Alice,
Either way, you can't deny we want our tsars to be big and all-powerful.
(A quality bad) reputation these days is everything! :o)))
Correct. What I think happened was that when the Director General (or whatever) asked the Tsar how he wanted the railway to run, the Autocrat said: "The most direct possible way of course, you fool. OUT!" and it was built straight, except where the terrain did not allow, given the performance of the locomotives of the time. After all the DG did not want the Tsar's train to get stuck, because that could have meant....
So, is there something for us to learn?
