#10 - JRL 7275
Orlando Sentinel
August 3, 2003
An unforgettable journey across Russia on a steam train
By Marjorie Pravden | Special to the Sentinel
Editor's note: This is the ninth in a series of biweekly articles about one traveler's six-month trip around the world. This week: A steam-train ride across Russia.
The Trans-Siberian 100th Anniversary Steam Express from St. Petersburg is the epic train journey. We're crossing 4,700 miles and six time zones, traveling the original 1903 Russian steam route through the forests and uplands of Siberia to the steppes of Outer Mongolia, where some villagers have never seen foreigners. The train itself is proving to be as fascinating as the journey.
On board are 44 passengers from around the world, including five British "gricers," fanatical railroad enthusiasts. We have showers, laundry service, a doctor, a gourmet chef, and in the bar car, a concert pianist. No, sir, this is not your traditional Russian train. It's a private train tour organized by GW Travel, a British company whose proprietor, Tim Littler, is a pioneer in Russian tourism outside the country's large cities. Our cars are hauled by a P36 steam engine that Littler owns and backup steam engines, promised by the Russian government, that wait along the route.
About every 100 miles, our engines had to take on water and coal. The frequent stops allow time to stroll villages and explore cities by tour bus. Every day is an adventure, something to remember. I've recorded many of our adventures in my journal.
Day 1: Record bashed! On the very first day, Littler is in the steam cab, his face black with coal dust. The gricers are in the Russian saloon car hunched over their stopwatches and GPS units. With two P36 steam engines, for a distance of 30 miles, we achieve an average speed of 75 mph with a top speed of 82.1, a Russian postwar steam record.
Tver village. It's amazing what is not illegal in Russia. It's startling to see old babushkas and women with baby strollers walking on the multiple tracks and taking risky shortcuts under the trains. East of Tver, the landscape brings flat, wooded lowlands, tin-roofed houses with small gardens, rusty telephone lines and colorful cemeteries.
We arrive in Moscow in the dead of night and leave behind a P36 that suffered a failure during "the run for the record." A "Su" steam engine replaces it.
Day 2: Ryazan, one of Russia's oldest cities. It's raining hard. Despite the storm, the group takes a city tour, but I go looking for an Internet outlet. A local woman who doesn't speak English walks me to one a half-mile away. An hour later, she is back with her husband and his car and gifts of chocolates and china, products of her city. They refuse payment for their help, then drive me to the station, saying goodbye with perhaps the only word they know in English, "friends," then drive away in the rain.
The skies clear and I ask Russian-born Marina, GW's liaison with Moscow, if I could "ride the footplate." Wearing her overalls, I jump up into the steam cab to face five startled Russian men in black. From the platform, Marina says something to them in Russian, then gives me a thumbs up. Mike, a gricer, yells, "Stay out of the way." I tuck into a corner, and my heart races.
I can't remember an hour and a half more exciting than this. Every sense is taken to the extreme. The fireman shovels coal, whirls around and shoots it into a blinding-red firebox. Loose chunks clatter over our feet. It's a ballet of men, levers, wheels and gauges. The smell of iron and fire, the taste of flying coal dust, the hissing steam, the soulful whistle. There's a hot blast from the firebox, then a cool rush from the window. The faster the train flies, the faster the cab bucks.
I'm thinking, it can't get any better than this when a startling sound comes from the steam whistle: an anguished humanlike cry, so long and excruciatingly beautiful that I nearly burst into tears. Sergei, his hand still on the whistle lever, turns and looks at me. In fact, all the men are looking at me. I had been grinning from ear to ear since I jumped into their cab, and they noticed. The whistle was for me.
Day 3: Krotovka. We arrive as villagers flow into a dirt square next to the station. Women in traditional dress sing in front of stand-up microphones. Passengers and crew are pulled into the center to dance. The "Big Hats" -- policemen with hats big enough to land a helicopter on -- decline to dance, pointing to their badges. Children come forward with flowers from their gardens, and an old woman bobs to the music, holding a round loaf of "welcome bread" over her head. That's when we realize that this is a party for us. When the whistle blows, we reboard this, the first tourist train to come through in many years, and from the windows, we emotionally blow kisses to an entire village that had, in a single hour, built a bridge of friendship.
Day 5: We are deep in the Ural Mountains, approaching the continental divide between Europe and Asia. We exit the train to see the surprisingly small concrete obelisk that marks this auspicious spot. Coming down into flat, marshy land to Chelyabinsk, another passenger, Nicola, goes into the cab for the ride of her life. On the platform, people wait gloomily for trains to take them to some unhappy destination. At least that's how it seems; my smile has yet to be returned by anyone over 30 on the platform.
It's 90 degrees. Is this the same 50-degrees-below-zero Siberia to which all those Russians were banished?
There are black fingerlike images and spots in my vision. The Russian doctor assumes it is coal dust from the cab and is treating it accordingly.
Day 9: Koshkornikovo. A man is drying fox skins on a second-story balcony, and I give a smile and, twice, a little wave. He gives me a blank look and goes inside. I try again with two women on a bench, but they seem suspicious (a lingering relic of the Cold War?) and wave me away. I sneak a photo, anyway. The well-kept elementary school is empty for the summer, but the principal is in. She takes a large scrapbook off a shelf and proudly shows Judy and me her kids. I watch an old woman, who is taken with Ron and won't take no for an answer. She gives him a large fresh fish wrapped in a newspaper. Our cook fries it up for his dinner.
I'm beginning to understand Winston Churchill's famous statement, Russia is "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Russians are rude and charming, grim and happy, secretive and open. They are, in a word, a paradox.
The color of people across Russia is almost exclusively white, a noticeably plain phenomenon when compared with America's melting pot of rainbow colors.
There are still black images in my vision. Where's a good eye specialist when you need one?
Day 10: Tayshet, whose station kiosk sports a range of pistols for sale. From Tayshet to Irkutsk, the landscape changes from low-lying marshland not unlike the swamps east of Orlando, to forests of fir, pine, birch and larch. There's a profusion of sunflowers and lupine. For miles across Siberia, the villages feature treated-wood houses. They are unpainted except for the eaves and window sashes, which are hues of green, for long life, and blue, for hope.
Now we're going over bridges and through long tunnels in the mountains, where rifle-toting sentries stand at attention beside wooden sheds at each end. The popular theory is they watch for bears that could wander into the tunnels and cause derailment.
Day 12: Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake and bigger than the five Great Lakes put together. Baikal is shrouded in the smoke of forest fires burning in the distance. Ferried by workboat from the train, we are picnicking on its shores. The tremendous barbecue features omul, the favorite fish from the lake, and musicians with traditional instruments, the Baikal Shores Group.
Day 13: Selenga. A very old man comes to the station; he is teary-eyed over the steam engine. To many rural elderly Russians, it represents the old days when there was, at least, "a chicken in every pot."
We pass 50 mothballed Soviet tanks on the outskirts of Ulan Ude, the last Russian town before Mongolia. During a city tour, we see that new houses are going up, and that the cars are newer and bigger than before. There is a Siberian engineering university, a college of languages (students wear dress shirts and high heels to class) and a large aircraft factory. Full-bodied statues of Lenin are more frequent in Russia than Martin Luther King Boulevards in the United States. But my favorite is in Ulan Ude. It's just a huge 21-foot bronze head of Lenin, high off the ground. "Oh, look," Widgie exclaims in her Mississippi drawl, "I feel like I'm standing in front of the Wizard of Oz, waiting for a dispensation."
The landscape is finally looking like my idea of Siberia, great, dry expanses of very flat land.
Day 14: During the night, the Russian government, having already been paid, reneges on its agreement to allow into Mongolia its steam engines, our steam crew (who were practically in tears) and our poor Armenian laundry lady. At 5:30 a.m., after comparing me with my photo for the second time in four hours to make sure I'm not a terrorist leaving their country, the Russian border police depart the train. My last image of Russia is the laundry lady, standing on the platform with her bags.
Under the diesel electric engine, we cross the Mongolian border heading for the capital, Ulan Bator, and everything changes. We are surrounded by soldiers with Mongol features. Their customs check is efficient and they depart quickly. Now, green and lovely pastures roll in all directions, the steppes rising above them. Round white gers (nomad tents) and livestock dot the landscape. This is the land of the khans, whose Mongol hordes once thundered across the terrain. But the here and now is just as thrilling.
For, outside my window there is a "wild" herdsman on horseback, joyously and all-out racing the train!
Marjorie Pravden is a television producer and freelance writer who lives in Palm Bay.
Top • Next
Aug. 3, 2003:
#7275 • JRL Home
- Back to the Top -