I remember the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, in the 1990s not long after the Soviet Union dissolved and opened up to the West, sent a reporter and photographer to do a story on riding a passenger train from Moscow to (I believe) Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast. It would be the world's longest train ride in one country, easily, so post-communism the paper thought it would be a fascinating story. If the reporter was to be believed, at one point in their journey he sent his photographer to the engine and, while riding in his car, perceived some unusual movement in the train. He actually wrote in the A J-C story words to the effect of "My goodness, my photographer has talked the engineer into letting him drive this train." When the photographer returned and the reporter quizzed him, the former acknowledged that the engineer had indeed let him drive the train. If true, "gulp".
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