The sixty passengers have come to Vladivostok by air from the UK, New Zealand and the USA, say PR of the Far Eastern Rail, part of the united Russian railway network.
The train will make long stops in major cities on its route. It has nineteen cars of several classes-a President Express, a Europe-Asia Express, several luxury sleeping cars, a restaurant, a bar easily convertible into a conference room, and a car with shower cabins.
The journey started with a retro treat-an old steam locomotive took it to its first stop in Ussuriisk, the Littoral Territory's second-largest city, a hundred kilometres off Vladivostok. An electric locomotive replaced the veteran there. The vintage locomotive was built in Arizona sixty years ago. It worked on the Russian Rail into the mid-1980s, when it was overhauled and put away into a depot for twenty years with proper maintenance.
Khabarovsk is a first major provincial centre on the itinerary-a city on the picturesque Amur riverside. The train is stopping there, tomorrow, for an eventful sojourn, complete with a boat trip along the Amur. If the weather is fine, the tourists will swim in the river and bask in the sun on the beach.
