NORTH KOREA: North Koreans are proud of their trains. In the Kumsusan Palace in Pyongyang, where they come to pay homage to the founder of their communist state, they bow before the embalmed remains of Kim Il Sung, which they can see in a glass case, before going to admire his railway carriage.
In the hall where the carriage is kept is a giant map of the country across which shoot electric lights showing you where Kim visited by train.
After you have seen the map you move to the other side of the carriage to peer in through the windows. You can see Kim's desk, his armchairs and his video machine.
Kim Jong Il, Kim's son and successor as communist leader of North Korea, has inherited his father's love of trains, or perhaps his dislike of planes.
He recently visited Moscow by train, a journey that takes well over a week. North Korean television lovingly screens a documentary about the journey, showing Kim busily embarking and disembarking en route.
On Thursday, Mr Kim is reported to have passed through Ryongchon station just nine hours before the tragic explosion. He was returning from talks in Beijing with Chinese leaders on the future of discussions with the United States about North Korea's nuclear programme.
Many foreigners who visit North Korea make a special request to take the train, either to or from Pyongyang, because it gives them the ability to see more of this secretive country.
I recently took the Pyongyang-Beijing train which leaves the North Korean capital at around 10.00 am. It takes 25 hours to get to Beijing.
The train comes in two parts. One is for local traffic and the other carriages carry on to China.
I shared my compartment with the Vietnamese military attaché to Pyongyang. Speaking Spanish, because he had spent many years in Cuba, he told me that he had spent 10 years of his life battling the "Yanquis".
When I asked him what he thought of recent economic changes and of North Korea's future, he was less forthcoming. But he did say: "We have to go to Beijing to get meat." I said I had seen plenty in the market, but he said shortly: "Only pork, no beef."
The other gentleman sharing our compartment was Cambodian. He told me he worked in the court of King Norodom Sihanouk. He explained that Kim Jong Il had given the king a portrait of his father and so he had been sent to collect it. In days gone by Kim Il Sung and the then Prince Sihanouk had been friends.
From the train I could see neat stations and large numbers of people on the roads and working the fields. Ryongchon is a small non-descript town. The train stops here for a few minutes to let locals on and off.
At Sinuiju, the last station in North Korea, you can see people walking up and down the main street but no traffic whatsoever. Formalities take some two hours. Local carriages are detached, as is the North Korean locomotive.
Finally, once the Chinese train is attached, the carriages shunt across the River Yalu to the Chinese city of Dandong. It is only a few hundred metres across the bridge - but it could be a million miles. It is a boom city dominated by modern skyscrapers and full of traffic. Many of its inhabitants are ethnic Koreans.
Here, many people tell you they feel sorry for people in North Korea. The hunger and poverty remind them of their own country before it began its reforms almost 25 years ago.
In Pyongyang, Mr Masood Hyder of the UN said he admired North Koreans who live under such difficult circumstances. "Ordinary folk are heroic...They are enduring with great fortitude. It is like a village in India 50 years ago. There is huge deprivation."