Virtual Railfan Tour of the Soviet Union 1974 - Murmansk to Moscow

 

We spent the whole day and night in the train, our private car came from the Red Arrow service.  I traveled in the locomotive from Midvirgirgarsk to Kandabolka.  There is quite a lot of room.  A long handled throttle, radio, two brake valves on right hand side.  The only control that the second man has is a horn. The cab was very clean indeed as was the engine compartment.  There was a rear view mirror.  The sound insulation is excellent and crews can talk to each other easily. Good heating. The crew were well dressed with white shirt and black tie.  The countryside was similar to Eastern Ontario with some wooden fences etc.  There were many people working on the track, digging snow from around the posts each tenth of a kilometer.  We received train orders from a female dispatcher.  Heavy snow.

In all, I traveled about 100 km (km 560 - km 459) in the cab in about 1½ hours and passed 8 trains on 11 sidings.  One steam locomotive was heading south, a 2-8-0 of the C17 class.  Most of the locomotives were the single ended TE3 freight type with a TEP or two TEPs on passenger trains.

The timetable is placed on a rack right in front of the engineer.  We were in cab signaled territory and ran under green signals all the way.  At the end of the run we ran out of the cab signaling and the aspect in the cab dropped to white. At Kandabolka I had literally to run to the other end of the train (16 cars) to get back to our private car on the rear.

There was a stop at Petrozavodsk and we had a look at the rest of the train.  It has only sleeping accommodation plus a restaurant car which has a good menu. We had a talk with the man on the platform.  Boxes of coal are placed along the platform and the women on each car lift it in to fuel the stove for heating and water from the samovar. Each woman is responsible for the door on her car.  The signal to start is given by the station master who has a short stick with a 6" white circle and black center on one end.

We arrived at Leningrad around 2300 and said goodbye to Mr. Nesterenko, the Soviet interpreter.  There was a change of direction and ChS2-648 hauled us to Moscow where we arrived at 0650.