This is a creature that itself moves through space through many places. It seems to feel directly connected to the power that the people working on board attribute one by one to the railroad. This video contains excerpts of the workers’ answers – a feeling of family and camaraderie, that being aboard lets one really see ‘human souls’, a sense that the train is a living creature or that each carriage has its own ‘spirit’, and, again and again, that the train has become home.

The experience we create when we look out the window, strike up a conversation with a stranger, chat with a family member, or simply read a book while rocking rhythmically to the sound of wheels helps to restore those parts of us that we neglect and miss.

The Trans-Siberian is as storied a railway as any in the world, the 9,289 kilometers of its route between Moscow and Vladivostok both a stark physical reality and a mystique-laden gestalt shaped by a bloody and romantic history, incomparable landscapes, thousands of artistic interpretations and the journeys of innumerable souls.