Part of the world's longest train journey: Moscow to Beijing
 

Train 4, the Moscow to Beijing Trans-Mongolian Express.

The world's longest train ride (possibly).

Frankly, it's doing my head in.  I'm getting a steady trickle of enquiries from people who think there's a man in a ticket booth at Lagos in southern Portugal selling tickets to Singapore for a direct train leaving every Tuesday.  Endless ill-informed click-bait media articles.  So here it is, the low-down on the World's Longest Train Journey, why it's currently not (and never has been) possible (but might be one day) and why even the definition of world's longest train journey is not as simple as you think it is.

What is the world's longest train journey?

If it were possible (it currently isn't), people are saying that the world's longest train journey is from southern Portugal to Singapore.  Usually, they cite Lagos as the starting point, but I'll tackle that issue in a minute.  It isn't one train or even one ticket, it's a series of some 20 normal scheduled trains and 20 separate tickets bought on 15 or so different websites.  If it were possible (did I mention that it isn't?) this is how you'd do it:

How did this media circus start?

In 2021, the Laos-China Railway opened for business between Kunming and Vientiane, filling a missing link in the rails between Europe and Singapore.  Some wag (I forget who) posted a graphic showing that the world's longest train journey was now from Portugal to Singapore.  He may have mentioned in the small print that it wasn't currently possible, but the media ignored that bit, picked up and ran with the idea of the world's longest train ride.  It's been bouncing around the internet ever since.

Why isn't it currently possible?

Perhaps you missed it?  Little matter of a war between Russia & Ukraine.  All travel to Russia inadvisable.  The Paris-Moscow, Berlin-Moscow and Warsaw-Moscow sleeper trains have all been suspended since 2019, initially due to the pandemic and now due to the war, sanctions and lack of travel.  The Kyiv-Moscow sleepers aren't running either (do I really need to say that?), in fact, for the first time in my lifetime there are NO international trains whatsoever from anywhere in western or central Europe to either Belarus or Russia, and haven't been since 2019.  Russia is cut off.

A few clever clogs will tell you it is technically possible, if you slowly work your way on multiple trains to a certain Estonian local station near the Russian border and walk across to a Russian Railways station on the other side, but nipping across a dodgy border on foot into a hostile state isn't quite what the 'little-man-in-a-booth-in-Lagos-selling-tickets-to-Singapore' brigade had in mind.

Similarly, both the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Manchurian Moscow-Beijing trains have been cancelled since 2019, initially due to the pandemic, now just 'because', well, lack of western tourists for a start.  True, domestic Russian trains are running between Moscow, Irkutsk & Vladivostok, and a weekly Irkutsk-Ulan Bator (Mongolia) has allegedly been reinstated.  An Ulan Bator to China sleeper has also been reinstated, but not to Beijing (where it used to go), just to a town in northern China requiring another onward train to Beijing.  But what was straightforward is now a multi-train expedition through hostile territory.

Perhaps divert through Turkey, Iran and the Stans?  Good luck getting an Iranian visa!  Ferry across the Caspian to avoid Iran?  Possibly, but ferries are like hen's teeth.  And a ferry or bus means it's no longer the world's longest train journey.  The Trans-Siberian Moscow-Beijing trains were an easy and practical option, anything else is something of an expedition.

Train 19 from Beijing to Moscow, part of the world's longest train ride   4-berth sleeper on train 19 from Beijing to Moscow

Above: Train 19 , the weekly Trans-Manchurian train from Moscow to Beijing, suspended since 2019.  Photos courtesy of Helmut Uttenthaler & Angie Bradshaw

Is it the world's longest train journey anyway?

The definition of world's longest train journey is fraught with problems.  You'll mostly see Lagos to Singapore quoted as the longest train journey.  It isn't.  The journey starts with a train to Lisbon, but just look at the map below:

Villa Real de San Antonio (VRdeSA) to Lisbon is significantly longer than Lagos to Lisbon.  There's no rail connection east into Spain from VRdeSA, so the shortest rail route from VRdeSA to Singapore is via Lisbon, just as it is from Lagos.  VRdeSA to Singapore is longer than Lagos to Singapore, so that's the world's longest train journey.

But, you cry, VRdeSA is east of Lagos so closer to Singapore so you're sort of doubling back and that's not allowed!

Well, I'm reliably informed that if you measure distance directly over the Earth's surface (the geodesic distance), Sintra (only 29 km west of Lisbon) is further from Singapore than Lagos, therefore Lagos to Singapore is disallowed by exactly the same logic as VRdeSA to Singapore.  So Sintra to Singapore is the world's longest train journey.

Except that the concept of train ride between the two furthest-apart points on the Earth's surface directly linked by rail and the concept of World's longest train journey are not identical (I knew a philosophy degree from Oxford University would come in handy).

Now let's take the un-stated but assumed condition of the 'longest train journey', that it has to be via the shortest route.  OK, so doing loop-the-loops with your route to make it longer isn't allowed.  But trains don't in fact always take the shortest route.  I recall setting my SatNav to 'shortest route' when driving from Portsmouth to Buckinghamshire and it took me down every village road and farm track.  Similarly, the shortest route from Lisbon to Moscow would take you down various minor French regional lines, where the French themselves joke about there being just 3 trains a day, one's cancelled, one's a bus, and one only runs on June 23rd.  You wouldn't go that way, you'd zip into Paris on a high-speed train and zip out again.  But if the world's longest train journey has to be by that shortest route, in practice you won't be taking that route, paradoxically you'll be making a longer train journey than the world's longest, at least in terms of distance.

Oh, and does it matter if you use road transport between termini in Paris or Moscow?  Maybe the metro counts.  But there's no metro between stations in Vientiane, and it's a fair few km between stations there.  How long can a transfer be before the journey ceases to be considered all-rail?  Best not to ask...

And if you walk from Woodlands Train Checkpoint to the nearest MRT station and take the MRT train to downtown Singapore, does the MRT train ride count, or does the world's longest train journey end at Woodlands (given the Singapore government unwisely ripped up the 13 km from Woodlands to Singapore station in 2011)?

My advice?  If (as I fervently hope) the war ends and such a journey becomes safe and practicable once more, don't bother starting from Portugal.  Start from your local station in the UK or wherever you live, your journey will be remarkable and amazing enough.  No need to chase a flawed and possibly unattainable concept.

Start of the world's longest train journey: Lagos, Villa Real or Sintra?

  

Potential starting points for the World's Longest Train Journey. But which?

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European Rail Timetable and mapReproduced from the excellent European Rail Map with kind permission of the European Rail Timetable people.

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