that had set out to break the 'four-hour barrier' Throughout the trip the drivers fought hard for every minute, every second even. And though a power blackout near the city of Tver set us back a whole six minutes, and we had to work like mad to make up for lost time, the barrier was broken."

"The result that has been achieved thus far is not going to affect train schedules noticeably," said Sergei Gapeyev, deputy railways minister for passenger traffic, "although we will work to cut the travel time. We have done this just to see what we can do. Making this kind of speed a standard fixture, however, will take a good deal of improvement, above all in the quality of railroad tracks."

As a matter of fact, to make this speed journey possible, the Oktyabrskaya main line that links Moscow and St. Petersburg had to undergo large-scale modernization. Even so, the ER-2000 cannot go at 200 kph throughout the route. Its average speed is just 140 kph.

Still, passengers got a chance to choose between, travelling by plane or by train. Railroad operators are making no secret of their intention to compete, as far as the Moscow-St. Petersburg route is concerned, with airlines (counting the time it takes to go to and from the airport, travel time is now the same). Meanwhile, Russia has joined the ranks of countries with a high-speed railway network, of which, until recently, there have been just three: France, Germany, and Japan. True, the Moscow-St. Petersburg route is just the first element of ours. Designed for the 2000-2015 period, a federal high-speed railway transport development program envisions a speed of 160 kph to 200 kph not only for trips to Europe (Helsinki or Berlin) but also to Nizhny Novgorod and Rostov-on-Don.

Vocabulary Notes

destination – назначение schedule – график, расписание

driver's cabin – кабина машиниста

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