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A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to China to Russia, China by TravelPod blogger Catndeano titled “Trans Mongolian Train Journey” Catndeano’s travel blog entry: “Sat 24th June Got up at 6am, checked out of the hotel and got a taxi to the station. The usual mass of people were there pushing and shoving, but we were getting used to it and pushing back. On the train we noticed a big change of passengers, mostly westerners! The two people we were sharing our cabin with were both British. Elizabeth, an Irish holiday maker and Jude, an English teacher who’d just been volunteering in western China for two years. Hurray, someone else to talk to! On leaving Beijing, we got to see the magnificent wall a few times more and then the landscape started to change from mountains to farmland and villages. For the next few hours, we chatted with our cabin mates, had some lunch, then fell asleep for a bit. The train was of a reasonable standard (by now we’ve travelled on so many, we have standards!) clean & tidy and more importantly, had western toilets at each end of the carriage. It appeared to be a Russian train, not Chinese. At the Chinese border (Erlyan Station) we stopped for 2.5hrs to change the wheels (bogeys) which for Mongolia and Russia are 3.5 inches wider. We were able to stay on board to watch this process and found it fascinating. The carriages are lifted into the air on hydrolic lifts (like in a car garage) and the wheels are then undone and pushed out from …
