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I thought deportation to the place finished years ago!!
To address UKSparky’s original concern, I would like to point out that current Australian immigration forms ask the visitor if they have a criminal record. The correct answer is to ask if one is still necessary!! [Linked Image] [Linked Image]

Seriously though, without going too far off topic on this board and to answer your question Mike, the Russian Far East is highly prospective for gold and other minerals - that's what saw me there. From discovery early in the 1900’s through to the present day the area has produced vast quantities of gold, far more than Alaska and the Yukon Territory with which it shares a common geological origin. This needs tempering by the fact that the majority of the metal was won by prison labour in Stalin’s gulags between 1935 and 1955, and that many of the mines would never have made any commercial sense in a market economy.

During the Cold War, much of the area comprised military reserves and was closed even to Russians (remember the Korean airliner shot down over the Kamchetka Peninsula?) This meant that very little to no modern mineral prospecting has been carried out. Early this month I landed on that same Peninsula at Petropavlovsk (home to the Soviet Pacific submarine fleet), en route to Magadan, and off loaded nearly 70 American fishermen and hunters (complete with large rifles) – how times have changed!!

To steer this back to topic though, Vladivostok where we ended up was a closed city until 1992 being the headquarters of the Russian Pacific surface fleet.

[Linked Image] Full size

Here is a colourful 5 foot gauge, Vladivostok tram heading west to the station at the end of the Trans Siberian Railway. In other words, having traveled the 9288 km from Moscow on the longest electric railway in the world, there is still 9 km of electric tramway to complete your journey to the eastern suburbs of Vladivostok – a little known fact. [Linked Image] .

From a technical side the overhead wire was of a different construction to a normal street tramway being a catenary system. The pairs of wires over each track and some dropper wires can just be made out in the photograph (you might need to go full size). Trolley bus routes also used this wiring method and it made for lots of (and unsightly) aerial cable especially at junctions.




[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 06-24-2005).]