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All pictures displayed are video captures from actual program footage unless noted.

Program 136
Russia, Finland, and Hungary / The Rolling Historical Monument

A fascinating look at railways behind the former Iron Curtain. Program host Dave Reed traveled by train through Russia and into Finland. We'll even get into a cab of a Russian diesel-electric. And we'll also spent some time in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.

Then how about a little ride on San Francisco's world-famous cable cars. We follow them over their different routes, watch them turned around entirely by hand, and spend some time in the massive powerhouse that drives the cables underneath the city streets. And they have PCC cars there too.

This program is also our first Trackside episode in which all of the video footage was shot entirely by Dave.

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Sunlight streaming through the trainshed in Moscow illuminates a pair of passenger trains and their cargo alike.

This Russian diesel sure looks like an Alco doesn't it. That’s because it was patterned after an Alco RSD1. In Russia it is known as a TEM1 and this one is busy shunting passenger cars in the Russian city of Pskov.

This chunky 6-axle diesel is leading a passenger train out of the station at Pskov.  Designated TEP70, there are almost 300 others just like it on the Russian system.

Some of our viewers may recall that back in the 1970's, the Southern Railway experimented with a "Quarter Horse" Hungarian-built diesel-hydraulic. The locomotive was not successful in the U.S., but the Class M43 is alive and well here in native Hungary.

A MAV Class V46 electric type locomotive, also known as a “Grasshopper” shunts coaches in Budapest.

To get around in Budapest, jump on one of these. Tram service parallels the Danube river, which divides the city into Buda and Pest.

A Finnish State Railways SR2 electric locomotive leads a train into the main passenger station in Helsinki, Finland.

One of San Francisco’s renown cable cars coasts onto a turntable at the end of it's run. The two man crew will then spin the table by hand and head back on the other track.