Petri and Pietu Tuovinen, Markku Pulkkinen and I arrived at the Finnish—Russian border just a minute before a loaded iron ore train crossed with Russian diesels.

I have to admit that 10 days of continuous travel had caught up with me and I’d fallen asleep in the car. “Hey, wake up! The train is over the frontier.”

“What? Where?”

I managed a decent image of the train. But the best was yet to come. An ominous looking sign marked the border area.

We waited for an hour while the Russian diesels were position on an eastward empty train. A thunderstorm rumbled to the south. Finnish custom agents inspect the train. The Russian diesels idled. It began to rain.

Finally, the train began to ease forward. The driver must have liked the attention and once passed the starting signal, he notched up the locomotives. It reminded me of photographing old Alcos!

Tracking the Light posts daily.