Balti jaam

This guide to Balti jaam in Tallinn follows a single journey: in June nineteen oh eight, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna became the first Russian imperial to take the train to the seaside resort of Haapsalu, boarding from the very platform where you're standing. It traces the station back to eighteen seventy, when the Baltic Railway first linked Tallinn to Saint Petersburg, and to the branch line that turned an aristocratic mud-bath retreat into a destination generations of ordinary Tallinners would later chase on the same tracks. Along the way you'll meet the station's other lives, as freight depot and now market hall, and the steam locomotive still parked outside. Look for the old ticket halls behind today's market stalls.