pride events, and while we would ordinarily avoid these, they seem almost welcome after the restrictions in Russia!

At the west bank of the Amstel, we turn north, through the crowds, and follow the riverbank around to the west, to the south end of the city center where we had passed on the bus. From here, we walk north along Kaiserstraat, a pedestrian-only shopping street, not the street (Rokin) further east that the bus had taken, stopping in a Waterstone's bookshop, where I buy a book on Britain's railways that I had missed when it first came out, and then continuing north to Dam Square and back to the hotel. Later, in a light rain, we walk back over to Damrak, the street on which we had initially walked south from Centraal Station, and have dinner in a restaurant there.  

Back at the hotel, we check what time we need to be on a train from Centraal station to catch our 11:15 am flight to Chicago, with no hassles, and then go to bed.

Winnipeg

Winnipeg has a population of 633,000, and is located at 50° N latitude, 97° W longitude, on the Canadian prairie, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The first Europeans in the area arrived in 1738, and the first trading forts were built in 1812. Winnipeg was incorporated as a city in 1873, not long after the Red River rebellion of 1869-70, led by Louis Riel. The Canadian Pacific Railway arrived in 1881, serving the same function for Winnipeg that the Trans-Siberian Railway did for the cities across eastern Russia, a decade or more later.

Winnipeg strongly resembles the cities along the Trans-Siberian Railway in a number of ways. It is a city of less than a million people, located in a populated strip not far north of the northern border of another country, at a similar latitude, and, it has a traffic congestion problem within the city that has not yet been addressed by any of the well-known traffic management methods.

Tuesday, August 5^th, 2008

The ATM at the hotel won't take any of our cards, preventing us from getting any Canadian money. A (larger) bus arrives to take us west, out of town on the Trans-Canada Highway, to Portage la Prairie, where we will board the train for Churchill. Rolland says we're doing this because here the bags can be unloaded from the bus right onto the platform, whereas in Winnipeg the same process would require multiple trips from street-side to platform-side at the main station, a considerable distance. The train is apparently over an hour late leaving Winnipeg, so we'll have a couple of hours to wait here for it to arrive.

While we're waiting, the eastbound VIA Canadien puts in an appearance, right on the platform track, but without stopping. Several CN freights pass by on that same line, along with a couple of Canadian Pacific freights on their line, less than a hundred yards further north. Eventually, our train arrives, and the two sleeping car attendants, confusingly named Bridget and Brigitte, get off to help load the bags that go in the rooms, while VIA personnel are loading the checked bags (identified with green VIA labels) into the baggage car up front.

Consist of Train 693:
F40        6451
F40        6455
Baggage  8601
Coach     8120
Coach     8105
Diner       8415    Princess
Sleeper    8214    Chateau Laval
Sleeper    8227    Chateau Varennes
Sleeper    8216    Chateau Levis

The sleepers are all of the 4 section, 4 double bedroom, 8 roomette type, with the space of one section now given over to a shower. Our group occupies essentially all of the rear two sleepers (although no-one is officially in the sections). The Bousquets and the Nowells have adjacent bedrooms in Chateau Varennes, such that they can open the movable wall between them and set up a table for card-playing.

The Hudson Bay Railway

After almost a century of discussion, surveying of a railway route to Hudson's Bay began in 1908, under the auspices of the Canadian Government. Initially, the selected route was to Nelson near the mouth of the Nelson River, some 80 or 90 miles south of Churchill. Construction began with clearing of the right-of-way in 1911 and grading in 1912, with the construction of five major bridges over rivers and many smaller trestles over streams, leading to track laid and ballasted as far as the Nelson River crossing at Kettle Rapids (mile 332), north of Gillam. At this point, construction was suspended due to Canada's participation in WWI, but the line was opened and operated as far as Gillam (mile 327), later cut back by over 100 miles due to the difficulties of the war effort.

In 1926, the decision was made to change the northern terminus to Churchill, and construction resumed  under the aegis of the Canadian National Railway, the nationalized railway formed to take over the assets and operations of the Canadian Northern Railway and Grand Trunk Pacific when the expense and effort of crossing the northern prairies and mountains on the way to the Pacific coast proved to much for those lines. Construction of port facilities at Churchill proceeded in parallel with the railway, which opened throughout in 1929, just before the onset of the Great Depression.

The line has rarely, if ever, been profitable, as the trade for which it was built has never really developed. After the privatization of CN, the line north of The Pas was sold off to the Hudson's Bay Railway, an independent with (theoretically) lower operating costs, but much more difficult access to investment capital for rehabilitating the line's physical facilities. The line was built, and continues to operate, for political reasons, and political decisions will determine whether it gets the needed capital investment to be returned to useful operating condition, a condition that can continue to support the operation of passenger train services.

Without the passenger trains, Churchill's six week tourist season during the polar bear migration cannot continue. Without the freight services on the line bringing in the needed food and supplies, Churchill cannot support that tourist season, as the problems on the line from early August through the end of summer, 2008, have demonstrated, reducing food supplies in the town to critical levels as the high season approaches.

There are many parallels between the Hudson's Bay Railway and the Baikal-Amur Mainline in Russia, in that both run through areas devoid of any real economic potential, with few on-line traffic sources, were created for political purposes, have never been economically successful, and whose continued  operation and existence is dependent on political decisions.

Thursday, August 7^th, 2008

At 6:10 am, we pass MP 481, then MP 501 at 7:26 am, and arrive in Churchill (almost at MP 510) at 7:58 am, only two hours late. This compares well to the train's average of six hours late, in recent weeks. Our 26 people get off the train and board a local tour bus which has exactly 26 seats, so some of us must always sit with our feet up on the wheel wells. The driver, "Bill", seems well acquainted with Rolland, and vice versa (Rolland has been running tours up here for a quarter century). Our first stop is Gypsy's Bakery, one of the few local restaurants, and perhaps the only one open for breakfast.

After breakfast, we tour around the small town of Churchill, including the areas fronting on Hudson's Bay, where are posted for no passage due to the possible presence of polar bears, and then head down past the wharf and large grain silos on the Churchill River to the landing stage at which we board a small (but not tiny) boat for our whale-watching cruise. Coolers containing most of our lunch (sourced at Gypsy's Bakery) are also loaded on this boat, but somehow the drinks and dessert are left behind on the bus. The boat is just big enough for the group to sit down, and heads out into the middle of the river with rain falling, so we're all wearing (supplied) ponchos. The Beluga whales are white-colored, and surprisingly (to me) small, especially compared to those Chris and I had seen in 1990, off Cape Cod.

While we're out on the river, a unit train of loaded grain cars is shuffling around at the grain silo, getting ready to unload (and for its contents to be loaded into the waiting ship). This train has a Kansas City Southern locomotive in its consist, which seems odd for this far north. After a couple of hours, including eating lunch, the boat heads for the pier at Fort Prince of Wales, on the north side of the mouth of the Churchill River. Here, after more warnings about not walking away from the group due to the possible presence of polar bears, we have a walking tour of the fort, built by the British to protect this area from incursions by the French. The fort is currently being preserved, so that it does not fall down in the next big winter storm.

Returning to the south side of the river on the boat, and re-boarding the bus, Bill takes us to a place where we can access the Hudson's Bay shore (and where we finally get the drinks and dessert), where many people take the opportunity to walk down to the stony beach, and then out to Cape Merry, at the mouth of the Churchill River, across from the fort we had visited earlier, where there are also some fortifications. Finally, we head for the Tundra Inn, our hotel for the next two nights, where our bags are waiting in the hall (rather than having been placed in our rooms). Chris and I first head to the civic center, where there's an ATM at which we can finally get some Canadian cash, and then eat dinner at the Tundra Dining Room, across the street, where the food is excellent. A number of us agree that we had seen 'more than the sights there were to see in Churchill', today, and we have another full day and a large portion of the following day to go!

Saturday, August 9^th, 2008

We're supposed to leave today, so in addition to the continental breakfast (better administered, this morning), we all have to check out of our rooms before Bill comes for us in the bus. We're starting out the day with a Tundra Buggy ride in Wapusk National Park, just east (or perhaps it might be thought of, less correctly, as south) of town. As we head out on the main road, it is clear that no passenger train has arrived from the south this morning, ready to turn for our scheduled 4 pm departure.

A Tundra Buggy is an enclosed platform, with seating and toilet, mounted on a frame above very large tired wheels, similar to those used on large dump trucks. This enables it to travel, slowly, over the tundra, without losing its stability or becoming stuck. It works as well in this "dry" season as in the snow. At first, it looks as if use of these vehicles has destroyed large areas of the tundra along the north-facing coast in Wapusk, east of Churchill, but the driver assures me that the "roads" were made by the military in the early post WWII years, and that his company is not permitted to depart from these existing roads. I still think that use of these vehicles is at least preventing the land from recovering from its previous misuse.

We see Canada geese, snow geese, tundra swans, yellow legs, caribou, golden plover, Bonaparte gulls, falaropes, lapland longspurs,  and sandhill cranes. At lunchtime, Rolland, Bill, and the driver set up a shelf on a couple of seatbacks to hold the coffee and hot water containers, and serving dishes, while out on the back porch, the driver barbecues hamburger patties. The food is good, but late in the meal session the shelf collapses, taking with it my insulated mug, and breaking off the (decorative, it appears) plastic footing to it. We don't realize the latter until after we get home. No-one is hurt, and no-one loses food. Even the hot drinks survive, in their containers.

After the Tundra Buggy Ride, Bill drives us the long way back into town, stopping to visit the airport and a house featured in a National Geographic film on polar bears. In town, there is still no train to be seen. Rolland has known since some time on Friday that Hudson's Bay Railway derailed a freight train at Wabowden, between Thompson and The Pas, and that VIA has bused passengers between the southbound train that left here on Thursday and the one coming north from Winnipeg, turning each train to become the other. Our trainset will thus be the one that left here at 1600 on Thursday (the same cars we came up on), is arriving here about the time it should leave, and won't be leaving until around 2200 (10 pm), when the train crew has had six hours of rest.

Rolland's second plan (the first was to take the train all the way back to Winnipeg) for us to ride a bus from Thompson to Winnipeg has thus been scrapped, in favor of us leaving this train at Gillam, doing some activities there, and then flying to Winnipeg, getting there only a couple of hours later than planned. In the meantime, we have six hours to kill, in Churchill. Some of us visit the Eskimo Museum, which has a nice set of exhibits, and where I buy a book on the history of the (original) Hudson's Bay Railway. A group of us them walks over to the depot, where we walk around the museum again. Bill appears with the bus, and takes us all to his tour company's office, where Rolland has been planning and arranging the next 24 hours.

We split up to have dinner at the location of our choice (there are only three), and Chris and I go to Gypsy's Bakery, with some others, including Rolland. Then we all get together for a slideshow at the tour office, covering life in the north country (further north than here). After that, Bill drives us out to Cape Merry for the sunset and we return to the depot, where we board the train and go right to bed. After three full days, we really have seen more than there is to see in Churchill and its environs at this time of year.

The train consist is the same as on the way up. The on-board crew, however, is different.
 

Train 692, 8-9-08	Schedule	Actual
Churchill. MB	1600	2207
Herchmer	2233	8-10-08
	8-10-08	0642
Weir River	0118	pass 1008
Gillam (arr.)	0430	1211

Tuesday, August 12^th, 2008

Rain continues to fall, all day today, as the geography lesson continues. Our bus has a local guide from Gimli, on Lake Winnipeg, who describes the sights as we head north, using the River Road along the west bank of the Red River, through Lockport, where there is an interesting style of dam on the river, and where the Winnipeg bypass channel returns to the river. (This floodwater bypass channel was built after a flood in the mid-20th-century, and was very valuable in protecting Winnipeg from the big flood on The Red River in the late 1990s.) When the river reaches Lake Winnipeg, we drive about 500 meters from the west shore of the latter to the New Icelandic settlement of Gimli, where we have lunch at a cafe, visit the museum that covers the Icelandic heritage, and then visit a museum covering the fisheries on Lake Winnipeg. Our local guide at the latter is passionate about the world's loss of fisheries due to mankind's pollution of the lakes and oceans. We also visit a couple of local art galleries, but it's hard to get interested in local art on the same trip that one has visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam!  

After our return to the hotel, still in the rain, Chris and I eat dinner at the hotel restaurant, sharing the table with Ernie Draffin.