THE world’s longest train journey that could have taken passengers 12,000 miles isn’t actually possible – and Putin is to blame.
The route of Portugal to Singapore would take a suggested 21 days, but passengers are currently deprived of it due to Putin’s tyrannical war effort.
GettyThe theorised route would take passengers across 13 countries[/caption]
Seat 61Mark Smith, known as The Man in Seat 61, unravelled the myth of the world’s longest route[/caption]
It would take commuters 11,653 miles across Europe, Siberia and Asia, but Russia‘s war with Ukraine has effectively shut it off from travel.
The despot’s conflict has meant that trains are not running from Western or Central Europe to Moscow, which would be where you pass through.
Passengers who wanted to spend months on a train, when adding in stop-offs, would begin in Lagos and finish in Moscow.
All of this at the cost of around £1,000 seems too good to be true.
Primarily, you cannot travel from Kyiv into Moscow due to the ongoing war.
Secondly, the route includes the rail transfers Paris Moscow and Moscow to Beijing.
Both the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Manchurian Moscow-Beijing trains have been cancelled since 2019.
Thirdly, the journey isn’t as simple as buying one ticket, it would involve buying about 20 different ones across multiple websites.
This would rely on all of those scheduled trains to run smoothly.
Mark Smith, known as The Man in Seat 61, unravelled the myth by carefully explaining why this route isn’t feasible.
He told The Independent: “You don’t buy the ticket from a little bloke in a booth in Lagos, selling tickets to Singapore for a direct train leaving every Tuesday.
“That’s what you don’t do.
“If it were possible, and it isn’t, you, it would be about 20 different separate tickets for 20 different separate trains bought on 15 different websites, all for regular scheduled trains.”
He went into more detail on his website, writing: “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.
“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.”
Mark claimed that the actual longest train journey isn’t Lagos to Moscow, but Sintra to Singapore.
He continued: “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.
“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.
All of this means that the so-called world’s longest train journey is hampered by several mitigating factors, logistics and a literal war.
The allure of the longest train journey has been around for years.
The theory originated when the Laos-China railway opened for business.
This linked Kunming and Vientiane – a missing link in the rails between Europe and Singapore – in 2021.
Seat 61The suggested path faces several issues, including logistics and the fact that travel into Russia is prohibited[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
