Moldova
Photobank MD from Chisinau, Moldova / Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · cropped
Moldova is a landlocked country of 33,843 km² in Eastern Europe, with a population of about 2.4 million and its capital at Chișinău. Romania lies to the west across the Prut, and Ukraine wraps around the north, east and south. The unrecognised breakaway state of Transnistria occupies the strip beyond the Dniester on the eastern edge. The land is gently rolling — low hills, wooded in the centre, and the black earth of the steppe to the south. It is farming country almost throughout: agriculture is the leading export, and in 2021 Moldova was the world's 21st largest wine exporter.
The whole railway belongs to one operator, Calea Ferată din Moldova: 1,232 km of it, single track and unelectrified end to end. Almost all of that is 1,520 mm Russian broad gauge, with just 14 km of standard gauge. That measurement is the defining fact of Moldovan rail travel, because Romania is standard gauge and the frontier is therefore a break of gauge. What the operator sells online is international: overnight trains out of Chișinău to Bucharest, to Iași and to Kyiv.
Rail journeys in Moldova
Good to know
What happens at the Romanian border?
The gauge changes. Moldova is 1,520 mm and Romania is 1,435 mm, so a through train cannot simply run across the Prut: the carriages have to be dealt with at the frontier, which on the overnight service happens in the middle of the night with the passengers aboard. It is the single most distinctive hour of any journey out of Chișinău to the west.
Why is Moldova broad gauge at all?
Because its railways were built as part of the Russian and then the Soviet network. CFM came into existence on 30 March 1992 as the successor to a subdivision of Soviet Railways, and it inherited the gauge along with everything else. The 14 km of standard gauge is a short stretch at the Romanian end, and it is the only place the two systems touch directly.
What is Transnistria?
A breakaway territory on the eastern bank of the Dniester, unrecognised internationally but administered separately from the rest of Moldova since the early 1990s. It matters to a rail traveller because several routes east and south historically ran through it, and any journey planned across that ground needs checking rather than assuming.
Are there rail passes for Moldova?
No. Moldova is not among the countries whose railways the Interrail Pass covers and there is no national multi-journey ticket. Tickets are bought for the individual train through CFM's own online portal, which prices the Bucharest service in Romanian lei as well as Moldovan lei.