Tour audio Saint Petersburg - Vyborg

We are about to embark on a journey from the Finlyandsky railway station (Finland Station) to Vyborg, one of the largest towns in Leningradskaya Oblast (Leningrad District). It is situated 122 kilometres away from the historical city of Saint Petersburg. It will take a little more than 2 hours for a usual suburban train to take you to Vyborg, while the high-speed Lastochka (Swallow) train will get you there two times faster.

On the way there, we will see numerous natural, architectural, and engineering landmarks. Our audio guide is intended for trains departing from Saint Petersburg, 'left' and 'right' corresponds with the direction of the train.

The Finland Station was constructed for the 300-kilometer Finland railroad that was opened in 1870 and connected Saint Petersburg and Riihimäki. By that time, there was already a secondary road from Helsingfors, or Helsinki, in Finland.

Even though until 1917, Finland was officially the grand princedom of the Russian Empire, it featured all the attributes of a sovereign state, such as an own monetary system and police forces. The border between Finland and Russia ran along the Sestra river  20 kilometers away from Saint Petersburg. Nowadays, this place is called the old border, and we will see it today. There was a customs office operating there.

The Russian Emperor commanded to allow a credit of 10 million golden roubles for the construction of a railroad between Russia and Finland. It took 8 years to build it, and the process was very difficult since it was necessary to lay rail tracks through the forests and swamps of the Karelian Isthmus, some were cut through rock.

After the construction was finished, the railway became the property of the Grand Duchy of Finland Until the very Revolution, only Finnish people serviced it. At first, it was mostly intended for passengers. Like everywhere else in Russia, there were three types of cars used on the railway; the fares cost 3, 2, and 1 kopeck for about a kilometre accordingly.

The railroad turned out to be rather popular. Trains were carrying cargo and passengers to the Grand Duchy, servicing numerous dacha suburbs to the north of the capital on their way. As the traffic flow grew, it became necessary to elevate the railroad to an embankment within the city limits since its tracks crossed the streets in 14 places. Later, in 1910s, it was connected to other branch lines of the city by a special rail track bridge across the Neva river that is still called the Finland Railway Bridge.

1. The Finland Station

The Finland station used to be the calmest and homely railway station in Saint Petersburg. It was designed by architect Pyotr Kupinskiy and built later than others, in 1870. The old railway station had gothic features and was positioned differently. It was not facing the embankment, and its front was to the left of the tracks.

The railway station was hit hard by the Second World War and was reconstructed afterwards. The walls of the old station can now be seen on the sides. Its architectural dominant is, of course, a clock tower. The height of the tower is 16 meters, plus 30 meters of the steeple, which is an architectural element one often sees in Saint Petersburg.

Let's have a look inside the main station. A side entrance and a metro passage lead to a spacious ticket hall of 1,300 square meters. Passengers can reach the rail tracks from inside the station. The ticket hall seems very airy and sunlit thanks to a unique roof comprised of a reinforced-concrete dome that is 6 centimetres thick at the top and 23 centimetres thick at the bottom resting on a pillar support.