VOLUME 35 No.10 October 2007 - Intercity Railway Society

Railway Globetrotters
by Martin Hall
The Baltic Explorer
I’m sorry there was no wagon corner in the September magazine but I was away in August on the ‘Baltic
Explorer’. I left Derby for St Pancras International and on arrival saw that it was almost ready for action.
It looks great and it nice that they have kept the old feel of St Pancras on the outside. I then made my
way to Waterloo to catch my Eurostar, which as usual left fairly slowly until we reached the new section
of line, when you could feel the acceleration. We finally arrived in Brussels-Midi where we changed trains
to continue by Thalys to Cologne. From Cologne we boarded an inter-city train for Wuppertal.
The next day before we left we had to have a look at the famous ‘dangle bahn’ a monorail system. From
Wuppertal we boarded another inter-city train and after changing at Hamburg we arrived at the ferry port
of Puttgarden an important route between Germany and Denmark. The train drove straight on to the
ferry and later arrived in Copenhagen where I spent a couple of days with the railway station right next to
the hotel, very convenient!
The next leg was from Copenhagen to Malmo in Sweden where we joined the X2000 high-speed service
to Stockholm where I spent another couple of days and surprise-surprise the hotel was next to the
station again, brilliant, but my wife was getting a little suspicious. From Stockholm we boarded an
overnight ferry to Finland and arrived in Helsinki the next morning and booked into the hotel not far from
the railway station (what a coincidence). We spent a few days here sight seeing and spotting of course,
very pleasant.
Next we took a ferry to Estonia and arrived in Tallin after a very rough crossing. I noticed a change in the
general feel of the country and although there were plenty of trams I nearly did not find the railway
station. We returned to Helsinki on the ferry after a few days and went straight to the railway station (for
a bit of spotting) and then boarded a train for Russia. As soon as we had crossed into Russia the border
guards came on and took our passports away and asked us to fill in forms so we could enter the country
and also eventually leave it. After a while we got our passports and forms returned. We arrived in St
Petersburg our final destination. Russia was an eye-opener, there seemed to be wealth and deprivation,
the traffic in the city was crazy, with traffic jams whatever time of day it was, the underground was manic
and the train stations (of course) were very busy. On one day my wife went on a sight-seeing boat trip
but I decided to look at the stations with another train spotter and when we arrived at the station we
recorded numbers, well wrote down what we saw as they use the Cyrillic alphabet. We also wanted to
take photographs so we walked off the end of the platform to get better shots, no problem, health and
safety does not seem to be high on their agenda in Russia.
TT 102-169
Ufhayr Railway Museum, St Petersburg
22 August 2007 Martin Hall
LV 18002
Ufhayr Railway Museum, St Petersburg
22 August 2007 Martin Hall
We finally left St Petersburg by plane and arrived at Heathrow only to be told that there was no one to
move the disembarkation tube to the aircraft so we could get out, so we stayed there for 15-20mins
before we could get off. This made us late into St Pancras for my connection to Derby, which meant we
arrived home rather late. A good holiday, tired but lots of lovely numbers to sort out.