Archived:NightOnTheGalacticRailroad

This is Lmm's crazy plan, that attempts to combine trains, lots of trains, with getting to Japan.

Conclusions, based on departing on a Saturday:

• Fly there, train back means:
  • Can spend most of a week (sunday morning -> friday midday) in japan
    • But notably doesn't fit a weekend, unless we extend it even further
• Get two and a half days (sunday midday -> wednesday 8am) in china - time enough to look around shanghai + beijing a bit
  • Finishes on Monday in Moscow, at which point there's no elegant next thing to do.
    • Can fly to hurry back - cheating, but means only 11 days-off-work consumed
      • Might be able to do some return flight shennanigans, given that aeroflot changing in moscow is actually a perfectly sensible way to fly to Japan
        • Assuming you don't mind bits of your plane falling off, etc.
          • In Soviet Russia, 'plane crashes YOU!
  • Can take the efficient sleeper trains, getting back wednesday, thursday or friday - inelegant
    • Could make it into a 3-week thing, meandering a little through europe - let's say Monday afternoon and Tuesday in Moscow, then overnight to St Petersburg for Wed, then overnight to Minsk for Thur, overnight to Kiev for Fri, overnight to Warsaw for Sat, overnight to Cologne for Sun. Or something like that.
      • That is basically all my (Smith's) leave gone for the year
  • Mickey will doubtless end up in jail in Belarus
    • I (Smith) move that the eventual spreadsheet of our itinerary incorporate, as is now traditional, a column detailing the respective ages of consent in the regions to be visited
• Train there, fly back means:
  • Elegant first section through Europe - we can spend one day each in Cologne/Warsaw/Kiev (or Minsk)/Moscow, or we could get to Moscow quickly and have pretty much two full days there.
    • Why have two full days in Moscow? I (Smith) would assume we just adjust our departure day so that we arrive in time to board the TSR
      • On the basis that weekends are free time off, so we might as well spend them somewhere cool. (The Trans-Siberian only runs once a week, so we have to take it Tuesday evening whatever else we do). Also, Moscow is likely to have enough stuff to interest us, (red square, st ivan's etc.) no?
        • I suppose the things to do in Moscow are the touristy things; I (Smith) for one would like to visit the Lenin Mausoleum, and I suppose one must visit St Basil's and Jake Corteen for the look of the thing
• Not much time in China - we'd get a full day in Beijing, but like 3 hours in Shanghai
  • Naturally arrives in Japan on a Thursday, at which point we either have a long weekend or get a (admittedly cost-effective) midweek flight back after a week or so
  • I (Smith) like this plan. Although I have no strong preference as to which end is train and which 'plane, going on the first version of the itinerary below it is likely that I will disengage from the group in Osaka and do my own thing (game) there, making my own way home.
    • Actually, thinking about it, I do have a preference; somehow using the TSR to come back to civilisation seems a lot lamer than using it as a route outward to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new perversions; to boldly go where no sensible man has gone before
      • Yeah, I think I (Lmm) agree. It's just a shame not to get any time in Shanghai, it's pretty high on my list of cool places to go to.

Stream of reasoning

• Day 0, Friday: Dudes gather in and around London.
• Day 1, Saturday: Train to Paris/Brussels/Cologne and a day there. Overnight train to, let's say Warsaw. We could get to Moscow by Monday morning on a direct train, but the trans-siberian doesn't leave until Tuesday evening.
  • There is a Cologne-Moscow sleeper train
    • Yes there is; my point is that doesn't get us to Beijing any quicker, though we could take it if we want more time in Moscow
• Day 2, Sunday: Warsaw, explore it, overnight train to Kiev (or Minsk)
• Day 3, Monday: Kiev, explore it, overnight train to Moscow
• Day 4, Tuesday: Moscow, explore it, get on the big train in evening
• Day 10, Monday: Beijing, explore it, overnight train to Shanghai
• Day 11, Tuesday: Shanghai, explore it very briefly, ferry at 2pm
• Day 13, Thursday: Arrive in Osaka at 9am, uh, day in osaka
• Day 14, Friday: Kyoto, maybe?
• Day 15, Saturday: One glorious day in Tokyo, or something
• Day 16, Sunday: Morning in Toyko, and fly home.

Um. Thinking about minimising necessary amounts of work-leave. Tuesday is the date with absolute rest around which the blocks must be arranged; if we work backwards and get from London to Moscow as quickly as is trainially possible, then that fixes our start point and allows the maximum amount of time to play with post-TSR. On that basis I (Smith) would be willing to sacrifice any of the pre-Moscow stops if that will speed things up, in order to allow a greater proportion of the presumed maximum duration to occur in the Orient. tl;dr I feel we should get out there as fast as we can and not piss about with seeing Eastern Europe

Let's see if there are any efficiency savings to be had from doing it in reverse:

• Day 16, Sunday: Train to Cologne, then Brussels and Eurostar home; we have about 6 hours to spend in one or other on the way.
• Day 15, Saturday: Get the 8AM train from Moscow, overnight to Berlin.
• Day 14, Friday: Arrive in Moscow at ~6PM, spend the night there
• Day 8, Saturday: Day in Beijing, train in the evening
• Day 7, Friday: Bah. Ferry only arrives on a Thursday, leaving on Tuesday midday, so again we only get like 4 days in Japan this way.

Let's look at it another way: suppose we wanted to go to Japan and other places, how much holiday time would we need?

• Japan, 5 weeks; China, 8 weeks; Russias, 10 weeks. Spare, 2 weeks. Total: Six months.
• Day n, Sunday: Morning in Tokyo, fly home
• Day n-1, Saturday: Let's say we're doing this at Comiket. Comiket!
• Day n-2, Friday: Mickey Comikets early. Other people go do something cultural.
• Day n-3, Thursday: Tokyo, and all its joys.
• Day n-4, Wednesday: Kyoto! History!
• Day n-5, Tuesday: Osaka! Accents!
• Day n-6, Monday: Arrive Osaka, 09:30, rest weary selves, go to a hot springs or something.
• Day n-8, Saturday: A little Shanghai in the morning, ferry at 13:00.
• Day n-9, Friday: I'm going to say spend this in Shanghai, and stay night in Shanghai.
• Day n-10, Thursday: Day in Beijing, sleeper to Shanghai.

Eek, the only good train runs tuesday to monday.

So, best option would be to extend the original plan above by a bit at the end. Constraints: if going out, train is tuesday -> monday, and ferry is tuesday from shanghai - so not much time in shanghai. If coming back, train goes wed -> mon (at 2:28pm, plausible flying time), ferry could arrive sunday (leaving japan on Friday). So a plausible itinerary would look something like:

• Friday evening: Gather
• Saturday hideously early morning: Planes to Japan
• Sunday morning: Arrive in Tokyo, spend some time there and in Osaka.
• Friday midday: Get ferry from Osaka
• Sunday midday: Arrive in Shanghai, spend a day and a half or so there
• Monday night (say): overnight train to Beijing, spend a day and a half there
• Wednesday morning, 8AM: get the big train
• Monday afternoon: Arrive Moscow. Lamers could at this point fly home, meaning they'd only need 2 weeks + 1 day off work; otherwise we could take the rest of the week slowly crossing Europe.

A modest proposal for training out and flying back by Smith

• Day 1 (Sun) - Assemble in London
• Day 2 (Mon) - to Cologne via Brussels
• Day 3 (Tues) - to Moscow via Cologne-Moscow sleeper. NOTE: I have not checked whether this gets us into Moscow in time to board the TSR. I am assuming that it does.
• Days 4-8 (Weds - Sun) - Miles and miles of godless fascist taiga
• Day 9 (Mon) - Arrive Beijing, depart for Shanghai on the Beijing-Shanghai sleeper
• Day 10 (Tues) - Arrive Shanghai, board ship for Osaka
• Day 11 (Weds) - Osaka
• Days 12-14 (Thurs - Sat) - Japan
• Day 15 (Sun) - fly home

The Cologne-Moscow sleeper takes two days, so we'd need to leave on Sunday. (Well, that's not entirely true; if we really wanted maximum train density we could get an early morning Eurostar to Cologne, spend the day going to Warsaw by conventional train, then get the Warsaw-Moscow sleeper which only takes one night) I feel if we're leaving Monday/Sunday we might as well leave Saturday and spent a few days in interesting places, at least for those of us who're conventionally employed (options would either be getting a second day in Moscow, or taking a slower combination of sleepers that would give us days in Warsaw and Kiev - see my plan near the top of the page). Also note that the ferry doesn't arrive in Osaka until Thursday.

That's annoying re ferry - I (Smith) now see what you mean about this getting us annoyingly small amounts of Japan. In that case I will concede both your points and the resulting outline, I believe, becomes something like this:

A modest and viable proposal for training out and flying back by Smith

• Days 1-4 (Sat - Tues) - Assemble in London, make our way to Moscow (in time to catch the Tuesday TSR) by $MEANS following $ROUTE.
• Days 4-8 (Weds - Sun) - Miles and miles of godless fascist taiga
• Day 9 (Mon) - Arrive Beijing, depart for Shanghai on the Beijing-Shanghai sleeper
• Day 10 (Tues) - Arrive Shanghai, board ship for Osaka
• Day 11 (Weds) - Miles and miles of akitsumikamiless democratic ocean
• Days 12-14 (Thurs - Sat) - Japan
• Day 15 (Sun) - fly home

That's basically identical to the topmost of my outlines above, right? Are we actually going to do this then? Awesome --Lmm

Broadly yes, actually. I (Smith) would recommend we draw the attention of the chat to this plan and see how quickly Philip shoots it down in flamesWWWW^W raises some problem we haven't considered