All these photos of single coach trains remind me of when we travelled from Russia into Mongolia, while doing the Transiberian train trip when my wife and I moved from new Zealand to the UK.
We had travelled from NZ to China, spent about a week sightseeing around China before hopping on a train in Beijing and travelled up to the Russian border then across to Ulan Ude which is on the eastern side of Lake Baikal. we stayed there a couple of nights and then took the train to Ulan Bator in Mongolia. The coach we were in was about the shabbiest coach in the whole consist, and was in the middle of the train. The trip down to the border town was easy enough, and in due course we pulled into the station at there. Nothing seemed to happen for ages, then the loco ran around the train, pulled half the train with our coach still attached out into the middle of the yard, left our coach there, took the rest and coupled back up to the other half of the train, then disappeared back into deepest Russia, leaving our coach all alone in the middle of a multi-track yard.
We waited there for ages, had a wander down into the town markets and found some lunch, looked at the butchers stalls with meat hanging in the full summer sun, wandered back to our coach, waited yet more time, and wondered if we were ever going to get to Mongolia.
Eventually about mid-afternoon a loco appeared from the border end of the station and meandered around for a bit, eventually finding its way to our coach and coupled up. Some more waiting, and then a bunch of army privates with a leader appeared, along with some border officials. Everyone was herded onto the coach, passports checked, army lads stationed at each coach door, and we waited some more.
A couple of other Kiwis who had been travelling Europe and were making their way back to NZ, and I were standing in one vestibule observing everything happening, when the army lad gets a cigarette out and starts fumbling for some matches. One of the Kiwi guys produced a disposable lighter and gives it to him, which he accepted and lit his cigarette. He goes to hand the lighter back but the Kiwi guy indicates to keep it, so he has it in his hand looking at it when the door to the coach rattles and the girl who looked after the samovar in the coach appeared and collected some more wood to fire the samovar. You have never seen an object disappear from someones hand so fast without it being a magician.
Eventually we get under way and trundle down the line, a single coach with an articulated diesel engine of some 9600 horse power doing about 15kph until we reach the border itself, at which point we stop, all the army guys line up and are accounted for by their leader, then we trundle across the border to the town on the Mongolian side.
