Latvian rail enthusiasts hope that when the state rail utility hands over the Gulbene-Aluksne line to a public-private consortium later this year it will attract enough visitors like Liepins - on a trip from her adoptive home in North America - to survive as a Western-style tourist attraction.
As preparations are completed for the second annual railway festival here on Sept. 8, Nikolajs Stepanovs, mayor of the small town of Gulbene, emphasizes the historic and economic importance of the line, which was built in 1903. Half the width of a modern railway and covering its 33 kilometers in a sedate 80 minutes, it is all that remains of the country's narrow-gauge network, once 1,100 kilometers long.
Stepanovs believes its tourist-pulling potential can help rejuvenate this corner of northeastern Latvia, which, since the collapse of Soviet-era collective farming, has been plagued by poverty and long-term unemployment. Otherwise, with its annual $160,000 state subsidy unlikely to last, the railway may be doomed.
Steven Wiggs, here to help on behalf of a U.K.-based historic railways group, the New Europe Railway Heritage Trust, says it will take time to lay on the necessary tea-rooms and picture postcards.
"We have nothing to teach the Latvians on the engineering side, but it's the marketing, organizing volunteers, charitable appeals and a certain discipline that's needed. They're going to have to get to grips with turning up to do things at the time they they've agreed on."
For Toms Altbergs, co-author of a book on the Gulbene-Aluksne line, the track is a link to Latvia's first period of independence between the two world wars, before the Nazis and Soviets used the broad-gauge network to haul people to death camps and gulags by cattle truck.
In a bid to de-Russify the nation's rail system Altbergs is preparing a dictionary of Latvian railway terms. "When I started working on the railways in 1988, workers of Latvian origin were in a small minority and even they spoke Russian among themselves. We hope in five or 10 years the railway will be really Latvian."
But Stepanovs, who is of Russian origin, does not entirely share such sentiments. "Round here, people are not nostalgic for the first Latvian republic, but for the Soviet era, when everyone was equal, whether they went to work drunk or sober, early or late.
"But the railway was different. There was more discipline and responsibility. People knew that lives and cargo depended on it."
Wiggs, meanwhile, is horrified to see pigeons flying through the open window of a century-old station. A lawyer by profession and English eccentric by character, he heads for the offices of the district council - attending first to his undone trousers and tousled hair - where he is promised the window will be repaired.
He is also unimpressed by the failure of the Latvian enthusiasts to alert local newspapers to a visit by the BBC. "Publicity is like oxygen to a historic railway,"he tells Altbergs. "If the chairman of your association breaks wind you should inform the media."
As the carriages rattle along it is clear that Evia Liepins, deep in conversation with a childhood friend, is hooked. "You could probably outrun this train it's so slow. But I ride on it whenever I return here."
The Sept. 8 festival will see an array of cultural events in the towns of Gulbene and Aluksne, as well as in Stamariena, a village halfway along the route, which will host a fair and a party in the evening. Buses will also take visitors from Stamariena to a nearby watermill at Ates where further celebrations are planned.
Trains will run from Gulbene to Aluksne and back during the day, leaving Gulbene at 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. and Aluksne at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Tours of Gulbene's train depot will take place between 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.
For those traveling from Riga who want to make the most of the event, a special overnight train from Riga to Gulbene has been laid on, leaving Riga at 10:40 p.m. on Sept. 7. Tickets are available at Riga Central station. For more information, call Janis Eiduks on 9531703.
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