Le train rouge s'ebranle et rien ne l'arretera UR SS UR SS UR SS C'est le train de l'etoile rouge Qui brule les gares, les signaux, les airs SSSR Octobre octobre c'est l'express Octobre a travers l'univers SS SR SSSR SSSR SSSR Louis Aragon

Stalin's special for his travel to the Potsdam conference, Alco diesel DA20-27 (assisted by Russian steam locomotive E1387) on broad gauge at Potsdam in 1945 (Railway Gazette International)

German chancellor Konrad Adenauer's special Bonn - Moscow during change of bogies at Brest, the USSR border station, September 1955 (Guenther von Wahl, coll. Ingeborg von Wahl)

Mao's personal train, dining-car A, built in Goerlitz 1957 (official photo)


Trans-Siberian and Ost-West-Express, everybody has heard these names - that's the railway of the Tsars, of the revolution, the line of the mass killers Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the line of the refugees, the line of the Cold War, the line of hell. It's the railway of the most fantastic journeys, too. Journeys into another world, to the snow-fields of Siberia or Mongolia, to China, North Korea, even to Vietnam. A lot of nice books have been written about, but the complete history of its trains never has been published. It had to remain a secret, almost like the secrets of the KGB… the mystery of the expresses between the West of Europe and the East of Asia….

French Hudson 232.U.1 in the railway museum at Mulhouse (WS)

Polish streamlined Pm36-1 and her naked sister Pm36-2 parading in 2005 (Thomas Wunschel)

The connection from the West by de-Luxe Nord Express is well known and also its delay by Royal Prussian haughtiness until its start in 1896. Some enthusiasts know also, that after World War II this train in France was hauled by one of the most beautiful locomotives, Marc de Caso’s “la divine” 232U1. Belgium had still Europe’s heaviest Pacifics in use. In East Germany, engineer Max Baumberg got in 1961 the occasion to create the then fastest steam locomotive of Europe with the rebuilt 18 202 Pacific and in 1990 it hauled the first tourist train Berlin-Koenigsberg, now Kaliningrad, consisting of ex-GDR government cars. But there are mysteries, too. Who knows the fate of Poland’s streamlined Pacific Pm 36-1, on exhibition at Paris in 1937, probably scrapped in Stalin’s Soviet Union? Only her “naked” sister Pm 36-2, temporarily renumbered Pm 36-1, is preserved. Polish Mikados were the successful engines, after the Mountains Pu 29 had failed. Another question: Did communists really dream of a fantastic train from Russia to Madrid, when they would have won the Spanish civil war? After more than half a century it became reality with the Soviet Moscow - Madrid sleeping car. Or what about the locomotive designs (reportedly by Floridsdorf in Soviet-occupied Austria after WWII) for a small Niagara and a Hudson with a height of 5.30m, unsuitable for existing European lines. Was it the dream of a Soviet “Magistrale” through Western Europe? Hitler’s project of a hyper broad gauge (3000 mm) railway to the Caucasus and even Siberia remained a fool’s dream. But it’s the question if the other devil, Stalin, had taken up the idea, or not. Being shy of flying he had ordered to lay the Russian broad gauge (1524/1520 mm) to Potsdam for his journey to the peace conference in 1945. On the same track did come the first through express from Moscow to Berlin and with it appeared wooden ex-Wagons-Lits cars. In the years after World War II the lists of secrets continued. On October 22, 1946 the action “Oswakin” started, transporting German air and space technicians and equipment by freight trains from Dessau, Bleicherode and Neu-Strassfurt to Russia. In March 1947 some CIWL sleeping-cars from Paris to Brest, the new Russian border station, were added to the Nord-Expess, carrying politicians to the Foreign Secretary conference at Moscow. On the western section of the Nord-Express line ran the Allies’ military expresses to the enclave West-Berlin and not even the Soviet blockade could stop them. A wonderful lady (who’s grandma had dined with the Kaiser) told that her aunt escaped from the Soviet zone hidden away in an American officer’s sleeping-compartment. In 1955 the “Adenauer-Zug” started from Bonn to Moscow. German chancellor Konrad Adenauer did fly to that conference, but the train served as a headquarter, safe from surveillance. The result of the state visit was the return of the surviving German prisoners of war, by boxcars. Soviet politics had changed since the death of Stalin in 1953. In 1960 for the first time Russian sleeping cars did run regularly to Paris, carried through by politics against bureaucracy. Was it Khrushchev’s idea? There are still other secrets. Had tourists, who saw an uncompleted railway at Suwalki region in northeastern Poland, discovered a strategic link from Belarus to Kaliningrad, the conquered Koenigsberg, which never was completed? Another strategic line, published by Western press, was the broad gauge link via Zahony in Hungary to Agerdomayor at the Romanian border, a backdoor into Ceausescu’s empire. A visit in 1989 showed that there was nothing - except the guards armed with Kalashnikovs coming down from the watchtower - and they let us pass.


Soviet publication of Russian profile locomotive designs, entitled "Austrian railway network" (coll. Werner Umlauft, J.B. Kronawitter)



The Czech 3-cylinder compound 499.0, which never was built (a drawing smuggled out from the Soviet bloc, collection J.B. Kronawitter)


Also the regular trains, mainly their locomotives, had their mysteries. From October 1945 the Soviet officers traveling between Berlin and Moscow had to change train at Brest. The blue train - known as “Blauer Zug” or “Blauer Express” from Berlin, later from the Soviets’ headquarters at Wuensdorf, was hauled by German 01 class Pacifics through Poland, the “Kolonnenloks”. Who ever had the occasion to speak to its drivers? Decades ago, one of them, Hans Miersch, told to the author from his trips on a 52 class war-engine, hauling requisitioned goods to the new Soviet border stations. They lived in a covered wagon, then they “acquired” a van, paid by smuggling, and the accompanying Russians helped them. Once a 01 of the “Blauer Express” had a defect and their 52 hauled it through Poland… In 1953 the tenwheeler 17 1104, rebuilt for firing coal powder, was equipped with two huge tenders for a range far beyond the GDR’s borders. Was it indented to run as far as Brest? It remained a secret. Also almost nobody knows that the rare Hungarian 303 class Hudsons, which hauled Moscow bound trains between Budapest and Miskolc, initially were intended as a streamlined copy of the German record-breaking 05. The proposed Polish Hudsons and Niagaras never were built. Who knows about the red Mitropa cars and maybe, even streamlined ex-German 03.10 Pacifics in Russia after the war, or the mysterious locomotive prototypes, the unsuccessful Teploparavoz (steam-combustion) engines or the three different “2-3-2” Hudsons? The fate of the Czech 3-cylinder compound Mountain of the 476 class, given as a present to Stalin, for longtime was unclear, until Czech historians found out, that it was scrapped in 1967. After WWII Czech engineers had traveled to France where they studied Andre Chapelon’s three-cylinder compound 242-A1. They were so impressed, that they planned the 499 Niagara class on the same principles and artist Vilem Kreibich created fantastic streamlining studies. After the communists took over, the project was stopped and any publication was prevented. East German engineers Baumberg and Toepelmann admired French Mountain type engines which they saw during the war, but the East German Mountain was not built. The communist authorities allowed Max Baumberg to meet engineer J.B. Kronawitter in the West, supposedly in order to spy out West German projects, and Baumberg let out some Eastern secrets, but cautiously he made no drawings! Other ideas such as the Soviet nuclear locomotive project for a 4.5 m broad gauge trans-Himalayan railway may have been clever fiction stories. From a Russian-German meeting, Henschel engineer Professor Kademann (the designer of the Chinese diesel-hydraulic NY7) reported to the author that no real project existed. A German design for a DB engine with a helium-cooled reactor, looking like a twin-V200, had been published, but this was a study only. The way across the Himalaya was barricaded since 1950, when China had conquered and subjugated Tibet. Reality were the tests of requisitioned German 15kVac locomotives on the Kozhva - Vorkuta line during 1948 - 51. However, only the E44 and E94 classes were tested, not the elegant E18 express passenger engines, which had been captured too. Finally the Soviet Union, as well as China, decided for the 25kV system. All the tests with gas-turbine and gas-generator engines led nowhere.

Experimental oil-fired high-pressure steam motor test engine V5-01 from Kolomna 1937 in the Soviet Union (a drawing based on a picture in a Russian Rakov edition), one of the numerous designs for Hitler's 3m broad gauge project and the DB study for a nuclear-powered locomotive in the 50's (contemporary press)


When the communists had established their railway SZD, they introduced sleeping accommodation for every passenger on every night train, a comfort unknown in Europe and in America and specially in the Soviets' satellite states, where eight persons were cramped into narrow seating compartments. The party bosses' Leningrad - Moscow Red Arrow (initially blue!) night express on the former Nikolai -, then October railway always had been something better, last not least by its beautiful stewardesses. Not to speak about the blue "Lux" - the special train for Stalin and his guests (and the NKWD intelligence staff) for trips to the Black Sea. It was so top-secret, that the train's manager then had to be executed.

And what's about the real Trans-Siberian? Had all its secrets been written down in literature? Who knew, that the Soviets' wooden de-Luxe cars, which appeared in Berlin in 1945, had been captured during the turbulent epoch described by Boris Pasternak in "Dr. Shiwago", when the Siberian Express crossed the lines of the Red and the White. It was stopped in 1918, when the "white" Admiral Kolchak ruled at Omsk. Even a"Transsiberien" is reported to have been running from Vladivostok to Omsk and one of the two trains obviously was an exclusive CIWL consist. On November 13, 1919, Kolchak left Omsk with five trains and the Russian gold treasure. The Czech Legion protected the admiral - and "sold" him at Irkutsk for thirty wagons with coal. So the legion could reach the Pacific, and Kolchak was executed. In the Far East, the last pirate on rails, Semyonoff, robbed a whole de-Luxe train for his own use. It was filled with precious prey, "senseless luxury",as the French journalist Joseph Kessel reported, excellent drinks from Cognac to Champagne (though the commander preferred Vodka from the two-liter bottle), and weapons. Always a locomotive was ready for departure. "One never knows", said Semyonoff (under Stalin he was sentenced to death). In the Trans-Siberian Kurier 2/1 between the wars and obviously even after WWII did run the requisitioned wooden ex-CIWL sleepers, diners and vans with bath. Who knows all its Western starting points in the years before… the Polish, the Lithuanian, the Latvian places where passengers had to change from standard to broad gauge - Negoreloye, Stolpce, Riga, Bigosovo, Gudagojis, Vilnius or maybe Radviliskis?

Japan, misusing China’s “Last Emperor”, had built up its satellite state Manchukuo. In this troubled region did run Asia’s fastest train, the steam-hauled streamliner Asia Limited. The French journalist Saurwein traveled from Jilin (Kirin) to Korea on an observation saloon in front of a train, accompanied by guards, while the locomotive was pushing in the rear - by security reasons. In Chiang Kai-shek’s China, the Shanghai - Beijing through train needed armored cars with guns in front of the locomotive, in the middle of the train and in the rear - immortalized by Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich by the movie “Shanghai Express”. Then the Japanese invasion stopped it. Chiang’s supply railway to Burma never was built and the occupiers now had other trains. The most important one was the Tairiku from the Korean harbor Busan, with ferry connection from Japan, just through to Beijing (the formation of this train is handed down!). And the most important spy of WWII, the German communist Dr. Richard Sorge, who informed Stalin that Japan was not planning an attack on the Soviet Union, had his collaborator on this South Manchuria Railway. Stalin could then throw his troops westward, against the German aggressors - via the trans-Siberian railway! After WWII, during the Cold War, the railways of the East once again became an interesting place for espionage. The Soviets based nuclear missiles on trains camouflaged as freight and a Western cargo container, equipped with automatic cameras, was discovered on the trans-Siberian line. True or not? In 2005 a railway enthusiast, Johannes Gloeckner, uncovered the secret: SS24 missiles were mounted on wagons which looked like refrigerator vans, hauled by TE6 (one half of the TE2) and DM62 (2M62) diesels of the army, stationed behind barbed wire at Valishog close to Kostrova, not far away from the Moscow - Danilov - Kirov line of the Siberian expresses.

Trans-Siberian trains were a reality during war and peace times. Reality of communism was shown on the through trains from Moscow to China and North Korea by the extreme border controls on both ends of an illuminated restricted area with kilometers of barbed wire, checking the trains from below, from above and inside, with soldiers, dogs, search-lights, mirrors and guns. Reality is also the strategic line through Mongolia. A Russian P36 steam locomotive is on exhibition there, but propaganda had told, that the transit line was dieselized from the beginning and that Soviet broad gauge even entered China, maybe planned through to Beijing? …And what about Japan’s streamliner “Asia”? A similar train appeared in communist China and than possibly it was hidden away. Or the Chinese communists’ secret project of a huge Niagara type express passenger steam locomotive? When Dave Wardale during the ‘80’s was invited by the ministry in order to improve existing QJ engines (and the railway administration prevented his work in favor of dieselization), he did not discover any drawing for the Niagara. Maybe the Soviets had taken along all information? American and Australian thinktanks then had found out, by combining some internal notes about cylinder dimensions, that it was not a copy of the Russian P36, but it should follow the less sophisticated layout of the standard QJ, based on the Soviet LV freight engine. When in North Vietnam German war-locomotives of series 52 were discovered, Australian historian Bill Pearce questioned, if the “empty” designation DK4 in China might have been reserved for ex-52s from Russia, which never came. There were other secrets too. In 1971, Mao was to be assassinated by his presumed successor Lin Biao during a ride on his special train to Shanghai. His crew was surprised as Mao started earlier, and he had a safe trip. Lin Biao then died by a mysterious airplane crash. Mao’s personal train, built by VEB Goerlitz, East Germany, was so secret that even the producer did not know the final car numberings. Its saloons later did not appear on the tourist special Peking-Orient-Express, as advertisements stated. Even more mysterious was the blue/white special of Kim Jl Sung from North Korea. It was so top-secret, that on a trip to Eastern Europe even the officials responsible for a safe journey were not allowed to take a photograph. Isolated North Korea had also a 3-car electric unit of own production, called “Juche” or “self-reliance”, the country’s political slogan.

Also in the 21st century there are mysteries: Will the magnetic levitation technology, successfully capable of speeds up to 500 km/h, used on Shanghai's airport link, bring new intercity connections elsewhere? May Kazakhstan's Talgo train open up a new future for night trains in remote countries? Ideas like a bridge from Sakhalin or a tunnel from Korea to Japan however are science fiction rather than projects.

Literature
by the author, the only one which covers the trains' complete history from Europe to China, Korea and Japan, including timetables, trains formations, CIWL and Russian car lists and locomotive lists:

Transibirien und Ost-West-Express

An illustrated manuscript is already placed in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich;
DB-Museum, Nurnberg;
Musee francais du chemin de fer, Mulhouse;
Museum fuer Verkehr und Technik, Berlin.


Tyumen railway station, a rare postcard published by the Czech Legion, which fought in Siberia during WWI