With the normal route blocked, three Land Rovers were sent along a disused railway track which went to within two fields of the cottage.

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Modernity, they proudly and not uncontroversially say, has arrived in this backward region in the form of an engineering miracle that has laid tracks on land gripped year-round by ice, a railway line at higher altitude than any other in the world.

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The Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, now the Northern Line, brought an 800% rise in land prices at Golders Green, Mr Harrison-Putnam said.

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At least one state infrastructure official said this week that lack of funds, lack of land, general lawlessness and environmental policy were hindering investment in railway development.

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Each had its own way of moving through the land and each had its own odor of passage: the railway tracks cut straight ahead, asking no questions of the bedrock through which it sliced, the wrought-iron rails smelling of axle grease and the wooden slats of rancid, licorice-scented shellac.

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The railway is a Soviet triumph of man over nature, built in an inhospitable land of extreme winter cold and mosquito-cloud filled summers.

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About 1, 200 shacks had been built on the land, which is crossed by a shallow underground fuel pipe, a power pylon and a railway line.

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