Karelian Trains
Oy Karelian Trains Ltd is a joint venture agreed on 23 November 2006 between Russian Railways (RZhD) and VR Group (Finnish Railways) to facilitate the operation of international express passenger rail services between Helsinki, Finland, and Saint Petersburg, Russia. Karelian Trains is registered in Helsinki; VR and RZhD both own 50% of the shares. The services are branded as Allegro.
Services were launched on 12 December 2010 using Alstom Pendolino trains ordered in September 2007. Investments will also be made in infrastructure to enable higher speeds to be achieved. Together, this has cut journey times between the two cities from the previous 5½ hours to about 3 hours. There are four daily train departures each direction, compared to two for the older service. The daily night train Helsinki-Moscow will continue like before.
Visas are required for many foreign nationals, including Finns, to enter Russia and for Russians to enter Finland. Passport and customs checks is conducted on board the trains. Traditionally the passport and customs checks has delayed the trains at least 30 minutes according to the time table (1 hour for 30 km Vyborg-the border).
During the first year of operation the service has had 280,000 passengers, far more than expected.
Read more about Karelian Trains: Rolling Stock
Famous quotes containing the word trains:
“To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm’s way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)