Recently I unearthed notes from my 2010 trip from Berlin to Moscow to Tomsk. The destination is a city known as home of the first university in Siberia. It was closed to many foreigners during its days as a center of laser and nuclear research. It has cultural links with Germany that began with German professors (American universities were big on that in the 19th century, too.). Scientific contacts continued and so Tomsk was the site chosen for the first meeting between Angela Merkel and Vladimer Putin.
The trip was a sample of less than half of the Trans-Siberian line. Most of my reasons for the train ride were typically tourist. However, I was hoping to see their legacy 3000V DC electrified rail line segments, which were inspired by the Milwaukee Road. I would see some of the territory in which American railwaymen worked as advisors in World War I and into the Revolutions. And as a Транспорт Специaлист I was interested to see the blend of American, European and original Russian rail concepts.
21 Jul 10 – Up early for crosstown trip to Tegel airport. Lufthansa flight went off as scheduled, as had trip to airport via tram, S-Bahn, TXL bus. Bus is packed with standees and their bags, but I only had a short wait for it.
Problem was in Frankfurt – which was a nuthouse as usual. Flight changes from Gate 33 to Gate 27 to Gate 31, which is worse than it seems due to the layout. Gate 31 actually leads downstairs to shuttle buses. We are driven to a plane parked in an outlying area and boarded via stairs. This and then congestion on runways result in a late flight.
On the Moscow-Domodedovo International end things procede routinely [this was before the terror bombing]. Taxi touts are everywhere in the terminal. Nyet! As I learned, the rail station is on the other end of the terminal building, in the domestic – crowded –area. It is even more crowded due to the touts.
Airport Express has its own counter with ticket lines. There are also counters for travel agents who will book rail or air trips and there are counters for unfamiliar airlines (and after landing I enjoyed seeing many, including Montenegro Airlines).
Hot weather! Airport Express 1730 trip (Moscow Time) trainset is hot inside. Pull out on time; ventilation made car comfortable at speed but running in mixed rail traffic leads to slowdowns and the heat rapidly increases. About half of the trip is very suburban and the second half is urban with first views of mega apartment blocks.
The train itself – very red, which Russians associate with fast trains [note that the word for red is also a word for beautiful so there’s some neurologic programing there] – is comfortable suburban stock with 2+2 seating and a wide aisle. Long train (8 cars?) is underloaded. It pulls into the suburban tracks at Paveletsky Station.
The suburban station is busy, but I am directed around a corner to the Metro entrance, and it is a stampede! There are ticket counters for the Metro but also TVM’s. The TVM’s could be toggled to English. As insurance against a mistake, I buy two rides; time is getting shorter, and I and a million-or-so Muscovites were getting sweatier.
Down the escalator with the masses. I get on the wrong train – I want Line 5, not Line 4. This is a consequence of no signs on trains and my repeated misconstruing of arrow signs. In Moscow they mean to turn after the sign.
The actual ride on the crowded train feels something like riding the BMT subway to Brighton Beach. Very pushy crowd but a young woman offers her seat to an elderly woman.
Rather than reverse direction, I set a new course, transferring at the Theatre Station. This has a new sort of crowd. In addition to the commuters there were people waiting for friends, possibly to go to the theatre. This slows down the flow. A la New York subways, the transfer includes a long pedestrian tunnel and elevation changes. A la Moscow, it also leads me to one more false turn, then I get on the right train. [The trip took me through Lubyanka Station, where I saw no sign of the terror attack that had taken place there.]
Off in a mass transfer at Komsomolskaya Square station. This serves three intercity + suburban train stations and they are busy. Yaroslavsky Station is easy to spot, due to its dramatic architecture. Inside, it is decorated with Siberian scenes and medallions [escutcheons?] of Siberian animals. It has a nice “You Are Here” display that showed me where to head for long-distance tickets.
The whole building is hot, and people are fanning themselves. Ticket clerks are running small fans on themselves in their work areas. Customers are cranky in slow-moving lines. Clerks appear to have been trained to be cranky.
The main problem appears to be a slow computer system combined with peak summer travel and sold out space. For example, a young couple in front of me want to travel together, but space together does not come up on their train. Lots of time is spent trying different combinations. The guy tries raising his voice and getting angry. Three clerks go over stuff on the screen. Fortunately, not everything is as slow. The man in front of me has it all worked out, including exact change. The clerk looks as if she is disappointed.
Ditto with my [Denver printed] e-tickets. I keep wondering what would happen, but all goes smoothly. She did get to snap at me to show my passport when I wasn’t quick enough. [The e-ticket had to be exchanged for a railway-issued ticket and checked against my visa and passport.]
Thankful to get out of the hottest hall in the station, I go back outside – nyet! I don’t wanna taxi! – and photograph some street scenes. Make taxi drivers and touts nervous. [On the flight between Denver and Frankfurt I had filled two pages in my notebook with useful questions and answers in Russian but had failed to memorize some phrase to scatter taxi touts. I ad libbed.]
I walk back inside and study the train arrival and departure board. Figure out which was which. This becomes important in a minute. Two Brit girls with backpacks come in and are briefly worried when train times do not match the info that they have. This is because they – as I had – looked at the arrivals list first instead of the departures. I set them straight. [Having walked in a few minutes ahead of them I had become an expert.] They did not read Russian and had been having a difficult time, finding that few people here spoke English.
They are happy to meet someone who speaks English, amused when I said that I was an American, so only spoke a sort of English. They had just graduated from a university, and one had a job set up to teach English in Vietnam. They were catching the trans-Siberian train ahead of mine.
They started their train trip in Lithuania, then to St. Petersburg, then to Moscow for a couple of days and then onward. When their track was posted, we said goodbye. As in the old days in the U.S., sleeping car trains departing major terminals were available for occupancy well before departure.
I pay for an hour in what I think was built as the First Class waiting room. This also gives access to better toilets and some quiet time. Most in the room were watching television, but it was not loud, and others were working on their laptops. The room had been retrofitted with many 220V outlets.
Back in the main waiting room for a few minutes. Another retrofit was a controlled-entrance waiting area so that ticketed passengers could wait without being hassled by street people, a la the Portland [OR] Greyhound station. I didn’t take advantage of it, but it looked like a good idea. I enjoy looking at the line-up of night trains, much as one would have seen until the 1960’s in the U.S. or the 1970’s in Western Europe.
Finally, the Tomich Train 38 is posted (even numbers eastbound as in North America). I head out to the intercity tracks area, and it is just backing in from the yard.
As a sidelight I had noticed a three-digit train number would be the last train of the evening, going to Vladivostok behind the trans-Siberian. I think it was the train being assembled on the adjacent track, with many postal and other head-end cars with a couple of passenger cars. A brief thought of riding such a train across Russia flashed through my mind!
Though I believe that Trains 37/38 are only seasonal trains, they carry destination signs showing the “Tomich” name and the lace curtains carried the name in stylized lettering! I find that Car 12 is on the head-end, behind a baggage car and a postal car. The car attendant was there to courteously check my ticket and passport. The compartment [a four-berth coupe] is hot, so I go back out on the platform to wait, as others do.
I come back into the compartment and introduce myself to Volodya, the other lower bunk passenger. It is awkward given my poor Russian, but he is very tolerant. He is 65 years old (has a much younger wife and child), may have a diet to follow, as he turned down the beer sales lady in the corridor and later said “no thanks” to chocolate. He is a reader of informal Komsomolskaya Pravda and says he was a retired civil servant [although that could describe a lot of former Soviet citizens].
No one bought the uppers, so this four-person room was less crowded than I had expected. I think some other space is open in this car, which may have been added recently to the consist. For example, few delays in using the restroom. The attendant is able to keep the car very clean.
Volodya:
To be continued.
The trip was a sample of less than half of the Trans-Siberian line. Most of my reasons for the train ride were typically tourist. However, I was hoping to see their legacy 3000V DC electrified rail line segments, which were inspired by the Milwaukee Road. I would see some of the territory in which American railwaymen worked as advisors in World War I and into the Revolutions. And as a Транспорт Специaлист I was interested to see the blend of American, European and original Russian rail concepts.
21 Jul 10 – Up early for crosstown trip to Tegel airport. Lufthansa flight went off as scheduled, as had trip to airport via tram, S-Bahn, TXL bus. Bus is packed with standees and their bags, but I only had a short wait for it.
Problem was in Frankfurt – which was a nuthouse as usual. Flight changes from Gate 33 to Gate 27 to Gate 31, which is worse than it seems due to the layout. Gate 31 actually leads downstairs to shuttle buses. We are driven to a plane parked in an outlying area and boarded via stairs. This and then congestion on runways result in a late flight.
On the Moscow-Domodedovo International end things procede routinely [this was before the terror bombing]. Taxi touts are everywhere in the terminal. Nyet! As I learned, the rail station is on the other end of the terminal building, in the domestic – crowded –area. It is even more crowded due to the touts.
Airport Express has its own counter with ticket lines. There are also counters for travel agents who will book rail or air trips and there are counters for unfamiliar airlines (and after landing I enjoyed seeing many, including Montenegro Airlines).
Hot weather! Airport Express 1730 trip (Moscow Time) trainset is hot inside. Pull out on time; ventilation made car comfortable at speed but running in mixed rail traffic leads to slowdowns and the heat rapidly increases. About half of the trip is very suburban and the second half is urban with first views of mega apartment blocks.
The train itself – very red, which Russians associate with fast trains [note that the word for red is also a word for beautiful so there’s some neurologic programing there] – is comfortable suburban stock with 2+2 seating and a wide aisle. Long train (8 cars?) is underloaded. It pulls into the suburban tracks at Paveletsky Station.
The suburban station is busy, but I am directed around a corner to the Metro entrance, and it is a stampede! There are ticket counters for the Metro but also TVM’s. The TVM’s could be toggled to English. As insurance against a mistake, I buy two rides; time is getting shorter, and I and a million-or-so Muscovites were getting sweatier.
Down the escalator with the masses. I get on the wrong train – I want Line 5, not Line 4. This is a consequence of no signs on trains and my repeated misconstruing of arrow signs. In Moscow they mean to turn after the sign.
The actual ride on the crowded train feels something like riding the BMT subway to Brighton Beach. Very pushy crowd but a young woman offers her seat to an elderly woman.
Rather than reverse direction, I set a new course, transferring at the Theatre Station. This has a new sort of crowd. In addition to the commuters there were people waiting for friends, possibly to go to the theatre. This slows down the flow. A la New York subways, the transfer includes a long pedestrian tunnel and elevation changes. A la Moscow, it also leads me to one more false turn, then I get on the right train. [The trip took me through Lubyanka Station, where I saw no sign of the terror attack that had taken place there.]
Off in a mass transfer at Komsomolskaya Square station. This serves three intercity + suburban train stations and they are busy. Yaroslavsky Station is easy to spot, due to its dramatic architecture. Inside, it is decorated with Siberian scenes and medallions [escutcheons?] of Siberian animals. It has a nice “You Are Here” display that showed me where to head for long-distance tickets.
The whole building is hot, and people are fanning themselves. Ticket clerks are running small fans on themselves in their work areas. Customers are cranky in slow-moving lines. Clerks appear to have been trained to be cranky.
The main problem appears to be a slow computer system combined with peak summer travel and sold out space. For example, a young couple in front of me want to travel together, but space together does not come up on their train. Lots of time is spent trying different combinations. The guy tries raising his voice and getting angry. Three clerks go over stuff on the screen. Fortunately, not everything is as slow. The man in front of me has it all worked out, including exact change. The clerk looks as if she is disappointed.
Ditto with my [Denver printed] e-tickets. I keep wondering what would happen, but all goes smoothly. She did get to snap at me to show my passport when I wasn’t quick enough. [The e-ticket had to be exchanged for a railway-issued ticket and checked against my visa and passport.]
Thankful to get out of the hottest hall in the station, I go back outside – nyet! I don’t wanna taxi! – and photograph some street scenes. Make taxi drivers and touts nervous. [On the flight between Denver and Frankfurt I had filled two pages in my notebook with useful questions and answers in Russian but had failed to memorize some phrase to scatter taxi touts. I ad libbed.]
I walk back inside and study the train arrival and departure board. Figure out which was which. This becomes important in a minute. Two Brit girls with backpacks come in and are briefly worried when train times do not match the info that they have. This is because they – as I had – looked at the arrivals list first instead of the departures. I set them straight. [Having walked in a few minutes ahead of them I had become an expert.] They did not read Russian and had been having a difficult time, finding that few people here spoke English.
They are happy to meet someone who speaks English, amused when I said that I was an American, so only spoke a sort of English. They had just graduated from a university, and one had a job set up to teach English in Vietnam. They were catching the trans-Siberian train ahead of mine.
They started their train trip in Lithuania, then to St. Petersburg, then to Moscow for a couple of days and then onward. When their track was posted, we said goodbye. As in the old days in the U.S., sleeping car trains departing major terminals were available for occupancy well before departure.
I pay for an hour in what I think was built as the First Class waiting room. This also gives access to better toilets and some quiet time. Most in the room were watching television, but it was not loud, and others were working on their laptops. The room had been retrofitted with many 220V outlets.
Back in the main waiting room for a few minutes. Another retrofit was a controlled-entrance waiting area so that ticketed passengers could wait without being hassled by street people, a la the Portland [OR] Greyhound station. I didn’t take advantage of it, but it looked like a good idea. I enjoy looking at the line-up of night trains, much as one would have seen until the 1960’s in the U.S. or the 1970’s in Western Europe.
Finally, the Tomich Train 38 is posted (even numbers eastbound as in North America). I head out to the intercity tracks area, and it is just backing in from the yard.
As a sidelight I had noticed a three-digit train number would be the last train of the evening, going to Vladivostok behind the trans-Siberian. I think it was the train being assembled on the adjacent track, with many postal and other head-end cars with a couple of passenger cars. A brief thought of riding such a train across Russia flashed through my mind!
Though I believe that Trains 37/38 are only seasonal trains, they carry destination signs showing the “Tomich” name and the lace curtains carried the name in stylized lettering! I find that Car 12 is on the head-end, behind a baggage car and a postal car. The car attendant was there to courteously check my ticket and passport. The compartment [a four-berth coupe] is hot, so I go back out on the platform to wait, as others do.
I come back into the compartment and introduce myself to Volodya, the other lower bunk passenger. It is awkward given my poor Russian, but he is very tolerant. He is 65 years old (has a much younger wife and child), may have a diet to follow, as he turned down the beer sales lady in the corridor and later said “no thanks” to chocolate. He is a reader of informal Komsomolskaya Pravda and says he was a retired civil servant [although that could describe a lot of former Soviet citizens].
No one bought the uppers, so this four-person room was less crowded than I had expected. I think some other space is open in this car, which may have been added recently to the consist. For example, few delays in using the restroom. The attendant is able to keep the car very clean.
Volodya:
To be continued.
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