The Trans-Siberian Railway

by Deborah Manley

No railway journey on Earth can equal the Trans-Siberian between Moscow and Vladivostok. It is not just its vast length and the great variety of the lands and climes through which it passes. It is not just its history as the line that linked the huge territories which are Russia together. It is a dream which calls countless travellers to the adventure of the longest railway in the world. From the birth aboard of Rudolf Nureyev to the childhood obsession with the railway of Lesley Blanch, to the weariness that eventually overcame Paul Theroux, to the excitement of the author s own journey, this revised and updated collection of travellers accounts brings together emotions, descriptions and humour from a century of travel. This new edition of a classic anthology takes us through the tremendous achievement of the railway s construction across harsh, unsettled lands through the earliest journeys of Western travellers and the trains on which they travelled, and their descriptions of fellow travellers, food, scenery, domestic arrangements, adventures on and off the train, convicts, revolution and war as the train carried them through a lonely, lovely landscape. The barrier of Lake Baikal was crossed by a British-built ice-breaker, put together on the lakeside, until the link around the deep water and through the first tunnels of the route, was completed. The railway played and still plays a huge part in holding this vast country together. The necessary preparations and each section of the journey are described by travellers as famed as Sir Brian Horrocks, Peter Fleming, Noel Barber, Laurens van der Post, Eric Newby, Bob Geldof and many others, now less known. Their accounts are drawn together from a treasury of long out-of-print books so past journeys can bring today s travellers a vast kaleidoscope of experience of a great journey to be enjoyed as you travel along the line or simply contemplate the adventure.

Genres: Russia

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 1988

Reviews

[Ms Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable from start to finish! I have been obsessed with this train journey for a long time but not planning to actually do it due to Recent Political Events, I have decided to read about it instead.

There's a good spread of writers included: intrepid travellers, popstars, business men, political prisoners and young women travellingwithparents and pets. I have read Peter Fleming, Paul Theroux and Esther Hautzig before but was delighted to reread their work in the context of other writers describing similar things. The writers from the turn of the century were the most unexpected as that period was the birth of the railway line and so the contrast between the industrial power which developed it and the rural isolation of the villages and towns it connects is the greatest.

I particularly liked the descriptions of getting the line across Lake Baikal and the challenges they faced as well as the description of the ice breakers. As for Peter Fleming, I could read him all day and his extracts were so entertaining I might read his book in its entirety.

[Paul Hargreaves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needs updating......for example says in 1986 photography of stations not allowed. How about today?

[ANCOLUFE]

this book is very interesanting