Almaty to Astana

Until 1953, a train from Alma-Ata to Karaganda went the long way round. That year the line south from Moiynty to Shu was finished along the edge of the Betpak-Dala, the Hungry Steppe, and it cut 2,400 kilometres off the journey at a stroke and completed the Trans-Kazakhstan main line. Every train between Almaty and Astana still runs over that shortcut. The daily Talgo leaves Almaty-2 at 16:57 and reaches Nurly Zhol station in Astana at 09:36 the next morning: 16 hours 39 minutes, three stops, and Lake Balkhash somewhere out in the dark around midnight.

The two cities at the ends are the old capital and the new one. Almaty held the title until 1997, when it moved north across the steppe to Akmola, renamed Astana the following year, and this is the train that connects them. It is a Talgo — the low, articulated Spanish design — but built in Kazakhstan by Tulpar-Talgo, the joint venture the national railway and Talgo set up in 2011; the coaches on trains 9 and 10 were all made in 2022. Overnight it means a compartment with a door that shuts. Southbound by day on train 106, it means the lake beside the line in the late afternoon and the desert after it.

Train 9 leaves from Almaty-2, the city station on Abylai Khan Avenue, and heads west. The first hours follow the old Turksib through Chemolgan and Otar towards Shu; the photograph at the head of this page was taken a few kilometres outside Chemolgan in July 2012, a KZ4A electric with what was then a brand-new Talgo set on train 152 from Petropavlovsk. The Talgo makes no stop at all for the first seven and a half hours. The slower trains do: train 43 stands twenty minutes at Shu, where the Turksib and the Trans-Kazakhstan line part company.

The cut-off

At Shu the route turns north, and from here to Moiynty it is on the line finished in 1953. Before it, Alma-Ata and Karaganda were joined only by going round; this one stretch took 2,400 kilometres out of the journey. West of the track lies the Betpak-Dala, some 75,000 square kilometres of clay and stony desert between the Chu, the Sarysu and the lake, used as spring and autumn grazing and home to the saiga antelope.

Lake Balkhash

The line reaches the water at Shyganak and runs along the western shore past Mynaral to Sary-Shagan, which the Talgo reaches at 00:30 and leaves ten minutes later. Balkhash is some 600 kilometres long and sits in a closed basin with no outflow. A narrow strait divides it in two, and the half beside the railway is fresh water while the deeper eastern half is salt. The little brick station at Sary-Shagan carries the year 1953 above its door; the town around it got its own village council the year after. By day, on train 106 southbound, this is the stretch to be awake for — it passes Sary-Shagan at about four in the afternoon.

Into the uplands, and Karaganda

North of the lake the railway leaves the water for Moiynty, the junction 361 kilometres south of Karaganda where the 1953 line meets the older one from Karaganda to Balkhash, built in the 1930s. The Talgo runs through it without stopping and calls at Akadyr at 03:31. At 05:54 it stands ten minutes at Karaganda, a coal city of half a million. The Karlag, the Gulag camp set up in 1931 largely to supply the coal basin's industry, ran across this steppe until 1959.

Astana

The last three and a half hours run north across the steppe, and at 09:36 the train pulls into Astana Nurly Zhol, the terminal station opened on 1 June 2017 for Expo 2017. Almost every Talgo serving the capital uses it; the older Astana-1 is where the through trains to Petropavlovsk and Kostanay call.

What pulls it

The Talgos are hauled by electric locomotives of the KZ4A family, designed with Siemens and built in China. The first went into service on 22 July 2004 and were used on the Talgo between Astana and Almaty. The KZ4AT followed from 2013, built for 200 km/h. When the first Tulpar-Talgo trains ran in 2011 they cut the trip from eighteen hours to twelve. The timetable today is slower: the fastest train in it takes 16 hours 4 minutes.

Three or four trains a day run between Almaty and Astana in each direction, two of them Talgos. The times below are the operator's own, read from the route detail behind each train on bilet.railways.kz in October 2026 for departures between 9 November and 6 December, and checked across fourteen consecutive dates. They are local times; Kazakhstan keeps a single time zone.

Almaty to Astana

Departure times from each station, arrival at the last. A dash means the train does not stop.

Astana to Almaty

What the timetable is doing

Trains 9 and 10 are the only ones that run purely between the two cities, and they use the newer stations at both ends — Almaty-2 and Astana Nurly Zhol — in 16 hr 39 min north and 17 hr 24 min south. Everything else is passing through. 105/106 is the Talgo between Almaty and Petropavlovsk, and 119 the Talgo between Almaty and Kostanay; the two alternate, so one or the other runs every day, and both use Astana-1. Train 106 changes its times in mid-November: before 17 November it left Astana at 06:45. 43 is the slow daily train between Almaty-1 and Kostanay, 24 hours of open-berth and compartment coaches with a stop at almost everything, and 15, every other day to Petropavlovsk, is the one that crosses the Shu valley by day and reaches the Balkhash shore in the late afternoon.

Two more appear on a few dates only — 113 north and 114 south were each on sale on just two dates in the fortnight scanned — and 16, every other day from Petropavlovsk, reaches Almaty in the small hours.

Departures are published by the operator: Qazaqstan Temır Joly · bilet.railways.kz (opens in a new tab).

Tickets are sold by Qazaqstan Temır Joly through its own system at bilet.railways.kz, in Kazakh, Russian and partial English, and at station ticket offices; sales open about six weeks ahead. Fares move by train and by date rather than being fixed. Across early December 2026 the Talgo's seated coach on trains 9 and 10 was 7,100 ₸, a berth in a four-berth compartment 11,003–19,183 ₸ and one in a two-berth compartment 17,328–25,563 ₸, with train 119 the cheapest of the Talgos.

The cheapest bed of all is on the slow train 43: an open platskart berth at 8,812 ₸, with a four-berth compartment at 14,513 ₸, for seven and a half hours longer on the way.

No rail pass covers Kazakhstan, so there is nothing to buy instead of a ticket. Interrail and Eurail describe a network of 33 countries, and Kazakhstan is not one of them.

The answer for this journey is the plain fare, bought per train from the operator: on the Talgo, around eleven to nineteen thousand tenge for a berth in a four-berth compartment, which is a night's bed as well as the ride. Checked against interrail.eu in October 2026.

The Talgo stops only three times between the capitals, and two of those stops come in the middle of the night. These four are worth knowing before you board: the two cities at the ends, the lake, and the coal city in between.

The train is the bed for the night in between. What is needed is somewhere in Almaty before the late-afternoon departure, and somewhere in Astana after a mid-morning arrival — and both ends belong to the same hotel group, which keeps a working website of its own in English.

Planning this trip and stuck on something, or spotted a time, fare or detail that has changed? Send us a message about Almaty to Astana. We read every one, and we update this page when something has changed.