bright lights of moscow stations flashing into view and vanishing again behind me

i was on a train, travelling by day, but it was winter-time - late december, the very depths - and to add to it the train was heading north - to leningrad - so it was quickly darkening on the other side of the windows - bright lights of moscow stations flashing into view and vanishing again behind me like the scattering of some invisible hand - each snow-veiled suburban platform with its fleeting row of lamps melting into one fiery ribbon - the dull drone of a station rushing past, as if the train were roaring over a bridge - the sound muffled by the double-glazed windows with frames not quite hermetically sealed into fogged-up, half-frozen panes of glass - pierced even so by the station-lights forcefully etching their line of fire - and beyond, the sense of boundless snowy wastes - and the violent sway of the carriage from side to side - pitching and rolling - especially in the end corridor - and outside, once complete darkness had fallen and only the hazy whiteness of snow was visible

from leonid tsypkin's novel summer in baden-baden (first sentence)

m swiezynski leaving berlin at night to venice
(by train) 2005