Topical 15/4/20

“I was particularly interested to see question 6 in the Santos quiz in last Thursday’s Courier about the big freshwater lake in Siberia,” a reader says. “I knew the answer was Lake Baikal because I have swum in it! I was on the trans-Siberian railway trip and we pulled up at the lake. I climbed out and had a swim much to the amazement of the other passengers. And it was freezing. I explained I was Australian and that seemed to make it more understandable to my fellow travellers. The story of the lake is fascinating – it freezes solid in winter and they drive trucks across it. And along the route of the trans Siberian railway the towns don’t have statues of famous generals or politicians, they have old steam locomotives mounted on stands, a tribute to the train drivers and railway builders who battled the harsh Siberian conditions. When the Inland Rail is built here maybe we can have old locos on plinths along the route as a tribute to our railway history.”