http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding_the_Iron_Rooster
I havent gotten to do the TransSiberian but this book led me to spend a few weeks in Mongolia.
When I was young I took a train from Toronto to Vancouver with my grandparents. A great memory.
From 2009-2011 I drove a Jeep Alaska->Argentina. Next year I'll set out on a lap of Africa, then after that I'll be driving my Jeep London->Australia.
All in, it was just under £10k (for two people)
Trains London to St Petersburg
London to Brussels - £100 Eurostar Brussels to Cologne - 58 Euro - Bahn.de (about £45) Koln to Prague - 138 Euro - Bahn.de (about £109) Prague to Krakow (three trains) - 488PLN - Polrail.com (about £92) Krakow to Warsaw - 140PLN - Polrail.com (about £26) Warsaw to Minsk - 698PLN - Polrail.com (about £132) Minsk to St Petersburg - £284.72 - realrussia.com
Accommodation Krakow - £68.22 lastminute.com Accommodation Warsaw - £38.76 lastminute.com
Other nights from London to St Petersburg were on trains
Tour - £5995 -all trains from St Petersburg to Hong Kong -all accommodation from St Petersburg to Xi'an -more than half the meals (apart from when on the train) -transfers to and from all stations -all guides and tours -all visas
Accommodation Hong Kong - £304.96 - Not sure where booked
Spending money - £1640
Flight HK to Melbourne - $HK9076 (about £746) Travel Insurance - $AUD324 (about £172)
Total: £9753
Polrail.com and realrussia.com are agencies and so added about 25-30% on top of the ticket prices, but the Polish and Russian rail websites aren't in English so didn't have much choice there. The Polish accommodation was pretty swanky and right next to the stations, there were much cheaper options, but splashed out a bit. Travel insurance was required for our visas; we had trouble finding anyone to insure us because we weren't finishing where we departed from. Spending money was under what we budgeted. The tour was obviously the big expense, doing it ourselves would have been a lot harder, but would have saved a lot of money, but then we'd have to have gone and lined up to get visas whereas they did that for us. Also having someone standing on the platform with a sign with our name on and then being driven to our hotel was pretty cool :)