Rives McDow <rmcdow@globaltimesystems.org> writes:

I have been in contact with a Russian astronomer in Murmansk, as well as someone who works in what would be the Department of Transportation in the US. They both say that Kirov is GMT+4, and that it uses daylight savings time. I can write the astronomer again and see if anything has changed, but it is via surface mail, and takes about a month to get a reply.

Thanks for the info. Kirov / Vyatka is an obscure case. It is a city that appears to have two names, depending on context, which means that if we added it to the database, we'd need to pick a name. (Is it normally called "Kirov" or "Vyatka" in typical conversation? I don't know.) Possibly different parts of the region observe different time zones depending on the context. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if some businesses (near the train station, for example?) observe Moscow time even if most of the region is one hour ahead of Moscow time. Here are a couple of data points that contradict each other. <http://www.mazut.kirov.ru/forum/>'s time stamp "1:25 am" generated at 21:25 UTC today indicates that the current time zone for this service is UTC+4, which suggests that Kirov is UTC+3 during winter, UTC+4 during summer. A note at the bottom right says "Часовой пояс: GMT + 4", which agrees with the time stamp. On the other hand, possibly www.mazut.kirov.ru is not located in Kirov, or it's configured using Moscow time even though Kirov uses UTC+4, or it's configured to not observe DST. On the other side, <http://skaro.afraid.org/digbyt/baikal03/baikal01.html> contains a seemingly authoritative commentary saying that Kirov was 1 hour ahead of Moscow on 2003-08-14 at 12:20 local time, as reported by traveler Digby Russell Simon Tarvin. As the photo makes clear he did get off the train and wandered through the train station during what he reports was a 20-minute stop. However, I suppose it's possible that the train station itself observed Moscow time and that his comment about Kirov being an hour ahead is simply copied from his tourist guidebook rather than being an actual observation of a local clock. For an example of misinformation along these lines, please see <http://www.trans-siberian.info/trans-siberian.php>, which claims that Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod, and Vladimir are all at UTC+4; this is obviously bogus. An even better caution to the unwary: All long distance trains follow Moscow time, so we've had to be aware of how many hours ahead of the capital we are on each leg and at each stop. It finally caught us out yesterday on the train from Yekaterinburg to Kazan. Our guide book told us Kazan was two hours ahead of Moscow - when in reality it's the same time zone. Unfortunately, we only discovered the truth in the last stages of the trip - after much confusion. The mistake meant we had lunch at 10am instead of when we thought it would come at noon. Of course, another breakfast beer delivery came with it. <http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/transsiberia/> Emma Griffiths (2005-06-25)