Most Interesting Border crossed by Train (Land)

[jamesontheroad]

This sole carriage was our "cross border" train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki in 1987. My memories are a bit vague, but we certainly began the journey hooked up to a Turkish Express going somewhere in the general direction of northern Greece. When we awoke next morning this is what our "train" looked like. After some passports checks, we were some time later hitched to a Greek train and completed rest of journey. Sadly, I don't have any real idea of where was. No services run that way nowadays.

Lovely memories, thank you. It was possibly Pythion.

 

[RT4038]

This sole carriage was our "cross border" train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki in 1987. My memories are a bit vague, but we certainly began the journey hooked up to a Turkish Express going somewhere in the general direction of northern Greece. When we awoke next morning this is what our "train" looked like. After some passports checks, we were some time later hitched to a Greek train and completed rest of journey. Sadly, I don't have any real idea of where was. No services run that way nowadays.

I believe this is Pithion (Ptiyo in Turkish). I travelled this way in February 2006, not by through coach - the morning (day) train left Istanbul about 08h30, with cars labelled for Pithion and Edirne (Adrianople). At Pehlivankoy the train was split, and the Pithion cars taken down to Uzunkopru (the border town on the Turkish side). All the Ptiyo passengers (I think 4 of us) were moved into the leading coach, which was uncoupled and taken over to Pithion arriving about 14h30. The Turkish train departed back about 15h30, then a train arrived from Athens (just missing, but not a scheduled connection). About another hour later an IC train to Thessalonika arrived which I caught to Alexandropolis to stay the night, before going onward to Thessalonika and Athens. The Station Master at Pithion was delighted to sell me an IC supplement reservation! There was nothing to do in Pithion but wait, although there was an interesting memorial to British soldiers killed at Pithion during the First World War, and a small abandoned steam loco shed.
The European Rail Timetable seems to indicate that the journey can still sort of be made (Possibly only via Edirne] , although you'd have to make your own way across the border [I'm unsure if there is a road crossing the frontier at this point?] However, I'm glad I did it when International service still hung on a thread and before the Greek rail network attenuation!

 

[LesS]

Two interesting crossings:
1. India into Pakistan. Amritsar to Lahore in 1990
Several hours at the last Indian station of exit passport control; then 5 minutes across the border, then another long stop for Pakistan border control.
The full story of segregated ques, pushy indian women, racial discrimination, and corrupt border officials would take too long.

2.Zimbabwe to Botswana in 1987
This was a Zimbabwe Railways service from Bulawayo to Johannesburg. At the last stop in Zimbabwe final immigration and customs was conducted on the train. All was ready to depart on time; BUT. A full hour was then taken to search the train repeatedly to find some stowaways. They were finally found.

 

[alex397]

Not as interesting many of the fascinating posts above, but for me I think the border I crossed today was the most interesting that I’ve done myself so far, mainly because I was the only passenger!
This was from Romania into Hungary, on the 09.40 from Salonta to Békéscsaba, on a single car diesel Class 117.
Having a whole train to myself (and the driver and conductor) crossing an international border was bizarre and must be rare to happen elsewhere.

So for one passenger to cross the border, there was a driver, conductor, a railway worker at the Kötegyán signal box to change the points just for the Salonta service, and a seperate railway worker to change the points at the other end of the station, as the Class 117 manoeveres to join a trailer at Kötegyán. This station also has a train dispatcher Certainly different staffing levels to the UK!. 3 other passengers joined here to continue the journey.

 

[parkender102]

This sole carriage was our "cross border" train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki in 1987. My memories are a bit vague, but we certainly began the journey hooked up to a Turkish Express going somewhere in the general direction of northern Greece. When we awoke next morning this is what our "train" looked like. After some passports checks, we were some time later hitched to a Greek train and completed rest of journey. Sadly, I don't have any real idea of where was. No services run that way nowadays.

Great Pic! I did Koln / Munich to Athens or Istanbul back in the eighties a few times and some of the rolling stock had seen better days! If you stuck to the German Coaches they were always a better bet. One of my vivid memories was nursing a hangover after a party somewhere on the train in the middle of the old Yugoslavia. We were passing through Northern Greek Mountains the next day and the dining car consisted of an empty luggage wagon with a wooden Box full of cans of Lowenbrau covered in ice. Random tables and chairs that looked like they'd been pilfered from someone's living room were placed around the coach and we sat there with the sun blazing as we snaked through the mountains drinking ice cold Lowenbrau to nurse our hangovers.............

 

[duesselmartin]

Cleaning crew at Dortmund hated the Balkan trains as they usually were a horrible mess. From compartments to toilets..

 

[StephenHunter]

looked to me, many of them, about twelve years old, and not the slightest bit menacing;

Most of them would have been conscripts, even the corporals and sergeants.

 

[Cheshire Scot]

Cleaning crew at Dortmund hated the Balkan trains as they usually were a horrible mess. From compartments to toilets..

After an overnight journey fom Venice into the Balkans in the 1980s (en route to Athens (which of course meant another night on the train)) I ventured to the toilet to have a morning wash. From the state of the toilet and wash basin I decided it would be safer not to wash and for the only time in the past fifty plus years I did not have a morning shave, fearing any accidental cut might become infected. On the next morning I found a reasonably clean toilet in the Greek coaches which had attached at Thessaloniki late the previous evening and felt safe to get rid of the horrible stubble which I had not experienced either before or since.

 

[43066]

Monaco - entirely in tunnel from one border to the other. Unique.

I can see an argument that the channel tunnel qualified, since it goes under the sea bed .

I seem to remember reading that, pre 1989, the trains in west Berlin used to run through the Eastern side without stopping - so effectively behind the Berlin Wall.

 

[bluegoblin7]

The Maple Leaf (New York, NY - Toronto, ON) is different from the Cascades and Adirondack in that Amtrak and VIA Rail share operation. It's an Amtrak train (with Amtrak staff and products in the café car, for example) in the USA and a VIA Rail train in Canada. It also makes additional stops between the border and Toronto. I haven't take it in almost 20 years, but my recollection from recent reports is that border controls are handled in the stations on either side of the border, so you need to detrain and bring luggage with you. (That may be incorrect - I welcome updates).

Yes, this is still the case. I did the Maple Leaf northbound in January - all off at Niagara and into the room described elsewhere. Thankfully the train was very lightly loaded but I can imagine it being a tight squeeze at times. It was a relatively smooth process, although I can imagine it being somewhat annoying having to get off to only get back on - I was breaking my journey at Niagara as it was, although it wasn’t fun getting off the train with two suitcases.

 

[Moritzplatz]

The most memorable border crossing for me was one that I did virtually every day from the West Berlin underground station that forms my user name - Moritzplatz, on line U8.

Due to the Cold War division of the city, two underground lines, U6 and U8, started in the south of West Berlin then travelled north beneath East Berlin in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and then out again into the north of West Berlin. (Click here for a 1987 Berlin underground map.) This meant passing through several 'Geisterbahnhöfe' ('ghost stations') in East Berlin, whose entrances had bricked up since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and which were patrolled by armed members of the East German transport police. As you can imagine, it was a hugely eerie experience to pass through these stations underneath a different country whose inhabitants could hear the Western trains, but not access them.

Even more strangely, Friedrichstraße station in East Berlin was an interchange for West Berliners to cross between the U6 and S-Bahn trains which also crossed Berlin's sector boundaries (see map). This was in a part of the station that East Berliners couldn't access. There were also 'Intershops' on the West Berlin platforms of Friedrichstraße where Western commuters were encouraged by the GDR to buy duty-free spirits and cigarettes in return for Western currency. Anyone make such purchases would then have to sit in fear of being stopped on their return by West Berlin customs officers who would sporadically jump on underground and S-Bahn trains en masse to check passengers for contraband at the first station in West Berlin.

 

[jamesontheroad]

This thread now contains many fascinating stories. They prompted me to recall a memorable border I did not manage to cross by train. Apologies for going off topic...

In 2010, I was on a three-week postgraduate university exchange in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The exchange spanned the long weekend of Chinese New Year, so with the university planned to be closed, four of us planned a trip to Bangkok. Although the consensus was to take a flight, I persuaded them to travel by bus and train on the way there and then fly back.

On day 1, we left KL and took a bus to Penang Island, where we stayed in a beachside lodge at Batu Feringghi. The next day, we crossed back to the mainland and to the old Butterworth train station (which I now learn has been demolished and replaced with a rather cramped new one under a shopping mall).

Photos of the old Butterworth station...















The train departed Butterworth at 14.20. We had four wide seats in an open-section carriage. A delayed southbound train caused us to halt at a rural station around dusk.









At Padang Besar (which, I think, is the current southern terminus of the international train) everything started to go wrong.

Of the four of us, two held joint British-Irish citizenship. At the time, I had British citizenship. Our fourth colleague was Slovakian.

If I remember it correctly, Padang Besar station is an island platform. The train arrived on one side, and everyone was obliged to leave the train to pass through the Malaysian exit border control and then the Thai entry border control. We were among the last passengers in the line.

The problem was my colleague's Slovakian passport. Despite 17 years having elapsed since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, at that time (2010), the government of Thailand had still not updated all of its land borders to recognise the passports of some newer countries.

There was absolutely no negotiation, she could not board the train again. We had to make a snap decision, because the train crew were getting impatient and it was late at night - around 22.30.

I made the snap decision to stay with her, and told our Irish colleagues to continue on the train to Bangkok. We were allowed to retrieve our bags and then the train departed.

However, the next problem was that while we were distracted trying to make a decision and retrieve our bags, the Malaysia border control staff had closed their office and left. For the first (and I hope only!) time in my life, we were temporarily in limbo, neither in Malaysia or in Thailand. To their credit, a member of KTM staff directed us to the Malaysian road border post a few hundred meters east of the station. He came with us, and explained the situation in Bahasa Malaysia. We were stamped back into Malaysia.

The guards told us the problem with certain passports was known to them, and that we would be able to enter Thailand at the Bukit Kayu Hitam border crossing on Asian Highway 2. It was now 23.00 and the border would close at midnight. We found a local taxi driver and directed him to the border, a journey of about 45 minutes. At Bukit Kayu Hitam we were able to walk out of Malaysia for the second time that night (the collection of stamps with the same date in my passport was already causing confusion). There was quite a long walk between the two border posts, but a man in a very expensive Audi offered us a ride and got us to the Thai border post before it closed.

There was a small town on the other side (Sadao?) and from there we took a Thai taxi towards Hat Yai station We initially hoped we catch up with the train there, but of course were too late.

It was about 01.00 at this point. I remember we walked east from the station, along what I guess was Thumnoonvithi Road. We found a hotel and I stopped on the pavement downstairs to drink a cold beer. I was exhausted from the day of travel and the afterglow of the adrenaline that had been coursing through my veins for the last couple of hours. But, for the first time in my life, I was in Thailand... and I knew I would remember the story. As if to make the situation more surreal, at that moment a street entertainer walked past us with an elephant.

The next day, we went directly to the intercity bus station, and chose, at random, one of the countless bus companies offering fast direct service to Bangkok. We had two seats up front on a double-decker coach. Despite having missed the chance to experience an obscure and exotic night train, I got to see much more of Thailand as we traced the length of the southern half of the country. I also learned a lot about the differences between UK and Thai driving "styles" ... and the versatility of the pickup truck.

 

[Cheshire Scot]

This thread now contains many fascinating stories. They prompted me to recall a memorable border I did not manage to cross by train. Apologies for going off topic...

A fascinating story of a memorable journey, thank you.

 

[stadler]

Khasan (Russia) to Tumangang (North Korea) is by far the most interesting one i have done. Back in 2017 or 2018 i did this route in both directions on my North Korea visit. I was initially thinking of the China route but then decided on this one as it is simpler and avoids spending more money on a Chinese visa too. I am glad i did is it is a very interesting border crossing.

The train and the operations of it is really interesting. It starts off from Moscow as one North Korean carriage attached to the Moscow to Vladivostok train. Then at Ussuriysk (about an hour before Vladivostok) the carriage gets detached. Then you wait there for four or five hours and the carriage gets attached to a Vladivostok to Khasan local train (which has just come from Vladivostok) and continue the journey. You travel for a few hours to Khasan and your carriage gets detached from the local train. You wait there for hours and then do Russian border control. Then finally your carriage goes the short distance across the border. Then you arrive in Tumangang and do North Korean border control and wait for hours more. Your carriage then gets attached to a North Korean local train and you continue the journey from Tumangang to Pyongyang where you finish. The other direction was exactly the same in reverse. I did both directions.

It must be the slowest border crossing in the world. We spent around seven or eight hours sitting around in Khasan and then went fifteen minutes across the border and spent around seven or eight hours sitting around in Tumangang again. The same happened in reverse. I think the whole border crossing procedure for both borders took at least fifteen hours total. Interestingly the border control was not as strict as you would expect. I have had much stricter ones in other places. Both the Russian and North Korean sides were not that interested in my baggage and only did a quick basic check. They only really spent a lot of time looking at my passport and visa and checking my documents and stamped me. It was nowhere near as strict as i was expecting.

The thing that makes this route more interesting is that you get much more time in North Korea without a guide. I had almost two days on the train from Tumangang to Pyongyang without a guide and then almost two more days on the return from Pyongyang to Tumangan without a guide. The guides meet you at Pyongyang station and then drop you off there on return. So it gives you a very rare chance to spend some time in North Korea by yourself. I understand the Chinese train normally has guides to and from the border.

One person at the tour company i went with said that they are only aware of about fifteen Western tourists use that route in the past five years. So that is about three Western tourists per year at this border crossing. It may well hold the record for the rail border crossing with the least tourists. In both directions on my trains there was no other Western tourists. I believe up until the early 2010s it was not even officially allowed. I remember reading some blog from the early 2000s about some Germans who unofficially took this route. For some reason almost all tourists still continued to use the China route even though the Russia route became officially permitted since the early 2010s at some point. I am glad i did it before covid as North Korea seems to have closed since and still not reopened to tourists so this border crossing is likely to be unavailable currently.

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

Have you read Helmut Uttenthaler's account of his 2008 voyage from Vienna to Pyongyang using that train?

The forbidden railway: Vienna - Pyongyang 윈 - 모스크바 - 두만강 - 평양

Our train trip via Russia to North Korea - using an officially closed for foreigners route inside the "Hermit Kingdom"

vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com

 

[stadler]

Have you read Helmut Uttenthaler's account of his 2008 voyage from Vienna to Pyongyang using that train?

The forbidden railway: Vienna - Pyongyang 윈 - 모스크바 - 두만강 - 평양

Our train trip via Russia to North Korea - using an officially closed for foreigners route inside the "Hermit Kingdom"

vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com

Ah yes that must be the one i had read. I thought i remember reading a blog about some German or Austrian who had done it years ago. He must have been the first Western tourist to cross that border.

 

[WessexEclectic]

Khasan (Russia) to Tumangang (North Korea) is by far the most interesting one i have done. Back in 2017 or 2018 i did this route in both directions on my North Korea visit. I was initially thinking of the China route but then decided on this one as it is simpler and avoids spending more money on a Chinese visa too. I am glad i did is it is a very interesting border crossing.

Were there any other tourists/non-Koreans in the carriage with you? Seems surprising that NK allowed visitors in that route without a 'chaperone' - Helmut seemed to indicate that their route via Tumangan in 2008 was *very* unofficial.

Tangentially, it seems NK is allowing some tourists atm - provided they have Russian passports.....

 

[ANDREW_D_WEBB]

The border between the Greek and Turkish parts of Nicosia is unusual. It is like having an international border half way along your local high street.

 

[Watershed]

The border between the Greek and Turkish parts of Nicosia is unusual. It is like having an international border half way along your local high street.

Yes, but it's not a border you can cross by train (as per the premise of this thread) as there are no railways at all on the island.

 

[parkender102]

Were there any other tourists/non-Koreans in the carriage with you? Seems surprising that NK allowed visitors in that route without a 'chaperone' - Helmut seemed to indicate that their route via Tumangan in 2008 was *very* unofficial.

Tangentially, it seems NK is allowing some tourists atm - provided they have Russian passports.....

In 1989 when we independently travelled UK - Budapest - Moscow - Beijing on the Trans Manchurian Route of the Trans Siberian Railway, we had no Chaperone or Tour Guide from Moscow to Beijing. Not sure whether this was common or not. When we arrived at the Departure Station in Moscow late one Saturday night there was a small group of Finnish (amongst others) who had a Chaperone and she seemed interested in us as she had no idea we were going to be on the Train. We told her we had travelled on the Overnight Train from Budapest (I assume this went through Ukraine but don't really recall any details). The Chaperone and other Tourists were located in another Carriage and Compartment further down the train. My girlfriend and I and a guy from Norfolk who had also travelled from Budapest were the only other 'Western' travellers on the train. I'm pretty sure the Chaperone was also keeping an eye on us for at least the Russian portion of the journey as she appeared at regular intervals.

 

[stadler]

Were there any other tourists/non-Koreans in the carriage with you? Seems surprising that NK allowed visitors in that route without a 'chaperone' - Helmut seemed to indicate that their route via Tumangan in 2008 was *very* unofficial.

Tangentially, it seems NK is allowing some tourists atm - provided they have Russian passports.....

Myself and my wife were the only two tourists on both the outward and return journey. The other people on both trains were a mix of Russians and North Koreans but they were all going there for work. I recall most of the Russians were embassy workers and Russian government contractors were going to and from Pyongyang for work. I understand North Korea also sends a lot of people to Russia for various work and i think this train was the regular route for them. None of the North Korean passengers on my trains spoke English or Russian so i could not communicate with them but one of the Russians onboard said they mostly do construction work. But it was a fairly quiet carriage and no other tourists. We had a compartment to ourselves. I was very surprised myself as i had expected to be met at the border (as i know happens with the China route) but instead i was met at Pyongyang station and then dropped off at Pyongyang station after my two week tour there had finished.

I think the route became official in the early 2010s at some point. The embassy and tour company knew what route i was taking and did not have a problem with it other than initially being surprised that i chose such an obsucre route. My visa even showed Tumangang as my entry and exit points. There is a few other accounts online of foreigners doing this route in recent times the mid 2010s so it has been done by others. I was also told that four New Zealand citizens had done it a couple months before me. So it seems they did make it an officially approved route at some point.

One thing i was told though is that the train via Tumangang could only be used as both the entry and exit point. I could not enter via this route and exit via China and i could not enter via China and exit via this route. Apparently foreign tourists using this Tumangang route had to both enter and exit via the same route. My initial thought was perhaps it was because they take your electronic devices at the border and return them to you. But that did not happen and i was able to keep all my electronic devices. So i have no idea why this is. For some reason they want foreign tourists to enter and exit the same way.

 

[dutchflyer]

Those when Berlin was divided in east/west also had in some places that wall just across streets etc. The above mentioned Friedrichstrasse S-Bahn had, if I remember well (first trip as student to over there) very high steel fences between the tracks-one could visit East_Berlin on a daypass for paying some precious DEM to get an equal amount of Mark-DDR. But this fence was remarkably quick to disappear when the walls fell, so one could see how close together it actually was.
This as I passed by also vanished former such rail-crossings like Helmstedt a week or two ago.

 

[Davester50]

Zimbabwe - Zambia both on steam hauled specials and Normal service train over the Victoria Falls bridge.

2.Zimbabwe to Botswana in 1987
This was a Zimbabwe Railways service from Bulawayo to Johannesburg. At the last stop in Zimbabwe final immigration and customs was conducted on the train. All was ready to depart on time; BUT. A full hour was then taken to search the train repeatedly to find some stowaways. They were finally found.

That was a good episode of Great Railway Journeys of the World at a very interesting period from Cape Town to Victoria Falls.


My own border crossing was quite a few years ago on the train from Malmo to Berlin with old East German couchettes on the rail ferry.
Great fun getting woken up with a torch light in my eyes to get the passport checked - even though the attendant held the passport and tickets.

 

[jamesontheroad]

Great Railway Journeys of the World at a very interesting period from Cape Town to Victoria Falls.

 

[RT4038]

Sadly, apart from a fairly short distance out of Cape Town on a suburban train, safety in numbers, none of this journey is now possible on ordinary service trains. All gone - so much for progress. A trip on the Blue Train from Cape Town to Pretoria is still possible £1,600 single per peron sharing., but crosses no borders.

 

[Davester50]

Yes. I remember watching the episodes when I was young, and found the YouTubes a few years ago. Well worth a watch.
Wish they'd show them again, but they've only ever shown Michael Palin's episode, and series 2 recently.

 

[nwales58]

Sadly, ... none of this journey is now possible on ordinary service trains. All gone - so much for progress. A trip on the Blue Train from Cape Town to Pretoria is still possible £1,600 single per peron sharing., but crosses no borders.

No service trains but Rovos will take you there and back several times a year.

Rovos' once a year Cape Town-Dar es Salam crosses 4 'interesting' borders, paying them to take care of it all probably removes much of the pain (apart from the cost).

 

[65477]

In 1977 the East German government run a limited number of organised trips to the country, one of which was railway based. This led to a number of odd border crossings. The journey into East Germany and Berlin was as expected but the return crossing meant that the train was met by people offering western chocolate and other items to those leaving the east – but not us English tourists.

At one station stop we were shown a red line on a platform and told not to cross it as officially the other side was in Poland. This did not stop us being allowed a short footplate trips on a steam loco’ on the tracks passing the said line!

Our plan was to return to the west by the overnight train from Dresden to Vienna. However the meant crossing Czechoslovakia, so we presented ourselves at the embassy in London to get the required transit visa. At which point we found out that we would be required to convert US dollars into the local currency and spend all of it in the country. We pointed out that we would be in an Austrian coach on an overnight train but were informed we still had to spend the money or forfeit it. At which point we changed our plans an went via Nurenburg. The odd thing was that while we were in East Germany we did actually cross into Czechoslovakia at one point due to the railway crossing the border, there were no signs anywhere about the border.



The last example in the trip was that my friend point out that where we were in Austria we could see Hungarian steam as there was a line between two stations in Austria which went through Hungary and passed Sopron steam shed. This was my only experience of the sealed train with armed guards as described by others. Luckily the guards were not in the seated area of the coach and I did manage to snatch a picture of the shed.

 

[RT4038]

No service trains but Rovos will take you there and back several times a year.

Rovos' once a year Cape Town-Dar es Salam crosses 4 'interesting' borders, paying them to take care of it all probably removes much of the pain (apart from the cost).

I've done all those borders by train already - the Rovos trip i'd like to do is to Lobito (Angola). But look at the price (US$16 500 per person sharing). Dreams, but on my (golden) bucket list!!!!

 

[The exile]

In 1977 the East German government run a limited number of organised trips to the country, one of which was railway based. This led to a number of odd border crossings. The journey into East Germany and Berlin was as expected but the return crossing meant that the train was met by people offering western chocolate and other items to those leaving the east – but not us English tourists.

At one station stop we were shown a red line on a platform and told not to cross it as officially the other side was in Poland. This did not stop us being allowed a short footplate trips on a steam loco’ on the tracks passing the said line!

Our plan was to return to the west by the overnight train from Dresden to Vienna. However the meant crossing Czechoslovakia, so we presented ourselves at the embassy in London to get the required transit visa. At which point we found out that we would be required to convert US dollars into the local currency and spend all of it in the country. We pointed out that we would be in an Austrian coach on an overnight train but were informed we still had to spend the money or forfeit it. At which point we changed our plans a went via Nurenburg. The odd thing was that while we were in East Germany we did actually cross into Czechoslovakia at one point due to the railway crossing the border, there were no signs anywhere about the border.

The difference probably being that the overnight train will have served Prague - so legally “in CZ”. The other train (through Varnsdorf) would have run “sealed” through CZ as a “corridor train” subject to special agreement that effectively meant it was never officially in CZ at all. Used to be quite a few of those where borders had moved since the construction of the railway - many now rendered academic by Schengen.