Russia by train · Russia by train
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Russia by train
Russia by train
Train service is usually reliable. You can get a direct train from many cities in Eastern and Central Europe to Moscow and sometimes Saint Petersburg. Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, Bucharest and Sofia are all possible departure points with daily services to Russia. There is also service from Moscow to all of the Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, & Uzbekistan) at least 2-3 times per week and is rather long (3.5-5 days). There is service from Moscow to Baku, Azerbaijan (3 days); however, the Azerbaijan-Russia border is only open to CIS passport holders. The Trans-Siberian Railway spans the entire country and connects with Chinese cities such as Beijing and Harbin, as well as Mongolia's Ulaanbaatar. There is also a very infrequent service from Moscow to Pyongyang, North Korea (essentially the Trans-Siberian plus a short link from Vladivostok to Pyongyang) but this line isn't open to Western tourists.
There are around 2 hours wait at border stations between European (except Finland) and ex-Soviet countries because of bogie exchange (ex-Soviet railways have wider gauge than European). Even at border between Russia and CIS country count with several hour stay, because of tedious and thorough custom control. The stay is assumed in train timetable.
For details on Russian trains, see below in the Get around: By train section.
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Russia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.