Handpicked experience
There is no steering wheel — you turn by braking one track — and the sloped armour in front of you is geometry doing the work of mass.
Controls that work on a principle no car uses
Armour design you can read off the shape of the hull
Ground that a wheeled vehicle simply could not cross
Instruction before you touch anything
Two hours that leave you filthy
Two hours on a training ground outside Moscow: a safety briefing, instruction, and time driving and riding in tanks and other tracked military vehicles on forest tracks and prepared obstacles.
A tracked vehicle does not steer like a car, and the first thing instruction covers is that the two levers in front of you are brakes.
Pull the left one and you slow the left track while the right keeps driving, so the machine pivots left. Pull harder and you stop that track entirely and it turns on the spot. Everything you do is a differential between two tracks, which means turns are not smooth arcs but a series of corrections, and a straight line takes constant small inputs.
It takes most people several minutes to stop over-steering, and it is the part of the day everyone talks about afterwards. Driving one badly is easy. Driving one smoothly is a skill.
If you are driving a T-34 or sitting in one, look at the angle of the front plate. It is not styling.
Armour set at a slope does two things at once. A shell arriving horizontally has to pass through more metal than the plate's actual thickness, because it is crossing at an angle — so 45 millimetres of sloped plate behaves like considerably more. And a rounded or blunt projectile striking a slope is likely to skid off rather than bite.
When the T-34 appeared in 1941 this combination, along with a diesel engine and a big gun on a mobile chassis, caused a serious problem for the forces facing it, and sloped armour became standard design thinking afterwards. It is one of the clearest cases in engineering of geometry doing the work of mass.
Look at the width of the tracks compared with anything else on the ground. That was deliberate, and in the conditions these machines were built for it mattered more than the gun.
Wide tracks spread the weight of a thirty-tonne vehicle over a large area, so ground pressure stays low and the machine keeps moving over mud, deep snow and soft ground that would bog a narrower vehicle to its belly. Russian spring and autumn turn unpaved roads into something close to liquid, and mobility in that mud decided a great deal.
You will feel this on the course. The vehicle goes places that seem obviously impossible from inside a car.
It is worth saying plainly. These are not props. The T-34 and its contemporaries were crewed by young men in a war that killed tens of millions of people, and crews in them died in very large numbers.
You can find that context interesting rather than uncomfortable, or you can find it both. The uniforms offered are a costume and putting one on is entirely optional. Nobody minds if you drive in your own clothes, and plenty of visitors do.
It is loud, hot and physically demanding. The interior of a tracked vehicle is cramped, hard-edged, and full of things to hit your head on; helmets are provided and should stay on.
Wear clothes you do not mind ruining, and closed boots rather than trainers. Anyone with a back or neck condition should take the passenger seat rather than the driver's, and the machines are not accessible to anyone who cannot climb unaided through a hatch. Bring hearing protection if you are sensitive to noise, though it is normally provided too.
Same route either way — the difference is who else is in the vehicle. Open one to see its dates and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
With brake levers. Slowing one track while the other keeps driving pivots the machine, and stopping a track entirely turns it on the spot.
Driving one badly is easy. Every turn is a differential between two tracks, so smooth driving takes constant small corrections.
An incoming shell has to cross more metal than the plate's actual thickness, and blunt projectiles tend to skid off a slope rather than bite into it.
Considerably. It became standard design thinking after 1941, and it is one of the clearest engineering cases of geometry doing the work of mass.
Slower than you expect. The interest is entirely in the terrain these machines cross, not in speed.
No. It is a costume and entirely optional — plenty of visitors drive in their own clothes.
Loud, hot and demanding. The interior is cramped and hard-edged, helmets are provided, and you climb in through a hatch unaided.
Anyone with a back or neck condition. The passenger seat gives the same experience of the terrain without the controls.