The Great Siberian Railway by Francis E. Clark

The Paris Exposition has made famous the Siberian _train de luxe_, with its moving panorama, its terminal stations at St. Petersburg and Peking, and its dinners at seven francs per head. The newspaper correspondent, too, who has seen it only in his mind's eye, as he sat at his own cosey fireside rehashing second-hand descriptions of its magnificence, has done his share to advertise it, until the wondering world has an idea that it is a veritable Waldorf-Astoria on wheels, before which all Empire State expresses on the American continent must hide their diminished heads. We read of library-cars and bath-cars, gymnasium-cars where one can make a century run on a stationary bicycle, elegant dinners, barber-shops where passengers receive a free shave every morning, pianos, and other luxuries too numerous to mention.

As a matter of fact, the Siberian _train de luxe_, at least as it started from Irkutsk on the 29th day of June, in the year of our Lord 1900, was a rather shabby vestibuled train of three sleepers, a diner, and a baggage-car. It was luxurious, indeed, compared with the fourth-class emigrant train on which we had been journeying, but it is still many degrees behind the best American trains. It should be remarked, however, that the best cars had been sent to Paris for the Exposition, and it is doubtless true that the train we took is somewhat below the average of the Siberian _trains de luxe_. It is well worth describing, however, as an important link in the great chain that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific in this new way around the world.