Train routes in Russia
16 routes · high-speed 1 · night train 11 · scenic 1 · heritage 1 · luxury 2
16 routes cross Russia in the World Train Map atlas. The longest is the Trans-Siberian Railway at 9,289 km; the fastest is the Sapsan, running up to 250 km/h; the oldest line dates to 1905. Every route links to its facts, photo and story, and to the interactive world map.
Open the world railway map →High-speed (1)
- Sapsan
The “Peregrine Falcon” races the dead-straight 1851 Nikolaev alignment between Russia’s two capitals.
Wikipedia ↗
Night train (11)
- Trans-Siberian Railway
The longest railway on Earth: 9,289 km, eight time zones and seven nights between Moscow and the Pacific.
Wikipedia ↗ - Arktika
Russia’s polar flagship crosses the Arctic Circle on the 1916 Murman railway: 35 hours north to a port where winter trains arrive in round-the-clock night.
- Moscow–Kazan Double-Decker
Two storeys of berths slip out of Kazansky station at 23:08 and pull in below the Tatar kremlin by breakfast. Russia’s double-deck night-train boom, eastbound.
Wikipedia ↗ - Red Arrow
Departing at 23:55 nightly since 1931 to the strains of ‘Hymn to the Great City’: the crimson Soviet flagship that outlived the state that built it.
Wikipedia ↗ - Baikal–Amur Mainline
Brezhnev’s ‘Project of the Century’, the Trans-Siberian’s wilder northern twin: 3,800 km of permafrost, seven ranges and towns that exist only for the line.
Wikipedia ↗ - Labytnangi
Fifty-two hours north to the last station on the Gulag-built Dead Road: the Chum–Labytnangi branch opened in 1948 and stops on the Ob, across the water from Salekhard.
- Vorkuta
Two nights up the Stalin-era Pechora mainline to Vorkuta, a coal city beyond the Arctic Circle that no all-year road reaches; train № 41 is its lifeline to Moscow.
Wikipedia (RU) ↗ - Premium
The southern flagship since 1964 (first Ritsa, then Sochi, Premium since 2009): 1,761 km from Kazansky station to the subtropical Black Sea platforms of Adler in 23 hours.
- Yantar
Running since 1964, the Yantar threads Moscow to Russia’s Baltic exclave via Minsk and Vilnius, the last corridor where Russian passenger trains still cross the EU.
Wikipedia (RU) ↗ - Sakhalin Night Train
Russia’s island sleeper: 613 km up Sakhalin’s east coast to oil-town Nogliki, on a railway begun under Japanese rule that kept its narrow gauge until regauging in 2019.
Wikipedia ↗ - AYaM Yakutia Train
23 hours north from the BAM at Tynda across permafrost to Nizhny Bestyakh on the Lena, one river crossing short of Yakutsk. Russia’s newest long-distance railway.
Wikipedia ↗
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Scenic (1)
- Circum-Baikal Express
The Tsar’s ‘golden buckle’: 38 tunnels blasted into cliffs a step above Baikal’s water, once the Trans-Siberian’s costliest link, now a slow shoreline excursion.
Wikipedia ↗
Heritage (1)
- Ruskeala Express
Russia’s only daily steam service: blue retro cars behind a vintage locomotive from Sortavala to Ruskeala’s flooded marble canyon, staged down to conductors in 1900s dress.
Wikipedia (RU) ↗
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Luxury (2)
- Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express
The Trans-Siberian done as a private hotel on wheels: fourteen days Moscow to Vladivostok with en-suite cabins, a bar car and stops the scheduled Rossiya cannot make.
Wikipedia ↗ - Zhemchuzhina Kavkaza
A hotel on rails looping from Moscow around the North Caucasus (Maykop, Kislovodsk, Vladikavkaz, Grozny, seaside Derbent and Nalchik): seven days, one ticket, since 2021.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons; each route page credits the author & licence
What is the fastest train in Russia?
The Sapsan, running Moscow to St. Petersburg at up to 250 km/h. It is one of 16 routes in Russia in this atlas.
Are there night trains in Russia?
Yes, 11 sleeper services in this atlas serve Russia: Trans-Siberian Railway (Moscow – Vladivostok), Arktika (Moscow – Murmansk), Moscow–Kazan Double-Decker (Moscow – Kazan), Red Arrow (Moscow – Saint Petersburg), and others.
Can you cross the border by train from Russia?
Yes, 1 of its 16 routes continues into another country: Yantar (Moscow – Kaliningrad).
Which is the most scenic railway in Russia?
Russia has 1 scenic or mountain line in this atlas. The longest is the Circum-Baikal Express, 215 km.
Cross-border lines continue into
Train routes in Belarus 4 routes
Train routes in Lithuania 9 routes