Am pleasantly surprised by the trains here. I was expecting a pretty cramped compartment with hard seats and possibly mild cushioning.

It is possible that some of the trains are poor, I have no way of finding that out. However, the no name #7 train I am on has a pretty decent feel to it. The compartments are pretty tiny but comfy for 4 to sleep in. A bit difficult if you need to constantly shuffle your baggage but once settled in, one can feel a bit of space and not too claustrophobic.

The cushioning is pretty solid. On top, they also provide additional bedding and fresh change of covers. There is tons of room to stow baggage and a lot of well thought out (comes with decades of running the service ) nooks and crannies where one can stow luggage, books, hang clothes etc.

The corridor is a bit cramped but I don’t mind it since it makes more room inside. The place is a bit too warm, would guess 25+C and I have to strip to sleep comfortably. Nice and toasty if you walk in from -20C

The journey has started and it is 56 Hrs to Irkutsk. So it is time to kick back, read some books and in my case, sketch a lot and ge a nice sketching hand and possibly, explore my imagination and draw something interesting.

Related posts:

1. Train journey – Vladivostok to Irkutsk
2. En route – Ekaterinburg
3. Good times in Irkutsk
4. Alternate route 1

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 13th, 2010 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Russia, Trans-Siberian, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.