Some 1891 photographs of Persia and the Russian Empire – including the Transcaspian Railway – taken by William Sachtleben and Thomas Allen Jr, two Americans who cycled around the world on safety bicycles.

General Aleksei Kuropatkin (who would become a major figure in the Russo-Japanese War a dozen years later) entertained them, but insisted that they take the new Trans-Caspian Railway some 600 miles, across the desert to Samarkand in Uzbekistan.