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| Tolstoy on wheels: making tracks for the Russian sage's estate
MOSCOW, July 8 (AFP) - Aficionados of rail travel who are also literature buffs can double their pleasure by taking the Tolstoy train to Yasnaya Polyana, the great Russian author's family estate south of Moscow. Count Leo Tolstoy was a reluctant rail-traveller himself, but his life and work are emblazoned over the walls of the six-coach Yasnaya Polyana express that every weekend whisks scores of his fans to see the house where he was born and spent most of his life. BizVantage – Beyond the news: indepth on business, investment and technology. Introduced two years ago, the service provides a perfect prelude (and postface) to a visit to the home and grave of one of Russia's greatest writers. Where Tolstoy took two days to cover the 200 kilometres (125 miles) between his home and the capital by horse-drawn carriage (or on one occasion a week on foot), the modern visitor needs just three hours to reach Kozlova Zaseka, the village station located a five-minute bus-ride from Yasnaya Polyana. With their tasselled curtains and burnished panels, the themed coaches are a travelling exhibition that transport you in time while you race through the Russian countryside. The first-class compartments -- "Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana" and "Tolstoy in Moscow" -- offer passengers the opportunity to view film versions of such masterpieces as "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". In principle, at least. On this occasion the screens were showing "Mr Bean". "Some of the cassettes got lost, some broke," the carriage attendant Larisa said. "Hopefully they'll be replaced soon." The buffet-coach -- "Tolstoy in movies and theatre" -- is a film-buff's delight, with stills from the many films made from Tolstoy novels and stories, or scenes from stage and opera performances. The second-class coaches offer "Tolstoy in art" (paintings, drawings and photographs) and "Tolstoy in the Caucasus", while passengers in the hard-seated but clean third-class coach get "Tolstoy and the railways". Tolstoy is in all likelihood the only major figure in world literature to have died in a railway stationmaster's house, and the wooden building in Astapovo where he breathed his last while the world's media camped out on the platform is featured here. So too are scenes from "Anna Karenina", a novel in which trains play a key role. Tolstoy was not best pleased when railway planners in 1868 established a train station at Kozlova Zaseka, five kilometres (three miles) from his home, and though he was to travel extensively by rail through Europe, it was only in his later years that he reconciled himself to taking the train for his Moscow excursions. Nuggets of information such as these are provided in the "Tolstoy's Railways" exhibition laid on at the Kozlova Zaseka station, recently reconstructed according to old photographs and featuring personnel wearing period uniforms. The rapid there-and-back rides leave the visitor to Yasnaya Polyana with a large slice of the afternoon to visit Tolstoy's home, most of it recreated as it was at the time of the count's death in 1910. There is also time enough to stroll around the grounds of the estate, to sit in Tolstoy's favourite bench in a secluded corner and to visit the writer's unmarked grave in a leafy glade where, the museum brochure suggests hopefully, you may wish to "reflect on essential questions of existence." Visitors who want to take in the 2,100-acre (800-hectare) estate's picturesque park, ponds and forests at greater leisure, or visit the nearby village of Kochaki where the rest of Tolstoy's family are buried, can stay overnight at a nearby hotel and catch the next afternoon's train home. The Yasnaya Polyana express runs twice weekly (Saturday and Sunday) from Moscow's Kursk station. bb/zak/bm Lifestyle-Russia-literature-travel
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