The economic crisis in Russia has struck with particular force in a town called Crystal Goose south of Moscow.
Workers from the local glass factory haven't seen their salaries for months.
Instead they're being paid in kind - with some of the crystal they produce.
The morning express from Siberia rolls into a small station 250 kilometres south of Moscow.
Armed with decanters, chandeliers and vodka tumblers, workers from the Gus- Khrustalny glass factory pour onto the platform, desperate to make a sale.
They haven't seen their salaries in months - instead, they are paid in glassware from the factory. Hawking the goods is the only way to make ends meet. Most have been at the station since dawn.
Business is bad. By the time the train leaves, few have had traded successfully.
Lyubov Savvina hasn't received her $20 monthly wage since May.
SOUNDBITE:
The train has just pulled out, I'm freezing cold and I haven't sold a thing. I'll be here till 10 o'clock this evening.
SUPER CAPTION: Lyubov Savvina, Glassworks canteen worker.
Glass and crystal has been produced in Crystal Goose since the mid-eighteenth century and is renowned across Russia. In better times, the town's glass factories turned out windshields for Soviet spacecraft. Today they produce little more than souvenirs and chandeliers.
The plant was privatised a year ago, but many of the shares remain unsold. State orders have dried up and without investment the plant cannot compete with foreign producers.
Most of the workers took two to three months forced leave this year on Russia's minimum wage - a little under $7 a month.
Nadezhda Peskova started her shift at noon. She was at the railway station at six in the morning and plans to return again in the evening.
SOUNDBITE:
I've been at work since noon and was at the market at six this morning. And I'll have to go to the station at six tomorrow if I don't go this evening.
SUPER CAPTION: Nadezhda Peskova, Shop Floor Quality Controller
About 80 percent of Crystal Goose's 100,000 population depend on the glass industry for their living. But as the economic vice closes on the factory, benefits have been cut one after another.
The number of workers on the list for better accommodation continues to grow. Sick of waiting, over a thousand have already quit the factory.
The trade union boss has worked at the plant for 22 years. He's run out of arguments to keep his members from leaving:
SOUNDBITE:
It's become something of an axiom here that if a person leaves the factory, he's bound to find better, more stable employment.
SUPER CAPTION: Vladimir Ivanov, Chairman, Technical Glass Works
Most of the workforce share his pessimism. But the unskilled and the elderly that remain have nowhere else to go except the train station. They'll be waiting for the Siberian express when it returns tomorrow morning.
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