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Richard's train riding pages

Nottingham - Moscow

Sometime in early 1984, The Great Organiser (otherwise known as Q) said to me something along the lines of: "We should go to Moscow". So we did. My contribution to the planning was to book my leave and then write him a cheque. Not many tourists went to the USSR back in 1984 and only a very few people would be capable of organising an independent trip. I wasn't, he was.

Here's the routing:
  • Nottingham - Harwich
  • Harwich - Hoek van Holland (on the St Nicholas)
  • Hoek van Holland - Kobenhavn
  • Kobenhavn - Stockholm
  • Stockholm - Helsinki (overnight on Viking Line)
  • Helsinki - Moskva (overnight Train no. 21 'Tolstoi', Soviet stock including a dining car)
  • Moskva - Warsawa (again overnight - we were taken off the train by the border guards at Brest because we hadn't exchanged our remaining roubles)
  • Warsaw - Koln
  • Koln - Oostende
  • Oostende - Dover
  • Dover - London
  • London - Nottingham
In Helsinki we noticed a box for the internal railway mail. We procured an envelope from somewhere and, in the interests of science, addressed it to ourselves at Nottingham Travel Centre. Duly posted, it arrived shortly after we got back. It will always remain a mystery how the envelope was routed, but it must have raised a few eyebrows when passing between Scandinavian Conductors.
Q and me with the camera on self-timer
How to get from Nottingham to Harwich in 1984
Boarding card for the St Nicholas
Sea Freightliner II alongside at Harwich
Kobenhavn
Stockholm Tunnelbana
Overnight Stockholm to Helsinki (depart 09.00, arrive 09.00) on the Viking Saga
Dinner on board with a bottle of liebfraumilch, the height of sophistication. A few nights later we had dinner in a Soviet dining car. The menu was in Russian and no English was spoken by the crew so we pointed at what looked like starters and mains. We're still not 100% sure what we had.
Helsinki. A classic bit of rolling stock design.
Helsinki. Wooden carriages.
Helsinki. Train no. 23 'Repin' 12.00 Helsinki - Leningrad awaits departure. Soviet stock.
Single ticket Helsinki - Moscow
Sleeping car supplement
Soviet visa. The Soviets didn't stamp your passport so there would be no record of you having visited. This was rather spoiled by the Finns who did. Anyone leaving Finland via Vainikkala is only going to one place. The Soviet border guards had a long list of prohibited items that they read out. This included "technical journals". One of the guards had a good look through my copy of Modern Railways when they searched the luggage - but I got away with it. The other thing they had a long stare at was the book I was reading. From recollection the cover illustration was bundles of American dollars piled in the shape of a swastika. Not really the best choice of reading.
We stayed at the Hotel Intourist. I left my paperback in the bedside cabinet when we left. On reflection, I probably condemned an innocent cleaner to the gulag.
The official Intourist set of Moscow metro postcards. The stations were (and still are of course) magnificent.
Cosmonauts on a stamp.
I was (sensibly) very nervous of taking train photos behind the Iron Curtain. This is a rare example, taken from the train.
Onwards to Poland
Polish steam
Transit visa for East Germany. Another overnight train. Stamped in at Frankfurt/Oder, through East/West Berlin and out into West Germany at Marienborn the following morning. All passport control throughout the trip was carried out on the trains, something we can't manage between London and Paris/Brussels 40 years later.