Long Train Runnin'

Nicholas II in the imperial train from angelfire.com

Writer Sara Wheeler shares lessons gleaned during two years of train rides through Russia. Sociology: "I had learned to bring contributions to what inevitably turns into a communal meal, especially when travelling in third-class platskartny, the open-plan dormitory cars that lie somewhere between a boarding school and a refugee camp." Geography: "As we trundled east out of St. Petersburg, the marshes merged into the silvery waters of Lake Ladoga ... . At Shlisselburg a bridge carried the train over the Neva, the mighty river that drains over 100,000 square miles, including much of south-east Finland." History: "Tsar Nicholas II signed his abdication papers in a panelled compartment of the imperial train as it idled in the sidings at Pskov. Tolstoy died at the lonely Astapovo transfer station in 1910." And literature: "... in the most famous scene in Russian literature, Anna Karenina flings aside her red handbag and sinks to welcome oblivion under the wheels of a train": http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/places/sara-wheeler/station-station