Documentaries : On the Road in Soviet Union: Chaos Abounds : * A reporter’s journey through the Central Asian republics on what the conductor calls ‘the worst train on Earth’ is an adventure not soon to be repeated.

We were well into our 16-hour journey across the Central Asian wasteland, rumbling and lurching between two of the 39 long-forgotten station stops on the weird route of the Bishkek-Tashkent Local, when Chief Conductor Ilias Cherigbayev uttered one of the great truths of the universe.

We had been plying him with local cognac and sausage in a ratty compartment that was like our private cell on a journey through hell--the climax of our monthlong expedition through the crumbling southern fringes of the Soviet empire. We were well into the second bottle when Cherigbayev, an ethnic Kirghizi with a soft, Oriental face deeply lined from 16 years on the Soviet railways, confirmed our worst fears:

“Soviet trains, you see, are the worst in the world,” our chief conductor explained, downing another shot. “Now, the worst of those Soviet trains are sent here to Central Asia. And, of all the trains in Central Asia, this one is, without a doubt, the worst.

“So you see, this is the worst train on Earth. It’s not fit even for cargo, for pigs or even dogs,” the chief conductor added for emphasis, as a puppy the size of a rat yapped uncontrollably in the next compartment, “let alone for people.

“No, this train never should have left the station.”

Us, too.

It wasn’t as if there were no warning signs that there was something terribly wrong with Local 187 when my Russian translator and constant companion, Sergei Larin, and I boarded it in Bishkek, the capital city of the newly independent Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan (formerly Kirghizia). But we had grown immune to such warning signs. As Sergei had said on the very first day of our journey a month before, “You know these red flags you put up as warning signs in front of deep holes in the road? Well, just keep in mind, you crossed the biggest red flag in the world when you entered the Soviet Union.”

But these weren’t just red flags on Local 187. They were more like warning labels on bottles of poison.

First of all, most of the 14 cars were missing their windows, or at least parts of them, the remains left sticking out of the frames like glass daggers. Only later would we learn that the windows had all been smashed to bits by rock-throwing ethnic Uzbek “hooligans,” as our chief conductor put it. It happens every time the Kyrgyzstan-based train passes through “hot spots” in Uzbekistan, which is often. It’s because of the anger that still runs deep among many Kirghizis and Uzbeks from a spree of ethnic carnage in which hundreds were killed from both communities more than a year ago. That carnage was just part of an ethnic conflict thatis just one of dozens of such conflicts in these remote republics that were forced into the union, in part through forced mass migration.

“I am sorry about the windows, but you see, we can’t replace them because the state window factory has no glass,” Cherigbayev continued. “The state glass factory that supplies the window factory can’t make the glass because the state silica mines that make the glass for the windows aren’t working either. No one knows why.

“The whole system has just completely fallen apart.”

True enough. In fact, the Bishkek-Tashkent local was only the most glaring of dozens of examples littering Central Asia that together form a tragic mosaic of life after communism here on the extreme edges of the fraying empire. In fact, our month on trains, planes, cars and foot through the independence-minded republics of Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan was like touring a hall of horrors filled not only with broken windows but also with failing factories, crumbling cities and broken lives. Together, they appeared as a vast collection of ill omens for the future of these republics.

The day we left Bishkek, for example, we found an Aeroflot pilot who works for the national airline’s “small aviation” department in the Kyrgyzstan city of Osh. “The situation is an utter disaster,” the Russian pilot explained. “You can’t imagine it. Pilots as young as 30 or 35 have to retire or they die. Mostly, it’s the chemicals from crop dusting. They’re killing us--and our children.”

In other parts of the republic, underground uranium fires are burning out of control. In an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, an entire people is being wiped out from pesticides and drought near the Aral Sea.

We found dozens of factories falling apart from a lack of spare parts throughout the region, state department stores with empty shelves, bread lines stretching for entire city blocks and rampant drug abuse and alcoholism, especially among the youth.

It was through this socialist wasteland that Local 187 careened and heaved its way along a route to our train’s ultimate destination, well beyond the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. It was Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest city of Jalal-Abad. But, because the impassable Alay Mountains lie between the Kyrgyzstan capital and its southernmost city, the train had to cross what may soon become international borders no fewer than six times. Travel during 10 of the 16 hours needed to go from Bishkek to Tashkent was through its northern neighbor, Kazakhstan.

“God only knows how we’ll manage,” Cherigbayev said when he was asked what it would imply for the railroad if the four republics of Central Asia begin enforcing old borders.

Then again, the chief conductor added after a moment’s pause, the question will become unimportant if nothing is done to repair or replace trains such as the Bishkek-Tashkent Local.

“For now,” he said, “I’m just sitting here wondering how we’re going to get through the winter without windows. I mean, just look at this piece of garbage they call a train.”

Indeed, over the gaping holes where flying rocks had taken out entire windows, Cherigbayev’s crew had stretched blankets, shreds of scrap vinyl and torn pieces of the soiled, gray fabric that the conductors hand out as bed linen. In cases where windows had merely been punctured or cracked, the staff had glued pieces from other broken windows over the holes. Often, we found, when the train lurched suddenly, the patches gave way, launching glass missiles into the sleeping compartments at bullet speed.

“Better tell your American friend to keep his head down in there,” one of the conductors told Sergei when one such missile narrowly missed us. “I don’t think they have trains like this in America.”

But the train was filled with other, less obvious dangerous flaws. There were the boilers, huge and hideous socialist contraptions at the end of each car that are used to heat water for tea and to warm the car in winter. Every so often, Local 187 would lurch to a halt, and an army of conductors, each carrying a dented and rusting pail, would walk to a coal pile near the tracks and collect the fuel that kept the boilers running. And, every so often, passengers walking through the cars would accidentally bump into the exposed boilers, suffering instant third-degree burns.

There was also a dining car with a handful of metal chairs, all missing their back cushions, and a grimy kitchen where the cook mumbled something that sounded like: “Don’t eat here. You’ll die.”

To be fair, Cherigbayev’s dedicated railway staff did attempt to provide entertainment during the long journey. For starters, soon after Local 187 pulled out of Bishkek Station, a deaf man bounded into our compartment offering us some reading matter: dozens of tiny booklets in Russian for one ruble each. The selection included “Kung Fu--How to Do It,” “Erotic Astrology for Women,” and “1,000 Years of the Russian Orthodox Church.”

When we politely declined, the man went through a series of obscene but insistent gestures, which Sergei finally interpreted as, “Oh, he wants us to buy a deck of pornographic playing card . . . from Denmark; 15 rubles each.”

In several cars, there was an attempt at slightly more sophisticated entertainment. Handwritten signs advertised “On-Board Video,” movies that included “Rambo” and “The Best of Bruce Lee,” all dubbed into Russian. Unfortunately, a conductor explained, the staff of the train, who had rigged up the videos on their own as a means of padding their paltry state salaries, had to discontinue the service when their imported video machines broke down and they couldn’t get spare parts to fix them.

In lieu of formal entertainment, though, the staff aboard Local 187 provided, if only inadvertently, another form of amusement--relating their own travel tales from their years on this lethal stretch of track. We asked Inoura, a 23-year-old Kirghizi woman who was assigned as the conductor for our car, to relate the strangest thing that has ever happened on Local 187.

“Strange?” she asked, a bit bewildered. “Nothing. It’s always the same--normal.”

“Well,” we try again, “has anyone ever disappeared from the train?”

“Oh yes. That happens all the time,” she said.

“Do they fall off?” we asked.

“No. They get thrown off,” she said. “You know, people get drunk, they start to fight, and someone gets thrown off the train. It happens all the time. Especially now that there are no windows.”

Sure enough, by the time we lumbered into Tashkent’s dilapidated, Stalin-era railway station, we had lost a few fellow passengers that way. We had taken fewer than the usual number of rock hits, perhaps not so surprising, considering that there were so few targets left. And, when we climbed down the broken steps of Local 187, both of us had the overwhelming feeling that we had somehow cheated death and learned a good deal in the process.

As Sergei had said before the train left Bishkek, citing the 150 rubles, the equivalent of $5, that we had paid for the tickets (including a hefty bribe to get seats on a train overbooked for weeks) “What do you want for $5? To live forever?”