On the Red Arrow

Nowadays it is out to travel from Moscow to StPetersburg by train. After all, there are eight jet airline flights a day with fares no higher than the cost of a rail ticket.

But I went by train all the same – by the Red Arrow, which leaves Moscow at 20 minutes past mid-night and pulls in StPetersburg with one stop, eight hours and some 400 miles later.

There can be few trains in the world so well appointed. British Railway chiefs could learn something to their advantage from a journey on it.

From the moment you are welcomed – and I mean welcomed – on board by the door of your carriage by the white-gloved conductor to the moment you step into the chilly sea air that makes StPetersburg so congenial to the expatriate Englishman, you are in the atmosphere of comfort equaled only by the very best hotel.

Its international carriages have two-berth compartments, complete with chairs, table, reading lights, lavish luggage space and radio – which can be switched off at will I hasten to add.

Between each two compartments is a cunningly contrived miniature bathroom, not to mention a shower compartment at the end of the carriage.

But the best thing of all is the tea – no nondescript khaki brew served in thick cups, but a scalding liquid served in glasses with elegant silver holders complete with thin slices of lemon and made, o the delight of readers of Russian novels, in a modern version of a charcoal-heated samovar hissing cheerfully away in the conductor’s cubicle at the end of the carriage.