Inveterate rail traveller, Paul Whittle, takes Russia’s Baikal-Amur line through remotest Siberia, stopping at isolated small towns where the lives of the inhabitants are intrinsically linked with the railway. Officially opened in 1989 it was another 10 years before western travellers could visit the region. Starting at the far-eastern naval base city of Vladivostock, Paul’s recent 2,700 mile journey westwards to Irkutsk and the amazing Lake Baikal traverses the tundra of mountains, marshes and permafrost along a line built at huge financial and human cost by Gulag prisoners, Soviet railway troops and young idealist Communist pioneers. Truly one of the World’s great railway journeys!