Trains

[sartorias]

I love long train rides with a desperate love, but I haven't been on one since 2004, so I've been feeling deprived. So I ride trains on the Net.

Thanks to 365postcards there is this realtime snip of the countryside between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Watching that, I get as mesmerized as I do on trainrides, with my face pressed to the window

Comments

[asakiyume]

My husband found a video like that of the journey from northern England down to London--it was great fun. Thanks for these links; I'll share them with my older son, who is a passenger rail fanatic (he may have already seen some of them).

[sartorias]

Hope he enjoys them!

[1crowdedhour]

Fantastic links! Thank you!

[sartorias]

:-)

[la_marquise_de_]

I have always wanted to do that Chinese journey. And the Trans-Siberian Express. Trains have a rhythm unlike any other form of travel, I think -- only canal boats come close and they are at the other end in terms of distance. As a child, one of my favourite books was Noel Streatfeild, The Painted Garden, in which three children from London travel from the UK to California by boat and train in c. 1949 (and then have adventures in Hollywood.) I loved their train trip from NY to LA, too, though I suspect it no longer exists in anything like that form.
It's the book that gave me my first idea of the US, in fact -- with the net result that on my first proper trip I insisted on going up the Empire State Building, visiting the Radio City Music Hall and finding a drugstore with sodas.

[sartorias]

You might like Warnie Lewis's diaries and letters--he records his trip around the world. (I also have the Richard Halliburton travel diaries of the early 1900s, and they are FASCINATING)

[avocadovpx]

>> And the Trans-Siberian Express.

Are you (Kari or Sherwood) familiar with this project between Google and the Russian Railways?

http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/en.html

[la_marquise_de_]

No, I hadn't seen that. How fascinating: thank you.

[mummimamma]

Great links! I loved the Beograd-Istanbul one. I have been planning on going on the Orient Express forever, perhaps one day.

And of course i have to promote my own trainride, namely Bergensbanen (Bergen-Oslo in Norway), there is a clip with lots of snow here, but you can also download the whole trip, (all 7 1/2 hours) - or watch the remixed 7 1/2 minute version. The whole trip was sent on Norwegian television, which 1.2 million viewers. In a country of 4.8 million inhabitants

[movingfinger]

As train users who have taken that ride, we got extremely exercised when for some reason the meet-up with the Flåmsbana was not on the shorter version first put up on the web!

Next project: perhaps a Hurtigruten voyage?

[sartorias]

Heh!

[mummimamma]

Heh, the meet-up with Flåmsbana is usually a short one. But it's there on the long version. With mandatory lost tourists :) It was actually shown twice because of teh great view.

Next project: perhaps a Hurtigruten voyage?
He, there has been a lot of joking about that.

[halfmoon_mollie]

and here's a song for you about Fast Trains