Krasnodar, Russia - We’ve all seen footage of trains hitting cars; it’s a standard feature in Hollywood action movies and
once.
But what makes this amateur footage so chilling is just how long the driver keeps trying to extricate his UAZ jeep from between the two sets of tracks as the train comes thundering down on him, before hopping out at (almost literally) the last second and scampering to safety.
Even the onlookers seem totally relaxed - apart from some shouted words of encouragement to the driver - as hundreds of tons of unstoppable force hurtles towards what turns out to be a very movable object.
Want to know how scary a Russian train is?
The global standard railway gauge (the distance between the rails) is 1.435 metres; South Africa’s Transnet is the world’s most extensive miniature railway, with a gauge of 1.067 metres, while the Russian state railway, JSC, runs on a 1.52 metre gauge.
A Russian locomotive is thus one-and-a-half times as wide as a South African diesel-electric unit, close to twice as high, more than twice as loud and almost four times heavier. Nyet, tovarisch, you do not want to argue with one.