As many of you will know, one of Kevin’s ambitions is to own a private railway car. So this morning, when I saw Nick Harkaway tweet excitedly about one such thing, I immediately forwarded the link to Kevin. The link is question was not just about any old train, it was about a train belonging to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and it served as a mobile Imperial palace. Check it out.
Of course luxury is only one option. There are other ways to make a train seriously cool. For example, you could add artillery. I found out about armoured trains during the opening day talk at Hydro Books. Andrew McKie forwarded me a link to some of the trains used by the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Take a look.
However, I still think that the coolest armoured train is the “Orlik”, captured from the Russians by the Czech Legion. I found this picture on a Czech website.
Apparently the Finns used them in their civil war too! Seriously fascinating.
I was curious as to why Chinese characters appeared on a Tsarist / Bolshevik / Czech / White Russian vehicle. It appears that after the Czechs left Siberia, it fell into the hands of the Whites who joined Zhang Zuolin’s Fentian Army as an attached unit under Brigadier General Chekhov.
It was finally captured by the Japanese Kwantung Army and probably used by them to patrol their rail lines. You can see some more pictures of similar trains used by the Chinese and crewed by White Russians here.
I was in the Chiang Kai Shek memorial in Taipei 2 years ago and there was an old caucasian buying something from the gift shop. The shop girl assumed he was American and spoke to him in English. He replied in perfect Chinese that he didn’t speak English. After finishing his purchase, he joked to his companion in Russian, and I knew right away I was looking at one of the last of those White Russians from KMT-era China.