Kazakhstan railway map. Kazakhstan Railways - railway

Just as Kazakhstan in its current form began as a territory between Russia and Central Asia, so did Kazakhstan’s railways began their history as a connecting link between the main part of the Soviet Union and its southeastern outskirts - both from the west, from the Urals and the Volga region, and from the east, from Siberia and Altai.
The first railway on the territory of the Kazakh state within its current borders is the Ryazan-Ural Railway, which connected Uralsk with Saratov and Central Russia in 1893.

A little later, a section of the southern passage of the Trans-Siberian Railway was built, passing through Petropavlovsk in 1894.
However, in those years Petropavlovsk was not perceived as anything other than a part of Siberia, and even now the 200-kilometer segment looks very modest against the backdrop of the Kazakh expanses lying to the south.

And the first major railway that passed through the interior regions and through the primordially Kazakh lands was the Tashkent Railway, which by 1906 connected Moscow, Orenburg and the Turkestan capital, passing through Mugodzhary, the western part of the Turgai steppes, the Aral semi-deserts and along the Syr Darya.

A trip along this line can now replace a full-fledged trip around Kazakhstan - the reality surrounding railway tracks and dusty stations with beautiful train stations, mostly not much changed over the past century.

Only pillars appeared in huge quantities, and the beautiful Kazakh cemeteries, with the spread of modern brick, probably became a little larger:

Such immutability of the landscape is not surprising, given that in the first Soviet decades, when the Kazakh economy, industry and, accordingly, a network of cities began to take shape, development still largely took place closer to the outskirts of the country, without moving away from the Central Asian mountains, oases and from the green plains and forests of the North.

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Development of railways in late XIX and in the first decades of the 20th century it was not limited to long main lines; In addition to them, several branches were put into operation, entering the borders of modern Kazakhstan from the adjacent Volga (Saratov - Uralsk), Ural (Chelyabinsk - Troitsk - Kustanai), Siberian (Petropavlovsk - Borovoe) and Altai (Kulunda - Pavlodar) lands.

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Suffice it to remember that the capital of the Kazakh SSR was Alma-Ata, located on the southeastern outskirts of Kazakhstan; and new railway lines continued to be built as transit lines.

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Following the Tashkent Railway, which connected European Russia with Tashkent, already in the 1910s, the adjacent Turkestan-Siberian Railway began to be built, designed to connect Central Asia with Siberia.
It was put into operation at the very end of the 1920s, providing modern transport to the new republican capital Alma-Ata and at the same time covering the south-eastern border of the Union, which was quite transparent in those years.
The third railway crossing the whole of Kazakhstan was built in the 1930s - 1940s. This highway, the shortest of the three, connected Western Siberia and Trans-Urals with Central Asia, passing almost along the meridional (north-south) direction; starting in Akmolinsk/Tselinograd/Akmola/Astana, it joins the Turkestan-Siberian Railway at Chu station several hundred kilometers west of Almaty. During the war years, a railway line from the industrial Urals (Magnitogorsk) was brought to the then Akmolinsk, and the previously built Transsib line (Petropavlovsk) - Borovoe was continued to it. The construction of the Trans-Kazakhstan Railway was largely associated with the beginning of the industrial development of the interior regions of Kazakhstan, based on the development of mineral deposits of the Kazakh small hills, primarily in the Karaganda region. At the same time, a southern part The Ural road, which connected new and old industrial centers to the east of the Ural ridge with mineral deposits in the area of Aktyubinsk and Guryev/Atyrau. The construction of this railway was part of the organization of large-scale production in the rear during the war.
Thus, by 1950, the structure of the Kazakhstan railway network had developed - three main lines coming from the northwest, north and northeast and converging in Southern Kazakhstan.
Intra-Kazakhstan economic development continued and accelerated many times with the beginning of the development of virgin lands in the 1950s. Then the railway network of Northern Kazakhstan reached the density of the railway network Southern Siberia or even the Urals: latitudinal lines were built/completed parallel to the Southern Railway of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Magnitogorsk - Tobol - Tselinograd - Ekibastuz - Pavlodar - Barnaul and Chelyabinsk - Kustanay - Kokchetav - Irtyshskoye - Karasuk - Novosibirsk - Barnaul railway).

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However, these lines also largely had a transit purpose, providing the shortest connection between the Urals and Kuzbass; in addition, until the 2000s, a significant part of passenger trains to Russian Altai traveled through Northern Kazakhstan.
Another significant event in the railway history of Kazakhstan during the development of virgin lands was the construction of a line from the Aktogay station on the Turkestan-Siberian road to the Dostyk (Friendship) station on the Chinese border. However, the Soviet-Chinese friendship soon ended, and the Kazakh railway network no longer acquired a transit function Union, and Eurasian scale was postponed for several decades.
In the late Soviet decades, the development of Kazakhstan's railways slowed down - as did the development of the entire country. The main object put into operation after 1965 was the transit railway in Western Kazakhstan (Astrakhan/Aksarai - Guryev/Atyrau - Beineu - Uzbekistan), which connected the railway network along the shortest route European Russia and the European part of the USSR with western part Central Asia and the Amu Darya Valley. However, by this time the domestic needs of Kazakhstan were already much higher value compared to previous decades: this line serves oil fields in the lower reaches of the Urals and Emba (Guriev/Atyrau), a branch to Aktau/Shevchenko was built, which provided the rapidly developing industrial complex of Mangyshlak with high-volume transport.
It was planned to build another railway connecting Western Kazakhstan and Central Russia in the most shortcut- from Beineu station it would continue the line from Uzbekistan to the northwest, and would approach Aleksandrov Gai station in Saratov region from the southeast. Construction in these places was carried out back in the 1910s - 1920s (the Algemba project), but was stopped, and in the late 1980s the section from Beineu to Inder (Inderborsky village) was built on the banks of the Ural River.
In the early 1960s, electrification of the Kazakhstan railway network began; however, the first electric railway line on the territory of the Kazakh SSR was the section of the Southern Railway of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Petukhovo - Petropavlovsk - Isilkul, 1961)
A little later (1964), a section of the railway in the interior regions (Tselinograd/Astana - Karaganda) was electrified; soon the main line from Astana through Tobol to Kartaly and Magnitogorsk was electrified. The Kazakh SSR was far from the last union republic to acquire electrified railways - they appeared in Uzbekistan, Latvia, and Lithuania later, but did not appear at all in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Moldova. But electrification covered only a small area in the north of the republic; Until the end of the 1970s, no new electrified sections were put into operation.

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In the late 1970s - mid-1980s, electrification of the northern part of the republican railway network (Velinnaya Railway) continued.

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At the end of the 1980s, electrification of the southern part of the Trans-Kazakhstan Railway (to Chu station) ended.

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In the mid-1980s, Uzbekistan began electrification of the Turkestan-Siberian Railway; however, by 1991 it had only reached eastern border South Kazakhstan region (Tulkubas station).
In general, despite their large length and extremely important role in the connections of the main part of the country with Central Asia, the railways of Kazakhstan have never been among the busiest in the Union, and have rarely been the focus of attention of the Union Center - perhaps with the exception of Northern Kazakhstan. An indirect sign of this can be the low share of electrification: from main roads to the end Soviet period Only transit lines in the north were electrified, including the Southern Railway of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and part of the Trans-Kazakhstan Railway.

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Suburban rail transportation has received relatively little development in Kazakhstan; Any significant volumes of electric train traffic are currently present only in the North.

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However, Stepnogorsk in the vicinity of Tselinograd/Astana with its urban electric trains, the relatively frequent movement of which continues today, is one of the few examples of this type of transport in the post-Soviet space.
Despite the large number of intra-republican lines and the increasingly complex structure of the network, by 1991 the Kazakh railway network remained largely fragmented and incomplete, like the entire country. It was still based on trans-Kazakhstan lines; It was difficult to move within the country in a direction that did not coincide with the directions of these trans-Kazakhstan lines: to travel from Western Kazakhstan to Northern Kazakhstan or from Northern Kazakhstan to Eastern Kazakhstan, one had to go to adjacent Russian regions.
So, optimizing the railway network and increasing its connectivity was not the last point in the measures to consolidate the country taken by Nazarbayev; It is logical that the economic-geographical and natural differences between the West, North and East and South could not but be accompanied by socio-economic and ethnic differences, which Ukraine itself has never dreamed of.
Thus, in the 1990s and 2000s, connections were built in Kazakhstan between the West and the North (Aktyubinsk - Tobol in the Kustanai region), the North and the East (Pavlodar - Semipalatinsk), the railway system in the Ust region was connected to the main Kazakh network -Kamenogorsk (from Ust-Kamenogorsk - Charsk station on Turksib).

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The construction of these lines was also connected with the transfer of the capital to Astana - if from Almaty, from the south-eastern corner of the country, it was possible to optimally reach almost all Kazakhstan regions along existing railway lines, which, in fact, connected all parts of the country with the South , then from Astana it was no longer possible; to reach the Kazakh West or East it was necessary to overcome a huge extra distance. Largely thanks to the implementation of these projects, Kazakhstan has taken undisputed first place in the CIS in terms of railway construction volumes.
The only regional center, and now the territory of Russia is cut off from the main railway network of Kazakhstan, is Uralsk. However, Kazakhstan got out of the situation there using management methods: according to an agreement between the Kazakh railway operator Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and the Russian Railways, the section in the Sol-Iletsk area, connecting Uralsk with Aktobe, is controlled by KTZ, and the section of the Southern Railway of the Trans-Siberian Railway in area of Petropavlovsk - "Russian Railways".
During these same years - albeit at a slower pace, given the sharp deterioration of the country's socio-economic situation - electrification continued; by the mid-1990s, electrification reached the Chu station from the west and Central Asia was finally connected by a high-capacity electrified railway to Russia. In 2001, the southern capital of Alma-Ata was finally provided with electric traction.

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In post-Soviet times, the number of transit trains decreased, and in some places they disappeared completely - for example, on the North Kazakhstan transit lines. At the same time, the number of domestic trains has increased, the use of which has become much more justified after optimizing the structure of the railway network.

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When compared with Russia, Kazakhstan has more connections between regional centers, without calling at the capitals, although the concentration of traffic in Astana and Almaty is also very high - about two-thirds of long-distance trains call at either the southern or northern capital.

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The country has become much to a greater extent isolated from neighboring countries in terms of railway connections - now long-distance trains travel through 12 border crossings (9 with Russia, 2 with Uzbekistan, 1 with China), but mostly in small volumes. The only exception- volumes of passenger traffic to China, which are developing along with Kazakh-Chinese relations; Now there are trains from both Kazakh capitals to Western China's Urumqi. However, the outlying regions, which are superior in population and industrial potential to many of the internal regions of the country, still gravitate toward the adjacent Russian regions; one of the signs of this is the continued running of long-distance trains connecting these Kazakhstan outskirts with neighboring, larger ones. Russian cities(Atyrau - Astrakhan and Ridder/Leninogorsk - Ust-Kamenogorsk - Barnaul - Novosibirsk - Tomsk). In addition, trains to Central Russia have been preserved from both Kazakh capitals, as well as from Karaganda (from the latter there is also one train to Belarus).

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In the 2010s it began new stage railway construction - these are lines in the interior of the country between Dzhezkazgan, Kzyl-Orda, Aktobe and Mangyshlak, designed to directly connect the center and the resource-rich west of the country, and reduce the size of the internal periphery that remains in the very center of Kazakhstan. In addition, a line to Turkmenistan was built along the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. An additional connection with China has also appeared - almost directly from Almaty. With the advent of new latitudinal railways in the center of the country, the shortage of latitudinal connections (east - west) will decrease, and lines running closer to the northern and southern borders of the country will be somewhat relieved. If we speak in topological terms, then in Kazakhstan - if we compare the structure of the railway network now and in 1991 - most of the country's territory is covered by cycles of one tier of the railway network. Kazakhstan retains its leadership in the construction of railways in the post-Soviet space - at least if we talk about absolute indicators. In terms of the relative growth of the railway network, Kazakhstan may compete with neighboring Turkmenistan.
As for the prospects for the national railway network, they are quite optimistic. Infrastructure projects generally occupy an important place in Kazakhstan's economic planning; despite the accelerated development of the road network that has emerged in recent years, railways also receive considerable attention. After the commissioning of railway lines in the central part of the country, the mainline construction/framework of the Kazakhstan railway network is generally completed; most of the projects are dedicated to further electrification; first of all, this is the main line to China (Aktogay - Dostyk), the Turksib section connecting it with Southern Kazakhstan (Alma-Ata - Aktogay) and the segment between Turksib and the Trans-Kazakhstan railway (Aktogay - Balkhash - Mointy). The implementation of this project, like many trans-Kazakhstan transport projects, lies in line with one of the many projects to create additional connections between China and Central Asia and Europe.

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Now the length of Kazakhstan's railways exceeds 15,000 km - 20th place in the world, 3rd place in the post-Soviet space; 6,000 km of railways are double-track.
Kazakhstani railways are electrified by a third (5,000 km, 16th place in the world and 3rd place in the CIS in terms of absolute length of electrified railways); on a global scale and by the standards post-Soviet space this is the average.
At the same time, electrification is distributed extremely unevenly throughout the country - in the north and south, in some regions, more than half of the railways are equipped with electric traction, while in the west and east there are no electrified railways at all.

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However, the lack of electrification on many main lines contributes to the fact that a train ride in Kazakhstan is more like a real journey, when you have time to take pictures and even a little look at the reality passing by.

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Currently, about 70 trains run on the Kazakh railway network, of which 42 are intra-Kazakh trains (only 1 of them partially runs along Russian Railways lines), 17 are transit.

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The pride of the passenger service of Kazakhstan's railways is the Tulpar high-speed trains based on the Spanish Talgo 250 trains.

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These trains run on 13 routes, connecting all major cities and major hubs of the Kazakhstan railway network.
They slightly reduce the huge distances in Kazakhstan, shortening the journey by an average of one and a half times.

In the outback, the railway and railway stations are often the center of life to a much greater extent than in Central Russia; With the arrival of the train, everything comes to life, the deserted sun-drenched platforms and station squares are filled with life.

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It feels like the intensity of freight traffic in Kazakhstan is no less than on the main railways of Russia.

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The Kazakh economy, which is based on large metallurgical enterprises and chemical enterprises and the extraction of minerals (coal, ferrous and non-ferrous metal ores, uranium), needs high-capacity transport, such as rail.

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In recent decades, the country's busiest railway line with passenger traffic has become the middle Trans-Kazakhstan road; It is logical that after the capital was moved to Astana, the role of this line became even greater. Now up to 30% of all Kazakh long-distance trains pass through it.

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And a new Nurly Zhol ("Bright Path") station is being built on the eastern outskirts of the city.
In general, there are many old stations in Kazakhstan only on the old Tashkent railway.

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In Central Russia there would be nothing particularly surprising about them, but here, in the steppe country, where the architecture is large quantities began to appear only during the era of virgin lands development and later - these stations look almost like churches of the pre-Mongol era in our country.
In the rest of Kazakhstan, train stations, at best, look something like this:

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And more often like this:

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The Chu station, where the Trans-Kazakhstan and Turkestan-Siberian railways meet, exceeds the Astana railway junction in terms of traffic volume, including due to the not very extensive railway network in Southern Kazakhstan - you can only get from both the east and the north of the country to the south through this station.

The next railway in Kazakhstan in terms of passenger traffic is the southern section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which passes through the republic on a relatively short section; this is the only section of the national railway network where more than half of long-distance trains are transit; although here their number has decreased noticeably compared to the late 1980s.
Petropavlovsk, where the Trans-Kazakhstan Railway adjoins the Trans-Siberian Railway, is also one of the most significant railway junctions in Kazakhstan.
The old Tashkent railway on the section from Arys in the Chimkent region to Aktyubinsk is approximately the same as the Petropavlovsk section of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

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Many Kazakh trains pass along this line, connecting the south of the country with the west, but there are also several trains from the European part of Russia to Central Asia, and one train from Russia to Alma-Ata.

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The southern section of Turksib does not lag behind this line - between Arys/Chimkent and Alma-Ata; This is where the flow from north to south passes, as well as most of the trains to Alma-Ata. However, with the gradual transfer of some trains to the new railway line Dzhezkazgan - Saksaulskaya - Beyneu, this segment may be somewhat relieved.
Almaty remains the third largest railway hub in Kazakhstan by traffic volume - about a third of long-distance trains running on the Kazakhstan railway network pass through the southern capital.
Turksib northeast of Almaty is noticeably less busy - there are much fewer transit trains from Russian Siberia to Central Asia (more precisely, there is only one left), and there have never been many internal ones, because the eastern outskirts of the country are quite deserted even by Kazakh standards.
The country's other major railway hubs are Arys, located at the junction of the Turksib and Tashkent railways, and neighboring Chimkent, the capital of Southern Kazakhstan, rivaling Astana for the title of the country's second most populous city.
The main railway junction of Western Kazakhstan is Kandyagash, located at the intersection of the Tashkent railway and the old Ural railway, which now carries trains to the rich raw materials of Atyrau and Aktau (Mangyshlak).
Eastern Kazakhstan is perhaps the poorest region in Kazakhstan for long-distance trains; the main junction here is Semipalatinsk, where the new railway from Pavlodar adjoins the Turkestan-Siberian Railway.
, whose main station is called "Zashchita" - a secondary hub, but busy thanks to the industrial power of the city; until recently - before the construction of the line to Turksib - it was generally isolated from the national railway network, communicating with it only through the Russian Altai region(Lokot station).

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Over the past decades, the role of the North Kazakhstan latitudinal railway lines (Ural - Altai) has changed the most, where most of the trains were transit, and now there are none left there at all. There is now no through traffic on these railways, in some places there is no passenger traffic at all, all the remaining trains are connecting the new Kazakh capital Astana with the western and eastern regions of the country.
The situation with electric trains and with commuter trains in general in Kazakhstan is in many ways similar to the Russian one, only perhaps more severe: while in our country cases of complete cancellation of suburban traffic are not so frequent, in Kazakhstan this occurs with greater frequency.

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It can be said that suburban traffic on most Kazakhstani railway lines has never been particularly intense - after all, the population density in the country is very low.

But after 1991, commuter trains disappeared in many densely populated areas, especially in the south; Perhaps the most egregious situation has developed in the one and a half million agglomeration of Almaty, where until recently there was only one commuter train (not every day), but now, it seems, there are none left at all. Sections of the main railway lines electrified after 1991 generally do not have commuter service, which is quite unusual by the standards of our country, where commuter service on main electrified lines is usually the last to disappear.

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Suburban electric trains remain in the north - Karaganda - Astana - Borovoye - Kustanay and Astana - Ekibastuz - Pavlodar, not counting the city electric trains of Stepnogorsk, also on the Trans-Siberian Railway, in the Petropavlovsk region, and also in the vicinity of Kustanay. Along with Astana, the main hub for suburban traffic is Karaganda, which has an extensive network of local lines, including one of two lines in Kazakhstan where only electric trains run (Kokpekty - Temirtau).

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In the area of Shymkent and Arys, locomotive-hauled commuter trains run along electrified sections; in other regions, commuter trains operate mainly in remote areas where the roads are worse, or where there are no long-distance trains.
Other interesting feature suburban railway service in Kazakhstan - there are still cross-border commuter trains here, unlike the Russian-Ukrainian and even Russian-Belarusian borders. On certain cross-border sections (Pavlodar - Kulunda, Tobol - Kartaly) they are the only representatives of passenger railway traffic, and in some places (Uralsk - Ozinki) they supplement long-distance traffic. Most likely, this is due to the same economic and geographical specifics of Kazakhstan, where the outskirts are more densely populated and more developed than central areas, and gravitate towards major cities located across the border (Northwestern Kazakhstan - to the Urals metropolis, Western Kazakhstan - to Astrakhan, Northern Kazakhstan - also to the Urals, and to Omsk, Eastern Kazakhstan - to Barnaul and Novosibirsk, Southern Kazakhstan - to Tashkent). Border areas have been developed to a greater extent, and suburban transportation is more in demand here.

KTZ tower among new buildings

"Kazakhstan Railways"(Kaz. Kazakhstan Temir Zholy- Kazakhstan Railway) - operator of the main railway network of Kazakhstan. Full name - Joint Stock Company "National Company "Kazakhstan Temir Zholy"". Headquarters - in Astana.

Republican state enterprise“Kazakhstan Railways” was created by Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated January 31, 1997 No. 129 “On the reorganization of railway enterprises of the Republic of Kazakhstan” by merging three RSE: the Directorate of the Almaty Railway, the Directorate of the Tselinnaya Railway and the Directorate of the West Kazakhstan Railway. The purpose of the merger was to optimize the management structure of the transportation process and eliminate unnecessary links, as well as the financial and economic recovery of the railway industry.

By Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated March 15, 2002 No. 310 “On the creation of a Closed joint stock company“National Company “Kazakhstan Railways”” was formed by CJSC “National Company “Kazakhstan Railways”” by merging the RSE “Kazakhstan Railways” with its subsidiaries. One of the differences between a RSE and a joint stock company is that a (Z)JSC can have a profit and pay dividends, while a RSE operates at break-even. In the case of KZD, the company pays dividends in favor of its sole shareholder - Samruk-Kazyna - and the national fund pays dividends to the republican budget.

On April 2, 2004, in accordance with the Law “On Joint Stock Companies” dated May 13, 2003, NC KTZ CJSC was re-registered into NC KTZ JSC.

Owners and management

The sole shareholder of the company is the Samruk-Kazyna national fund, 100% of whose shares belong to the Republic of Kazakhstan. The fund solves problems of improving the quality of corporate governance, increasing budget transparency, manages the activities of KTZ through the board of directors, without interfering in operational work.

The activities of KTZ are controlled by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, which, as an authorized body, ensures the implementation public policy in the area railway transport, as well as the state Agency for the Regulation of Natural Monopolies.

Samruk-Kazyna approves the company’s board of directors, which in turn approves the company’s president and annual reports. The candidacy for the president of the society is proposed by the president of the country.

Since June 2009, the post of Chairman of the Board of Directors of KTZ has been occupied by Timur Kulibayev.

Board composition

Chairman of the Board, President of NC KTZ JSC - Askar Mamin (April 2008)
Vice President - Ermek Kizatov (2008)
Vice President for Support - Erik Sultanov (2008)
Vice President for Economics and Finance - Kanat Alpysbaev (2008)
Vice President of Human Resources and social issues- Askhat Akchurin (2008)
Vice President for Logistics - Erkhat Iskaliev (2011)
Advisor to the President - Beibit Zhusupov
Managing Director, Chief of Staff - Kanat Almagambetov
Managing Director for Legal Affairs - Rustem Khasenov
Managing Director for Economics - Almas Lepesbaev
Managing Director for Finance - Elena Lepskaya
Managing Director for Operations - Baurzhan Urynbasarov

Asset structure

Currently, KZD has a holding structure. The company's asset portfolio includes 26 subsidiaries, affiliates and jointly controlled organizations with a geographical presence throughout Kazakhstan.

Activity

Railway transport is the most important component of the industrial infrastructure of Kazakhstan. In force geographical features- the lack of direct access to the sea and navigable rivers, the vastness of the territory, the raw material structure of production and the location of productive forces, the underdevelopment of the road transport infrastructure - railway transport plays an extremely important role in the country's economy.

The railway industry of Kazakhstan is a fast-growing market, the production and technical potential of which is steadily increasing in lately [When?] and provides employment to more than 140 thousand people.

The company’s activities are regulated by the laws of the republic “On Railway Transport” and “On natural monopolies and regulated markets."

Performance indicators

Freight transport

In 2010, freight turnover amounted to 213 billion t km. The total volume of cargo transportation in 2009 amounted to 268 million tons, of which 35% was in export traffic, 53% in interregional traffic, 6% in import traffic and 6% in transit traffic.

Passenger transportation

Joints

The Kazakhstan Railway borders on the Volga Railway (at Ozinki and Aksarayskaya stations) in the west, with the South Ural Railway (at Iletsk-1, Nikeltau, Tobol, Presnogorkovskaya, Petropavlovsk stations) in the north, and with the West Siberian Railway (along Kulunda and Lokot-Altaisky stations) in the northeast, with the Lanxin Railway (China) along the cross-border crossing Dostyk (Friendship) - Alashankou in the southeast and (Korgas station on the Zhetygen - Korgas highway) in the east, with The Uzbekistan railway (via Oasis and Sary-Agach stations) in the south, with the Turkmen railway (via Bolashak station on the Uzen - state border with Turkmenistan highway) in the southwest.

Quality

Electric locomotives used in Spanish traction high speed trains Talgo 200 between Astana and Almaty may be good, but the Spanish cars in the train are worse than compartment cars (made in Russia or Soviet Union). I was convinced of this from December 14, 2012 to December 15, 2012 (landing at 20.00 in Almaty (station - Almaty-2), arriving at Karaganda on March 6). The carriage is very noisy, like a tin can, shaking and swaying all over, I very much regretted that I did not travel in an ordinary compartment carriage. The price for a seat cost me 18,800 tenge. By plane it would cost an average of 15,000. You have to try very hard to fall asleep in such a noisy carriage. The compartment room has a radio station (from the 70s) - why???, there is no TV, but there is a proud inscription above the ceiling - Wi-Fi. The dispenser installed at the beginning of the car is so wobbly that it seems like it will fall in the aisle; disposable cups are rolling around on the shelf next to it, but I never saw a trash can for their disposal. There are no seats in the restaurant, the impression is that everyone is hungry. My neighbor was brought a drink to his room without a glass. The impressions from the trip in the Spanish carriages of train No. 001 remained negative.

Notes

Bond price information on Kazakhstan Temir Zholy Finance B.V. 6.375% 06/10/2020 (ISIN XS0546214007). (Russian) (Retrieved July 16, 2011)
Eurobonds “Kazakhstan Temir Zholy Finance B.V.”, 05/11/2016, 7.0% (ISIN XS0253694755). (Russian) (Retrieved July 16, 2011)
Consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2010 and independent auditors' report, pp. 6, 10, 30, 43, 54. (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
Annual report 2009, p. 53. (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
Group structure (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
Charter of the joint stock company “National Company “Kazakhstan Temir Zholy”” (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
According to the company's charter, the official name in Russian is JSC National Company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (sic).
(Russian) (Retrieved May 26, 2011)
(Russian) (Retrieved May 26, 2011)
Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated March 26, 2010 No. 239 (Russian) (Retrieved May 26, 2011)
(Russian) (Retrieved May 26, 2011)

A well-developed railway network is typical for the Republic of Kazakhstan. Its total length is 14 thousand km. Only 4 thousand km have been electrified. The railways of Kazakhstan in some sections are managed by the railway administrations of Russia and Kyrgyzstan.

For the state, railway transport has great value, since it accounts for more than 57% of the country's passenger turnover and 69% of the country's cargo turnover. Among the countries former USSR Kazakhstan has the most progressive railway sector. The operator of the railway network is the Kazakhstan Railways company, whose office is located in Astana. You can see the train schedule on the website http://www.railways.kz.

What trains are used?

The rolling stock of the railway is represented by freight cars, passenger cars, tank cars and traction vehicles (diesel locomotives, diesel trains, electric trains, etc.). The railway sector is an important part of the production infrastructure. Kazakhstan does not have navigable rivers or access to the sea, but has a vast territory and an underdeveloped transport sector. These conditions make the role of railway transport paramount. The railways of Kazakhstan have high technical and production potential, which has been steadily increasing in recent years.

Railway communication is necessary for direct communication of the country with Russian cities, such as Moscow, Samara, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Barnaul, etc. Long-distance trains constantly run from the Russian capital to Kazakhstan. Regular flights operate from the listed cities to Pavlodar, Karaganda, Alma-Ata and Astana. Railways connect Kazakhstan with other countries (Kyrgyzstan, China, Uzbekistan). Traveling around the country by train is very convenient. Between major settlements Trains run regularly. Ticket availability can be found on the website railways.kz, which is available in Russian.

Conditions and tickets

IN Kazakhstan trains Classes of trains similar to Russian ones are used: compartment, SV, general, reserved seat. Conditions for passengers do not differ from conditions on trains in the Russian Federation. The main routes of the country: Almaty - Pavlodar, Almaty - Astana, Almaty - Kostanay, etc. A high-speed train equipped with Spanish-made carriages runs daily between Almaty and Astana. This train has three classes of carriages: tourist, business and grand. The cost of a ticket for a high-speed train is approximately 2000 rubles (about 9800 tenge). A ticket for a regular train can be purchased for 7,000 tenge. To purchase a train ticket, you can use the following virtual platform: https://epay.railways.kz.