On Trains and Terrorism

We are planning to go from St. Petersburg to Moscow by train. Train has always been a traditional way to travel in Russia, and the route from St. Petersburg to Moscow is the one that has been described by almost every Russian novelist in the last 200 years.

In the Soviet era, this route was serviced by the special train called Krasnaya Strela, which stands for Red Arrow in Russian. This express train would take you from one capital to another in about 8 hours in comfortable sleeper cars. One would just get on board at night in one city and wake up the next morning in the other.

In the late 70's the Soviet engineering genius produced a high speed train, which covered the distance in mere 3 hours. Those who have ridden the bullet train in Japan get the idea. However, the genius part is not the speed of the train per se, it's the fact that those trains operate on the same rail tracks as the regular slower trains. Over the years they've slowed it a bit, and today it takes about 4.5 hours, mostly because of the safety precautions.

These days there are half a dozen overnight trains, which differ in price and accommodations, catering to all kinds of travelers. I am thinking of putting us on one that really serves as a hotel on wheels, where one would get all the amenities of a high class hotel, including full size beds and bathrooms, high speed wireless Internet access etc. In the most luxurious of the cars there are only 4 rooms per car to make it all possible.

Last week, however, I learned from the news about a train derailing on the route from Moscow to St. Petersburg because of a terrorist attack.

There were no casualties, yet a few people were injured. The authorities traced the terrorists quickly, although they're yet to be captured. The tracks were restored within a few hours, and so was the regular train traffic. They even sent an armored military down that road to check on other possible bombs planted under the tracks; that train was used in Chechnya for similar operations.

We're still going to take the train though. For a while now this particular route will be the safest one in Russia.