Nature Reserve Railways

What if your high-speed train suddenly slows down, leaves the main line and plunges into a remote forest, and then the wheels start rattling along old tracks? Out the window, boarded-up stations will stretch by—and instead of the usual cafés on Liteyny, there will be a overgrown dead-end in the end. Comparing today’s trips and expeditions with rare living fragments of the railway past, the author of a travel project, Mikhail Konchits, draws on his personal experience to explain why train romance in the Russian provinces is so alluring. The audiobook takes the listener to old minor stops, into the world of unhurried “cuckoos” and narrow-gauge lines scattered across less-populated corners of the country. Each journey along preserved railways comes with cultural and geographic context—the very backdrop against which this unusual train makes its own special run.