extreme railway journeys sbs

World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys

Tells the stories of epic train journeys through stunning landscapes all around the world, and meets the characters who travel, work, and live near them.

Extreme Railway Journeys

Chris Tarrant travels across Morocco from west to east prior to visiting the sands of the Sahara. He examines whether or not a railway line once traversed the Sahara all the way to Timbuktu.

Chris attempts to travel across three former Soviet republics in the space of a week, via rail. He experiences the life and culture of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Chris takes a look at the railway network that winds through the Balkan region. He makes his way through five countries that were once part of Yugoslavia as he travels the rails.

Chris Tarrant heads to the Middle East to look into what remains of the century-old colonial railways. Plus, he follows the route of the Hejaz Railway to Jordan, before crossing into Israel.

Chris' journey tackles snow and ice as he heads to the Alps to ride on six pioneering mountain railways. Plus, he checks out 19th-century winter sports.

Chris embarks on a thousand-mile journey across Spain's complex railway system. He heads to Gilbraltar in the far south and Bermio on the north coast.

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Chris Tarrant

Jeff Morgan

Melanie Darlaston

Hugh Whitworth

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‘Extreme Railways’ travels the world in search of incredible journeys

Former “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” host Chris Tarrant embarks on a series of extreme railway journeys across the world’s toughest terrains, coming to Arizona PBS every Sunday at 6 p.m. in December and early January.

In a captivating five-episode series, “Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways,” Tarrant explores some of the world’s oldest and most scenic railway journeys. Along the way, he meets fellow passengers, local characters and train drivers and engineers, and discovers more about the history, maintenance and impact of these extreme railways. Each episode is filled with incredible stories and challenges his crew must overcome.

Dec. 9: Ice Train to Nowhere (Alaska)

Chris heads to the Arctic to explore a railway which probably should never have been built… the Alaska Railroad. Constructed when the USA’s largest state was barely populated, Chris wants to find out how and why it has become such a success. But traveling at the tail end of winter with few trains means completing his journey to the end of the line in Alaska’s frozen interior is not going to be easy.

Dec. 16: Night Train to Patagonia (Argentina)

Chris travels by train across a thousand mile stretch of Argentina to the heart of Patagonia. In its heyday, this country boasted one of the largest and finest railways in the world, largely funded and built by the British. As he heads further and further South in his quest to ride the iconic Old Patagonian Express, Chris finds out just how far this once great railway network has fallen.

Dec. 23: The Diamond Railway (Africa)

Chris travels 1500 miles from Cape Town in South Africa, across Botswana to the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, following the route of an incredibly ambitious railway pioneered by controversial 19th century British Colonialist, Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes made a fortune from diamonds and used it to fund his railway and to extend British rule across Africa, laying the foundations for apartheid in the process. Chris wants to discover if this railway built to further the interests of a white minority is still relevant to the people of these countries today.

Dec. 30: Trans-Caucasus Express (Eastern Europe)

Chris travels the length of the historic Trans-Caucasus Railway from the flaming towers of Baku on the shores of the Caspian to the port of Batumi on the Black Sea. He explores this railway built in the days of the Russian Empire in a region that for decades was part of the Soviet Union. He wants find out how the former republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia and this great railway they now share are faring today.

Jan. 6: War, Ore and Santa Claus (Scandinavia)

Chris travels 1800 miles across Scandinavia and Finland in the middle of winter, braving deep snow, sub-zero temperatures and hardly any light. He’s on a mission to find out how war, iron ore and a certain Lapland-living red suited gentlemen inspired the Scandinavians to build an extreme railway network that operates deep into the Arctic Circle 365 days a year.

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The World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys

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Actor Bill Nighy narrates as cameras follow trains travelling though some of the most scenic landscapes in the world. The stories of these iconic railways are told by those who travel on, wo... Read all Actor Bill Nighy narrates as cameras follow trains travelling though some of the most scenic landscapes in the world. The stories of these iconic railways are told by those who travel on, work on and live beside them. Actor Bill Nighy narrates as cameras follow trains travelling though some of the most scenic landscapes in the world. The stories of these iconic railways are told by those who travel on, work on and live beside them.

• Franz Bislin
• Gion Caprez
• 9 User reviews
• 1 Critic review

Episodes 43

• Self - Narrator …
• Railway Traffic Controller Rhätische Bahn …
• Construction Manager Albula Tunnel …
• Manager Alp Grüm Hotel …
• Geotechnical Engineer …
• Father of Disentis Kloster …
• Self, train conductor
• Self, train waitress
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• October 25, 2019 (United Kingdom)
• United Kingdom
• Channel 5 (United Kingdom)
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Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys Series 5

Chris Tarrant is back with more amazing railway journeys…

In four new episodes, Chris will be travelling thousands of miles by train across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In the pursuit of great railways and their stories, he finds himself in the places that most visitors never reach and sees a very different side to countries that we may think we know, but then again maybe we don’t.

In mid-winter, Chris heads from Budapest to Transylvania in search of the truth behind the world’s most famous vampire, Count Dracula.

Next stop is Istanbul, where Chris embarks on a thousand mile railway journey to the far north east of Turkey as he finds out how the railways played a key role in uniting this young nation

In Ireland, Chris attempts to cross the Emerald isle entirely by train in just six days, uncovering lost railways, extreme engineering, railways of the troubles and railways of peace.

In Kenya, Chris explores the rapidly decaying “Lunatic Line” the most extraordinary railway project of the whole colonial era, that was famously troubled by mosquito infected swamps, hostile tribes, parched deserts and of course man-eating lions!

Episodes: Kenya, Transylvania, Ireland, Turkey

UK Premiere January 2020.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys review: a grumbly host meets a tired format

F ronting a travel programme should be the ultimate TV job. Chris Tarrant may no longer be at the helm of primetime quiz shows , but Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys (Channel 5) seems like a nice, cosy place for him to land. Travel the world, talk to camera a bit, put feet up. But what should be a nice excuse for a working holiday is looking more and more like a tricky prospect in the modern age. Travel shows are in a state of flux with cheap flights meaning it’s often possible to get from the UK to a European city for less than a train fare. You don’t even have to leave your living room, really: simply type “Hadrian’s Wall”, for example, into Google Maps and get an immediate, first-person 360-degree perspective. Then there’s the fact that, as tourism has boomed, so too has the anti-tourist backlash, with cities creaking under the weight of their Airbnb guests.

Where does the travel series sit in these times? Should it show off increasingly familiar places through new eyes, or should it explore new, relatively undiscovered areas and risk ruining them by exposure? Sue Perkins’ recent trip down the Ganges was a semi-confessional travelogue that offered surprising intimacy. Levison Wood walks everywhere – which is more impressive since it’s the Himalayas or the length of South America rather than, say, a stroll to the local Tesco. Richard Ayoade’s Travel Man finds wry intrigue in cities’ tourist traps by exposing standup comedians to local customs, such as zorbing. All are a way of breathing new life into the format, turning travel into relatable experience, rather than a distant spectacle, when it’s not really so distant any more.

Then there’s Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys . I don’t mean to pick on Tarrant, or kick a Channel 5 show when it’s down, but he is one of a number of presenters who plough a similar furrow. Tarrant reminds me most of Rick Stein, whose Long Weekends are often an exercise in how to be as patronising to locals as possible.

With his railway gimmick, Tarrant is a kind of Stein-lite, bumbling through environments, desperately trying not to imitate the accents of the people he’s talking to (and he doesn’t always manage it). In this opening episode of the series, he’s in north Africa. “The aim is to travel the entire length of Morocco’s state-owned railway system at the hottest time of the year in the middle of the period where nobody eats or drinks,” he explains, declining to add a much-needed answer to the question of why. Without such caveats it would be Chris Tarrant: Railway Journeys, which, I suppose, isn’t quite so showy.

Still, what Tarrant learns in Morocco is bafflingly specific. He’s obsessed with his early discovery that the railway stations and trains in this country are clean, and brings it up with insistent regularity. He’s also quick to note when trains are late. “You may be wondering, where is this freight train? Well, so am I,” he grumbles. I was wondering why he’s filming with a coat on in 40C (104F) weather, particularly since one of his other observations is that it’s hot. He’s seemingly thrown by Arabic names, and says things like, “Chris. Nice and easy,” when he introduces himself. When a woman named Leila tells him what she’s called, he gets carried away: “Nice name!” he beams, then starts to sing Eric Clapton’s Layla, and briefly strums an air guitar.

It’s Alan Partridge-like in other ways, too – Tarrant limps because the hot tarmac has melted the sole of just a single shoe – but it’s not the doddery-ness of it all that jars. It’s the fact that, as a travel presenter, attempting to show viewers parts of the world that may be new to them, he’s so resolutely uncurious, so unwilling to see beyond what he already knows. When he gets to Taza, he jokes, twice, about it being a town named after him – some of his friends call him Tazza – but he also casually decides that “there’s not a lot to see or do around here”. It’s like a restaurant critic complaining that there’s only food in front of them, so what are they supposed to write about?

It’s not Tarrant that’s the problem, exactly. He’s only one of a certain breed. But it’s odd that this old-hand TV presenter made me wonder whether it was time for travel programmes to grow up a little bit.

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Railway Journeys are now SBS’ very own Big Bang Theory

Ratings: railway shows overwhelm sbs schedule, while seven takes out another ratings week..

• Published by David Knox
• on June 19, 2017
• Filed under News

Railway Journey shows have become the Big Bang Theory of SBS, screening at 7:30 from Tuesday – Friday, and ranking as 3 of its 4 top shows last week.

But it was another win for Seven last week.

Network: Seven: 30.4 Nine: 26.7 TEN: 18.7 ABC: 17.6 SBS: 6.6

Primary channel: Seven: 20.3 Nine: 18.0 TEN: 13.1 ABC: 12.6 SBS: 4.5

Multichannels: 7mate: 4.1 7TWO: 3.7 9GO!: 3.6 ELEVEN: 3.1 ABC2: 2.8 9GEM: 2.7 ELEVEN: 2.5 9Life: 2.4 7flix: 2.3 ABC News: 1.5 SBS Food Network: 1.0 SBS VICELAND: 0.9 ABC ME: 0.7 NITV: 0.1

Corrected: Seven scored all demos 16-39, 18-49 & 25-54.

Best brands last week were:

Seven: Seven News (Sun: 1.18m), House Rules (Sun: 1.09m), Home and Away (765,000) and Border Security (706,000).

Nine: True Story with Hamish & Andy (1.09m), Nine News (Nine: 1.06m), A Current Affair and The Voice (both 852,000).

TEN: MasterChef Australia (Tues: 903,000), Have You Been Paying Attention? (802,000), The Project (7pm: 572,000) and NCIS (534,000).

ABC: Four Corners (807,000), ABC News (Sat: 781,000), Father Brown (768,000) and Australian Story (754,000).

SBS: Great Continental Railway Journeys (363,000), Rome’s Invisible City (280,000), Extreme Railway Journeys (277,000) and Great British Railway Journeys (259,000).

Seven won every night except Wednesday, which fell to Nine. ABC bettered TEN on Saturday.

Seven again won Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, while Nine claimed Sydney and Brisbane.

• Tagged with A Current Affair , Australian Story , Border Security , Extreme Railway Journeys , Father Brown , Four Corners , Great British Railway Journeys , Great Continental Railway Journeys , Have You Been Paying Attention? , Home and Away , House Rules , MasterChef Australia , NCIS , Nine News , Rome's Invisible City , Seven News , The Project , The Voice , True Story with Hamish & Andy

11 Responses

I want a railway channel

So basically, as unlikely as it sounds, Michael Portillo, ex-Conservative MP, is Sheldon???

** Chris Tarrant filled the Wednesday slot. Different show, but important distinction to make.

I’ve seen bits of episodes if GBRJ, and I can understand why people enjoy it, not my cup of tea tho.

SBS railway journeys. If it’s Tuesday it must be the bright yellow jacket, Wednesday the bright blue one…With Michael Portillo visiting Victorian factories making sports referees whistles, leather soles for shoes, Horlicks, linen, beer and travelling on steam trains, etc, I wouldn’t want his dry cleaning bill!

Thanks for your comment and info David. Well I hope the 60,000 – 70,000 capital city viewers justify the cost of — let’s say probably 250 – 300 thousand dollars a week this would be costing to commission. Return on investment ?

What a complete joke. SBS relies on British train shows instead of making content that people actually watch. Content that fulfils its charter. Merge SBS and ABC now and get rid of most of the useless bods making these dumb decisions. I’d love to know the cost of Masterchef ( oops ) I mean The Chef’s Line at 6 PM…and does it capture a decent audience compared to what was there before ,as I would hate to think about the weekly cost to the network – and the Australian taxpayer . David do you have any ratings data here?

To be fair they still produce local charter shows, Family Law, Dateline, Insight, food titles and new doco series next week etc. My point was really that trains are taking over early evening schedule. SBS has argued in the past the broadly popular stuff brings in revenue to produce charter titles. Chef’s Line hovers around 60-70,000 viewers.

The AFL and multi-channels have powerful for Seven on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Must only be another handful of weeks, until Seven can claim 2017, by weeks won.

Impressive feat thus far.

Nine have a strong chance at winning this week.

Again, worth noting that the SBS Rome documentary was a 4th time repeat in the same Sunday night slot!

1st time repeat

No, definitely at least the 3rd and pretty sure the 4th time-was put in behind the new 3 ep series of Roman/renaissance laser scanning docs in the slot-SBS never says that the docs are repeats but many are, sometimes within a few months-they still rate well by their standards as so many folks are desperate for an alternative to singing/cooking/ bitching shows on a Sunday evening.

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Journey on the Trans-Siberian: Moscow to Yekaterinburg

This is the second part of a series about my trip across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway in the summer of 2018. I’ll cover the overnight ride from St Petersburg to Moscow, the 16 hours I spent in the Russian capital, and the two-day ride from Moscow to Yekaterinburg.

After a few days in St Petersburg I boarded the overnight train to Moscow. The sleeper train “Red Arrow” departs at 11:55pm. I read (but didn’t confirm) the departure time was set in Soviet times to leave before midnight so travelers could get reimbursed for two working days.

There were three people already in the cabin when I walked in: In one of the top bunks was a girl who looked 20-something, and on the two bottom bunks, two Brazilian men who looked like soccer fans. (It was World Cup summer.)

We exchanged muted hello’s and filled out our breakfast order forms. Without wasting time I followed the process of settling into an overnight cabin:

• Examine and unpack the supplied bedding.
• Make the bed.
• If foreigners are in the cabin, motion to them to follow your lead.
• Exit the cabin to give others room to make their bed and, if they wish, to change into sleeping attire.
• Return when appropriate, and begin smalltalk to spark a deep and cross-cultural conversation that’ll grow richer and bring you closer together with every mile of track until the morning golden hour.

Except the Brazilian men didn’t speak English, and the girl, probably on-guard, remained silent. I went to sleep.

It wasn’t the rocking that stirred me awake every hour, but the impressive guttural symphony coming from the man below me. The snores came in different tones and rhythms, transforming mid-breath with no particular pattern, which made them difficult to ignore. (A few days later, Tatiana, another cabin-mate, refuted my story by telling me sound doesn’t travel upwards. “Then he cheated physics,” I said.) I forced my earplugs deeper and felt relief that this is only a seven-hour trip.

By morning the Brazilians still didn’t speak English but the girl was more inviting. She’s a mother of two—which surprised me—and was headed to Moscow for a meditation seminar. I made whatever smalltalk I could fit between bites of fried cheese fritters until we arrived in Moscow.

It was early morning, and my first objective was to find a quiet part of the city where I can rest until some nearby coffeeshop opens. I took the metro to the nearest patch of green on Google Maps—a park called “Clean Ponds.”

The only available bench was next to a group of Russian men still drinking from the night before. One of the men was slumped over, another was drying in the sun after taking a dip in the pond, another was throwing fists at the wet one, and the rest were fighting to stay upright—only because it’s easier to keep drinking when upright. I decided against napping, and instead enjoyed the scene unfolding to my left.

A woman approached and sat next to me, holding her small dog, and complained about the park’s occupants. Following a light conversation, she lit a cigarette, told me about her (deceased) husband’s medical invention, and proposed I introduce the product to the US market in return for a cut of the profits. She did this while parrying advances from one of the men. (“I have a job and own an apartment in a good location, behind the McDonald’s,” he said.) She gave me her phone number before leaving, probably dreaming of business ventures in America that will not happen.

When the woman left, the party group noticed me. “Where the f— did you come from?!” one of them said. I was prepared to give (and take) a few hits and run, but managed to ease the tension with some jokes and handshakes.

I gave up on rest and went in search of coffee and breakfast.

Irina and Red Square

Irina is a lawyer living in Moscow who’s trying to improve her English. We met on a language-learning website, and arranged to meet in person to walk through the Red Square and practice English/Russian.

The Red Square was staged for the World Cup and crowded with tourists. It felt like the Russian version of Times Square, which I found intolerable. I snapped some shots and hurried us to lunch.

We found a Georgian restaurant just off the main boulevard and spent the next hour chatting about Russia’s legal system, language exams, graduate school, and how long could it possibly take to cook chicken.

In 2007 I was supposed to visit St Petersburg aboard my college’s training ship. My cousin warned me I should brush up on my Russian: “We have smart relatives there, don’t embarrass yourself.” I searched for Russians to chat with online and found Polina.

We spoke every other day in the months leading up to my voyage that summer. I started to like her. We made unrealistic plans for her to travel from Moscow to St Petersburg to meet me for the few days I’d be there. It never happened. Just days before my ship’s scheduled arrival, the captain diverted us to Estonia after failing to get the proper docking permits or visas for Russia. Polina and I exchanged only a few emails over the next decade.

This time, the plan worked.

We met and crisscrossed the Moskva river over bridges as we spoke of life in Russia, her newborn son, traveling, her dreams of returning to freelancing, the things we still do and those we don’t… I don’t remember where we walked or what we passed.

Is this what Captain Smith made me miss? I imagined myself at 19, and Polina getting permission from her mom to take the overnight train to St Petersburg, and my needing to return to the ship by midnight, and maybe ending up like my shipmate and the Croatian girl he fell in love with on the first day in port in Dubrovnik…

The thought made me happy but also underscored the passage of time. We were far from 19, and we both found love on native soil, and she became a mom, and I had to catch the train to Yekaterinburg before midnight.

After saying goodbye to Polina, it was time for the next segment of the Trans-Siberian Railway: A one-and-a-half-day ride to Yekaterinburg. I stocked up on ramen noodles and tea, and made my way to the train.

Riding the Trans-Siberian Railway is interesting for two reasons: The train itself, and the people on it. Life aboard the train doesn’t differ much from one segment to another, so I will write a separate article of observations and survival tips learned throughout the entire trip.

The people, however, did change with each segment. On this segment from Moscow to Yekaterinburg, as urban sprawl gave way to dense forests and wooden villages, I got to know a family from the Far North.

Tatiana, Nastia, and Sasha

My roommates for the 27-hour trip from Moscow to Yekaterinburg were Tatiana and her two children, Nastia and Sasha.

Within minutes of departure I took off my shoes to get comfortable and waited for the hallway activity to calm down before preparing for bed. Tatiana, somehow sensing my inexperience with long-distance train travel, pointed at the blue disposable slippers that came with the provided bedding and gently suggested I put them on. I thought they were silly and not for someone who’s used to rough traveling, so I responded that I’m alright in my socks. She tried to convince me a bit longer before giving up.

Moments later, I went to the bathroom—there’s one at each end of every car—and learned they’re just like airplane bathrooms: small and wet, and you don’t know from what . I returned to the cabin, changed my socks, and donned the blue disposable slippers. Tatiana looked on with approval.

They were traveling from their small military town near the Russia-Finland border (where her husband is stationed) to Novosibirsk — over 3,000 miles away — to visit her parents, as they do every summer. Airfare would cost them three months’ worth of income (by my own calculation), so they took the train, like many Russian families traveling to or from Siberia.

Our conversations spanned life in Russia, life in the US, Nastia’s college ambitions (she’s undecided between medicine and chemistry), traveling (because of the husband’s position in the military, the family is not allowed to travel outside of Russia), drawing, Russian literature, and more… We talked without end for two days while sharing food and drinking tea by the liter.

Tatiana teaches literature and Russian at their local school. She told me about life inside the arctic circle and showed me photos of polar lights, fields of flowers, her shirtless husband stepping out of a bania (a Russian sauna) and jumping into the snow, and other everyday scenes. She worried about what will happen after her husband’s military contract ends next year. She’ll miss Nastia when she stays behind in Novosibirsk for one final year of school and then university.

Tatiana also worried about my safety. She advised me to tell people I’m a local: “Your Russian is good enough,” she said, “that people will believe you and assume that your slight accent and slower pace is due to—” and she raised her fingers to her temple and did a twisting gesture. I nodded, thought for a moment, and decided that was a compliment.

Nastia is a straight-A student interested in chemistry and medicine. She’s not sure which of the two she’ll study in university, but she has another year to decide. She’ll stay with her grandparents in a small village outside of the city for another year until it’s time to attend Novosibirsk University. Although she studied english in school for several years, she never felt comfortable enough to speak it. (The faculty at their local school is made up of military spouses with little or no teaching experience.)

Nastia earns money on the side by painting custom designs on her clients’ nails. Her designs—from cartoon characters to landscapes to sunsets, all painted on half-inch-wide keratin canvases—are remarkable and belong in high-end nail salons of New York. I offered her some advice based on my consulting experience (she should charge more for more the elaborate designs). Her entrepreneurial spirit made me happy for her, maybe because it reminded me of my teenage years when I drew cartoons for money.

Sasha is just beginning to learn English, and this was his first encounter with a native speaker. He was nowhere near conversational English, so he engaged the only way he could: shouting out Russian words from his language workbook to see if I could respond with the right translation. “How do you say, um, ‘lion?’” he asked, and looked at me with a wide smile and alert eyes, waiting to hear a word that matched his notes. “Give Greg a break,” Tatiana said, more than once, after many animals were correctly translated, but I gave Sasha an approving smile to signal it’s alright. “Crocodile!?” he continued…

The next day, as the train approached Yekaterinburg in the early morning, I nudged Tatiana and Nastia awake to say “goodbye,” as they requested the night before, when we exchanged longer goodbyes and I told them how wonderful it was to meet and spend time with them. “Goodbye, Greg,” they replied, and both gave me a smile that I didn’t expect from anyone whose sleep was interrupted, who’s been on the road for weeks, who wouldn’t see her daughter (or mother) for a year, whose future was so uncertain… And still they smiled in the way that only good people do.

Previous chapter: St Petersburg Next chapter: Yekaterinburg

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Home » Prices and Trans-Siberian Tickets » Trans-Siberian Railway Ticket Booking

Where can I book my ticket for the Trans-Siberian Railway?

There are two ways to get your Trans-Siberian ticket. You can book all your tickets on the Internet at home in advance and have the tickets sent to you. Alternatively you can fly to Moscow and buy the tickets on the spot over the counter.

Online Booking versus Local Purchase

Both options have their advantages and disadvantages. When booking online you can be sure you have all the tickets in your pocket and don’t have to worry about them when travelling. You have a firm reservation and need not worry that there are perhaps no tickets available. However, this certainty has a price.

If you take nothing but a plane ticket to Moscow and buy your travel reservations for the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia you will, of course, pay less. However, the ticket sellers at the counters can speak no English as a rule. It is difficult, but not impossible, to order your tickets without speaking Russian. Keep in mind that trains can be booked solid and you may have to wait a few days before you can continue. If you prefer careful planning and certainty, this is not for you. If you are looking for pure Trans-Siberian adventure, this is the right address.

Online Reservations with Real Russia

A very good online booking provider is RealRussia. It is the only site I know where you can buy 3rd Class tickets for the Trans-Siberian Railway. Even if you prefer to buy your tickets locally, it is worthwhile checking the various options and approximate costs with their booking engine. The Tour Planner enables you to specify exactly when you want to go and where and how long you want to stay. You can plan your journey in peace and try out the various alternatives. It is worthwhile pushing things around a bit. The price for the same route may differ depending on the type of train used. On the whole the prices compared well with the tickets I purchased at the counter. No one who had booked through RealRussia complained about problems.

What are the key issues when booking?

If you travel on the same class throughout, make sure that the trains have a green “International Rate” logo. You will then save about 100 € on the total cost. The tickets will be sent from England. The shipping costs, depending on the exchange rate, are around 23 €. For about 11 € it is possible to have the tickets sent to your hostel in Moscow. I personally prefer to invest a few extra Euros and have the tickets safely in my hands. But that is up to you. If you want to save the shipping costs you can pick up all the tickets at the agency office in Moscow.

The prices on some rail links are labelled “TBC”. This abbreviation stands for “To Be Confirmed” meaning the price will be determined individually. You will then receive an e-mail quote and can decide whether to accept it or not. These connections are not any more or less expensive than the normal ones. you need a Paypal account or a credit card to pay. This is not a problem as you should in any case get yourself a free credit card for the journey. Note that the final payment will in British pounds. This may include foreign exchange fee of about 1.6% on your credit card.

Type your total distance and your start date into the form below. Then you can then fill in stopover as a second step.

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