Kazakhstan railways - railway

18.07.2020 Tools and fixtures

KTZ tower among new buildings

"Kazakhstani railways» (kaz. Kazakhstan temir zholy - Kazakh railway) - operator of the main railway network of Kazakhstan. Full name - Joint Stock Company “National Company“ Kazakhstan Temir Zholy ””. The headquarters is in Astana.

The Republican State Enterprise "Kazakhstan Railways" was established by the decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated January 31, 1997 No. 129 "On the reorganization of the enterprises of the railways of the Republic of Kazakhstan" by merging three RSEs: the Department of the Almaty Railway, the Department of the Tselinnaya Railway and the Department of the West Kazakhstan Railway roads. The purpose of the merger was to optimize the management structure of the transportation process and eliminate redundant links, financial and economic recovery of the railway industry.

By the Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated March 15, 2002 No. 310 "On the establishment of the Closed Joint Stock Company National Company" Kazakhstan Railways "" "CJSC" National Company "Kazakhstan Railways" was established by merging the Republican State Enterprise "Kazakhstan Railways" with its subsidiaries ... One of the differences between RGP and a joint-stock company is that (Z) JSC can have a profit and pay dividends, while RGP operates at a break-even level. In the case of KZD, the company pays dividends to 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, JSC “NC“ KTZh ”was re-registered into JSC“ NC “KTZ” ".

Owners and management

The sole shareholder of the company is the Samruk-Kazyna National Fund, 100% of which are owned by the Republic of Kazakhstan. The fund solves the problems of improving the quality of corporate governance, increasing the transparency of the budget, manages the activities of KTZ through the board of directors, without interfering with operational work.

The activities of KTZ are controlled by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, which, as an authorized body, ensures the implementation of state policy in the field of 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 annual reports as president. The president of the country proposes the candidacy of the president of the society.

Since June 2009, Timur Kulibayev has been the chairman of the board of directors of KTZ.

Board composition

  • Chairman of the Board, President of JSC "NC" KTZ "" - Askar Mamin (April 2008)
  • Vice President - Ermek Kizatov (2008)
  • Vice President for Provision - Erik Sultanov (2008)
  • Vice President for Economics and Finance - Kanat Alpysbayev (2008)
  • Vice President for Human Resources and Social Affairs - Askhat Akchurin (2008)
  • Vice President for Logistics - Erhat Iskaliev (2011)
  • Presidential Advisor - Beibit Zhusupov
  • Managing Director, Chief of Staff - Kanat Almagambetov
  • Managing Director for Legal Affairs - Rustem Khasenov
  • Managing Director for Economics - Almas Lepesbayev
  • Managing Director for Finance - Elena Lepskaya
  • Managing Director for Operations - Baurzhan Urynbasarov

Asset structure

At present, KZD has a holding structure. The company's asset portfolio includes 26 subsidiaries, associates and jointly controlled entities with a geographical presence throughout Kazakhstan.

Activities

Railway transport is the most important component of the industrial infrastructure of Kazakhstan. Due to the 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 underdeveloped transport infrastructure - rail 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 recent times [when?] and provides employment for 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 transportation

In 2010, the cargo turnover amounted to 213 billion t · km. The total volume of freight traffic in 2009 amounted to 268 million tons, of which 35% 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 Privolzhskaya railway (at the Ozinki and Aksaraiskaya stations) in the west, with the South Ural railway (at the Iletsk-1 station, Nikeltau, Tobol, Presnogorkovskaya, Petropavlovsk) in the north, with the West Siberian railway (along the station Kulunda and Lokot-Altaysky) in the northeast, with the Lanxin railway (China) along the Dostyk (Druzhba) - Alashankou cross-border crossing in the southeast and (Korgas station on the Zhetygen - Korgas highway) in the east, with The Uzbek railway (along the station Oasis and Sary-Agach) in the south, with the Turkmen railway (along the station Bolashak on the Uzen highway - the state border with Turkmenistan) in the south-west.

Quality

The electric locomotives used in the traction of the Spanish high-speed trains Talgo 200 between Astana and Almaty may be good, but the Spanish carriages are worse than compartment cars (made in Russia or the Soviet Union). I was convinced of this from 12/14/2012 to 12/15/2012 (20.00 landing in Almaty (station - Almaty-2), arrived on 06.03 in Karaganda). A very noisy carriage, like a tin can, shakes and sways all over, very much regretted not having gone in an ordinary compartment carriage. The price per seat cost me 18800 tenge. On an airplane it would cost an average of 15,000. To fall asleep in such a noisy carriage, you have to try very hard. A radio point (70s) is installed in the compartment room - 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 to fall in the aisle, disposable cups are rolling on the shelf next to it, but I never saw a bin for their disposal. There are no seats in the restaurant, the impression is that everyone is hungry. My neighbor got a drink in his room without a glass. The impressions of the trip, in the Spanish carriages of train No. 001, remained negative.

Links

  • Kazakhstan: results of railway transport in 2006

Notes

  1. Bond price information on Kazakhstan Temir Zholy Finance B.V. 6.375% 06/10/2020 (ISIN XS0546214007). (Russian) (Retrieved July 16, 2011)
  2. Eurobonds "Kazakhstan Temir Zholy Finance B.V.", 11.05.2016, 7.0% (ISIN XS0253694755). (Russian) (Retrieved July 16, 2011)
  3. Consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2010 and independent auditors' report, pages 6, 10, 30, 43, 54. (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
  4. Annual report 2009, p. 53. (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
  5. Group structure (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
  6. Charter of the joint-stock company "National company" Kazakhstan temir zholy "" (Russian) (Retrieved May 4, 2011)
  7. According to the charter of the company, the official name in Russian is JSC National Company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (sic).
  8. (Russian) (Retrieved May 26, 2011)
  9. (Russian) (Retrieved May 26, 2011)
  10. Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated March 26, 2010 No. 239 (Russian) (Retrieved May 26, 2011)
  11. (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 are electrified. Railways of Kazakhstan in some sections are operated by the railway administrations of Russia and Kyrgyzstan.

For the state, railway transport is of great importance, since it accounts for more than 57% of the passenger turnover and 69% of the country's cargo turnover. Among the countries of the 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 link in the production infrastructure. Kazakhstan has no navigable rivers and no access to the sea, but it has a vast territory and an underdeveloped sphere of motor transport. These conditions make the role of rail transport paramount. The railways of Kazakhstan have a high technical and production potential, which in last years is steadily increasing.

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

Conditions and tickets

In Kazakhstani trains, train classes 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. Between Almaty and Astana, a high-speed train, equipped with Spanish-made cars, runs daily. This train has three classes of carriages: tourist, business and grand. The cost of a high-speed train ticket is about 2,000 rubles (about 9800 tenge). A ticket for a regular train can be purchased for 7000 tenge. To buy a train ticket, you can use the following virtual platform: https://epay.railways.kz.

Just as Kazakhstan in its current form began as a territory between Russia and Central Asia, so the Kazakh railways began their history as a 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 east, from Siberia and Altai.
The first railway on the territory of the Kazakh state within its present borders is the Ryazan-Uralskaya railway, which connected Uralsk with Saratov and Central Russia in 1893.

A little later, a section of the southern passage of the Transsib was built, which passed through Petropavlovsk in 1894.
However, in those years, Petropavlovsk was not perceived otherwise as a part of Siberia, and even now the 200-kilometer segment looks very modest against the background of the Kazakh open spaces 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 the Mugodzhary, the western part of the Turgai steppes, the Aral semi-deserts and along the Syr Darya.

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A trip along this line can even now replace a full-fledged journey across Kazakhstan - the reality surrounding railway tracks and dusty stations with beautiful train stations has generally not changed much over the past century.

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

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Such invariability of the landscape is not surprising, given that in the first Soviet decades, when the Kazakh economy itself, industry and, accordingly, the network of cities began to form, development continued to a large extent closer to the outskirts of the country, not 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 XX century, it was not limited to long main lines; besides them, several branches were put into operation, entering the boundaries 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 recall 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, in the 1910s, the Turkestan-Siberian railway adjoining it 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 of Alma-Ata and at the same time covering the southeastern 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 the Trans-Urals with Central Asia, passing almost along the meridional (north-south) direction; starting in Akmolinsk / Tselinograd / Akmola / Astana, it adjoins the Turkestan-Siberian railway at the Chu station a few hundred kilometers west of Alma-Ata. During the war years, a railway line from the industrial Urals (Magnitogorsk) was brought to the then Akmolinsk, and the previously built Transsib (Petropavlovsk) - Borovoe line was continued to it. The construction of the Transkazakhstan railway was largely associated with the beginning of the industrial development of the interior regions of Kazakhstan, based on the development of mineral deposits in the Kazakh Upland, primarily in the Karaganda region. At the same time, the southern part of the Ural Rockada passed through Western Kazakhstan, connecting new and old industrial centers to the east of the Ural Range with mineral deposits in the Aktyubinsk and Guryev / Atyrau regions. 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 Kazakh railway network was formed - three main lines coming from the north-west, north and north-east and converging in South Kazakhstan.
Internal Kazakhstani economic development continued and accelerated many times over 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 of Southern Siberia or even the Urals: latitudinal lines were built / completed, parallel to the Southern route of the Trans-Siberian (Magnitogorsk - Tobol - Tselinograd - Ekibastuz - Pavlodar - Barnaul and Chelyabinsk - Kustanai - Kokchetav - Irtyshskoe - Karasuk - iron road Novosibirsk - Barnaul).

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However, these lines also had a transit purpose in many respects, providing the shortest connection between the Urals and Kuzbass; in addition, up to the 2000s, a significant part of passenger trains to the Russian Altai followed 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 Aktogay station on the Turkestan-Siberian road to Dostyk (Druzhba) station on the Chinese border.However, the Soviet-Chinese friendship soon ended, and the transit function of the Kazakh railway network no longer the union, but the 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 / Aksaraiskaya - Guryev / Atyrau - Beineu - Uzbekistan), which connected the railway network of European Russia and the European part of the USSR with the western part of Central Asia and the valley along the shortest route. Amu Darya. However, by this time, internal Kazakhstani needs were already much more important in comparison with previous decades: this line serves oil fields in the lower reaches of the Urals and Emba (Guryev / Atyrau), a branch was built to Aktau / Shevchenko, which provided high-haul transport to the rapidly developing industrial complex of Mangyshlak ...
It was planned to build another railway connecting Western Kazakhstan and Central Russia along the shortest route - from Beineu station, it would continue the line from Uzbekistan to the north-west, and would approach the Alexandrov Gai station in the 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 a section was built from Beineu to Inder (Inderborsky village) on the banks of the Ural River.
In the early 1960s, the electrification of the Kazakh railway network began; however, the first railway line on electric traction on the territory of the Kazakh SSR was the section of the Southern Railway of the Transsib (Petukhovo - Petropavlovsk - Isilkul, 1961)
A little later (1964) a section of the railway in the inner regions was electrified (Tselinograd / Astana - Karaganda); the main line from Astana through Tobol to Kartaly and Magnitogorsk was soon electrified. The Kazakh SSR was far from the last union republic that acquired electrified railways - they appeared later in Uzbekistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and 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 commissioned.

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

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In the late 1980s, the electrification of the southern part of the Transkazakhstan railway (up to the Chu station) was completed.

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In the mid-1980s, the electrification of the Turkestan-Siberian railway began on the part of Uzbekistan; however, by 1991 it reached only the eastern border of the South Kazakhstan region (station Tyulkubas).
In general, despite the great length and extremely important role in the links of the main part of the country with Central Asia, the railways of Kazakhstan were never among the busiest in the Union, and rarely found themselves in the center 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: of the main roads by the end of the Soviet period, only transit lines in the north, including the southern passage of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and part of the Transkazakhstan railway were electrified.

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In Kazakhstan, suburban rail transportation has received relatively little development; 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 torn apart and ineffective, like the entire country. It was still based on the Trans-Kazakh lines; it was difficult to move within the country in a direction that did not coincide with the directions of these trans-Kazakhstani lines: to travel from Western Kazakhstan to Northern or from Northern Kazakhstan to Eastern, one had to call in adjacent Russian regions.
So optimizing the railway network and increasing its connectivity was not the last point in the measures to consolidate the country undertaken 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 that Ukraine did not dream of.
So, in the 1990s and 2000s, links were built in Kazakhstan between the West and the North (Aktyubinsk - Tobol in the Kustanai region), North and East (Pavlodar - Semipalatinsk), the railway system in the Ust region was connected to the main Kazakhstani network. -Kamenogorsk (from Ust-Kamenogorsk - Charsk station on Turksib).

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The construction of these lines was also associated with the transfer of the capital to Astana - if from Alma-Ata, from the southeastern corner of the country, it was possible to get to almost all Kazakhstani regions in an optimal way through the 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 the undisputed first place in the CIS in terms of the volume of railway construction.
The only regional center, and now cut off by the territory of Russia from the main railway network of Kazakhstan, is Uralsk. However, there Kazakhstan got out of the situation by management methods: under an agreement between the Kazakh operator of railways Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and the Russian Russian Railways, the section in the Sol-Iletsk region, connecting Uralsk with Aktobe, is controlled by KTZ, and the section of the Southern Railway region of Petropavlovsk - "Russian Railways".
During the same years - albeit at a slower pace, given the sharp deterioration in the country's socio-economic situation - electrification continued; by the mid-1990s, electrification had spread from the west to Chu station, and Central Asia was finally linked by a high-haul electrified railroad to Russia. In 2001, the southern capital of Alma-Ata was finally provided with electric traction.

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In the post-Soviet period, the number of transit trains has decreased, in some places they have disappeared altogether - for example, on the north Kazakhstan transit lines. At the same time, the number of domestic trains increased, which became much more justified to use after the optimization of the structure of the railway network.

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If we compare with Russia, then in Kazakhstan there are more connections between regional centers, without entering the capitals, although the concentration of traffic in Astana and Alma-Ata is also very high - about two-thirds of long-distance trains enter either the southern or northern capital.

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The country has become much more isolated from neighboring states in terms of railway connections - now long-distance trains follow 12 border crossings (9 with Russia, 2 with Uzbekistan, 1 with China), but mostly in small volumes. The only exception is the volume of passenger traffic to China, which is developing along with the Kazakh-Chinese relations; Now trains from both Kazakhstani capitals run to the western Chinese Urumqi. However, the outskirts of the country, surpassing many of the country's interior regions in terms of population and industrial potential, still gravitate towards the adjacent Russian regions, one of the signs of this is the still running long-distance trains connecting these Kazakhstan outskirts with neighboring, larger Russian cities ( Astrakhan and Ridder / Leninogorsk - Ust-Kamenogorsk - Barnaul - Novosibirsk - Tomsk). In addition, trains to Central Russia from both Kazakhstani capitals, as well as from Karaganda (from the latter, there is also one train to Belarus) have survived.

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In the 2010s, a new stage of railway construction began - these are lines in the interior regions of the country between Dzhezkazgan, Kzyl-Orda, Aktobe and Mangyshlak, designed to directly link the center and the resource-rich west of the country, and to reduce the size of the inner periphery that remains in the very center of Kazakhstan. In addition, a line has been built to Turkmenistan along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea. An additional link with China has also appeared - almost directly from Almaty. With the advent of new latitudinal railways in the center of the country, the deficit of latitudinal connections (east-west) will decrease, and the lines passing closer to the northern and southern borders of the country will be somewhat relieved. If we speak to describe 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 in absolute terms. In terms of the relative growth of the railway network, Kazakhstan can 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, considerable attention is also paid to railways. After the commissioning of railway lines in the central part of the country, the mainline construction / formation of the frame of the Kazakh railway network has been completed as a whole; most of the projects are dedicated to further electrification; first of all, this is the main line to China (Aktogay - Dostyk), connecting it with South Kazakhstan by the Turksib section (Alma-Ata - Aktogay) and the segment between Turksib and the Transkazakhstan railway (Aktogay - Balkhash - Mointy). The implementation of this project, like many trans-Kazakhstani transport projects, is in line with one of the many projects to create additional links between China and Central / 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 double-track railways.
Kazakhstan railways are electrified by a third (5,000 km, 16th place in the world and 3rd place in the CIS in terms of the absolute length of electrified railways); on a global scale and by the standards of the post-Soviet space, this is an average indicator.
At the same time, electrification is extremely unevenly distributed throughout the country - in the north and south more than half of the railways are provided with electric traction in some regions, 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 manage to photograph and even inspect a little reality passing by.

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

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The pride of the passenger service of Kazakhstani 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 Kazakh railway network.
They slightly reduce the huge Kazakhstani distances, reducing the distance by an average of one and a half times.

In the hinterland, 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, deserted sun-drenched platforms and station squares are filled with life.

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It seems that the intensity of freight traffic in Kazakhstan is not less than on the main railways of Russia.

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Kazakhstan's economy, which is based on large metallurgical enterprises and chemical enterprises and the extraction of minerals (coal, ores of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, uranium), needs high-haul transport, such as rail.

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In recent decades, the median Transkazakhstan road has become the busiest railway line in the country; it is logical that after the transfer of the capital to Astana, the role of this line became even higher. Now up to 30% of all pass through it. kazakh trains long distance travel.

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And a new station Nurly Zhol ("Light Path") 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 in them, but here, in the steppe country, where architecture began to appear in large numbers only in the era of virgin lands and later, these stations look almost like churches of the pre-Mongol era in our country.
In the rest of Kazakhstan, the stations in best case look something like this:

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And more often like this:

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

The next railroad in terms of passenger traffic in Kazakhstan is the southern course of the Trans-Siberian, passing 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, too, their number has noticeably decreased compared to the end of the 1980s.
Petropavlovsk, where the Transkazakhstan Railway adjoins the Trans-Siberian Railway, is also one of the most significant railway junctions in Kazakhstan.
In about the same way as the Petropavlovsk section of the Transsib, the old Tashkent railway is loaded on the section from Arys in the Chimkent region to Aktyubinsk.

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Many Kazakh trains run along this line, connecting the south of the country with the west, but there are also several trains left 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, between Arys / Chimkent and Alma-Ata, does not lag behind this line; here the flow passes both from north to south, and most of the trains to Almaty. However, with the gradual transfer of some trains to the new Dzhezkazgan - Saksaulskaya - Beineu railway line, this segment may be somewhat unloaded.
Alma-Ata remains the third largest railway junction in Kazakhstan in terms of traffic volume - about a third of long-distance trains running along the Kazakh railway network pass through the southern capital.
Turksib north-east of Almaty is noticeably less loaded - 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 inland trains, because the eastern outskirts of the country are quite deserted even by Kazakh standards.
Other major railway junctions in the country are Arys, located at the junction of Turksib and the Tashkent Railroad, and neighboring Chimkent, the capital of South Kazakhstan, which rivals 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 road, along which trains now go to the rich raw materials Atyrau and Aktau (Mangyshlak).
East Kazakhstan is perhaps the poorest region of Kazakhstan by long-distance trains; the main junction here is Semipalatinsk, where a new railway from Pavlodar adjoins the Turkestan-Siberian mainline.
, the main station of which is called "Protection" - a minor junction, 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 most of all, where most of the trains were transit, and now they are not there at all. There is no through traffic on these railways now, 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 suburban trains in general in Kazakhstan is in many ways similar to the Russian one, only, perhaps, more harsh: if we have cases of complete cancellation of suburban traffic is not so frequent, then in Kazakhstan this occurs with greater frequency.

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We can say that suburban traffic on most of Kazakhstan's railway lines has never been particularly intense - after all, the population density in the country is not high at all.

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 Alma-Ata, where until recently there was only one commuter train (not every day), but now, it seems, there are none left at all. The sections of the main railway lines that have been electrified since 1991 are largely devoid of commuter service, which is rather 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 - Borovoe - Kostanai 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 Kustanai. Along with Astana, the main hub of 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 region of Chimkent and Arys, commuter trains run on electrified sections on locomotive traction; in other regions, commuter trains run mainly in remote places, where roads are worse, or where there are no long-distance trains.
Another interesting feature of the suburban rail service in Kazakhstan is that there are still cross-border commuter trains, in contrast to the Russian-Ukrainian and even Russian-Belarusian borders. In some transboundary sections (Pavlodar - Kulunda, Tobol - Kartaly) they are the only representatives of the passenger railway communication, in some places (Uralsk - Ozinki) they supplement the long distance communication. 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 the central regions, and gravitate towards large cities located across the border (North-West Kazakhstan - to the Ural megapolis, Western Kazakhstan - to Astrakhan , Northern Kazakhstan - also to the Urals, and to Omsk, East Kazakhstan - to Barnaul and Novosibirsk, South Kazakhstan - to Tashkent). Border areas are more developed, and suburban transportation is more in demand here.