I thought 4 days on the train would be long enough before I needed a rest and a good bath. I planned to stop and rest in Lake Baikal, which is 24 kilometers from Irkutsh. Intourist, the Russian travel agent, booked me on the fast train from Moscow to Irkutsh called Baikal see picture at right). The first train that arrived in Irkutsh arrived in August 16, 1898 and next year the 100^th anniversary of the first train will be celebrated. A special timetable was produced to commemorate this historic event and was placed in each compartment of the train. I left Moscow on September 21, 1997 at the scheduled time of 9.20 PM. The train schedule that was provided in each compartment was based on Moscow time so this eliminated confusion with the 4 local time zones that the train passed through. As I had a digital watch with a dual time feature, I was able to keep the watch with one time on Moscow time and one on local time.

Now for the railway buffs, I would like to describe some features of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The sleeping cars were cars that were recently built in the former East Germany and were very clean and comfortable (see picture at right). The cars are divided into compartments that each had 2 lower and 2 upper berths. The linen for the beds cost 14,000 rubles or about $2.50 and had to be returned at the end of the journey to one of the 2 attendants on the sleeping car. There were 2 common toilets at each end of the car. Hot water for making tea or other hot drinks and food was always available from a hot water tank called a samovar. There was piped in music and a public address system that was used for making announcements. One of the 2 attendants was always on duty on the car. Our attendants were 2 mature women who looked after everything including tickets, selling bedding, drinks and food, cleaning and vacuuming the car, making sure passengers got off at the right stations, cleaning the outside boarding rails and steps before passengers got off or on the train and any disciplinary problems. When we got back on the train after a station stop, the attendants would ask us to wipe our feet on a special mat they provided before we entered the car. As I spoke Russian, the attendants would ask me to tell the English speaking passengers to wipe their feet if they were not aware that they should do this.

The Trans-Siberian Railway is double tracked and electrified from Moscow to Vladivosto (see picture at right). The Russian Railway in total has 87,000 kilometers of track and 38,800 kilometers of this track is electrified. They have a 5-foot gauge as opposed to the 4-foot 8-½-inch gauge of North America and most of Europe. They have 3729 electric locomotives and 2600 diesel locomotives (see picture at lower right). They have 36,179 railway passenger cars and 396,000 railway freight cars. 

 A lot of the track on the Trans-Siberian Railway uses concrete ties and continuous welded rail ( see picture at  lower right) The track bed is kept in good condition, as I did not experience any roughness in the ride at any time. The railway passenger cars have automatic couplers and have 2 buffers at each end that helps to keep the slack at a minimum and greatly improves the ride. The servicing of the train at each of scheduled servicing stations was done in less than 20 minutes and was always done efficiently. The train that I was on, maintained a speed that appeared to be between 120 and 140 kilometers an hour in spite  of the many other passenger, commuter and freight trains. As there was double track and this passenger train had a high priority, I never noticed any stoppage for signals or other trains. The only slow down I observed was when we were going through some mountainous territory and before a station stop when the train was slowing down so the train would arrive exactly at the scheduled time. I could set my watch at the time the train actually arrived and departed from each station.

I shared the compartment with a young Russian soldier who was stationed in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea and was travelling to see his grandparents in Nizhneudinsk that is just before Irkutsh. His parents that live in Kaliningrad packed him so much food that he insisted that I help him eat it so it would not go to waste. So I quickly got into the swing of sharing my food with the other Russian passengers that I was with and this made eating a real party time in the compartment. When the train stopped for servicing that would require 20 minutes, we would obtain fresh and hot food at the stations that were sold by various vendors and then share this in our compartment. This food was a lot more appealing to eat than what was served in the dining car on the train. My soldier friend would tell me about the cities that we passed and I would talk to him about Canada.

From Moscow the train traveled through the Central Russian Upland which was like the prairies, then over the Ural Mountains that are not too high, over the Steppes that is again similar to the prairies (see picture at right), and then to Eastern Sayan Mountains near Irkutsh. These mountains contain the taiga forest of Russia and are similar to the forested areas of British Columbia where the mountains are not too high. On the train, Russians would ask me what did the countryside look like in Canada. I would tell them we have prairies and mountains that have similar vegetation that I saw in Russia. 

 What surprised me were the large cities in Siberia such as Perm (population 1,098,000), Ekaterinburg (population 1,370,000), Omsk (population 1,169,00), Novosibirsk (population1 1,600,00), Krasnoyarsk (population 929,000) and Irkutsk (population 639,000). The other thing that impressed me was the large number of industrial plants that were located in these cities as well as other towns and smaller cities in Siberia. Many of the plants that were visible from the train were equipped with efficient wide span rail mounted gantry cranes in their outside storage areas. We also passed some railway yards that stored steam engines. These engines are maintained as a security measure in the event that they may be needed if hostilities broke out in the future.

With so many interesting things to see and do on the train, the four-day journey passed by very quickly and without noticing the time go by I was in Irkutsh for my 3 days rest and a good bath that I really needed.