Karelian Trains
Oy Karelian Trains Ltd was a joint venture agreed on 23 November 2006 between Russian Railways and VR Group to facilitate the operation of international express passenger rail services between Helsinki, Finland, and Saint Petersburg, Russia. Karelian Trains was registered in Helsinki; VR and RZhD both owned 50% of the shares. The services are branded as Allegro.
Operations
Services were launched on 12 December 2010 using Alstom Pendolino trains ordered in September 2007. Investments will also be made in infrastructure to enable higher speeds to be achieved. Together, this has cut journey times between the two cities from the previous hours to 3 hours and 27 minutes. There are four daily train departures each direction, compared to two for the older service. The daily locomotive-hauled night train Helsinki–Moscow will continue like before.Travel visas are required for many foreign nationals, including Finns, to enter Russia and for Russians to enter Finland. Passport and customs checks are conducted on board the trains. Traditionally the passport and customs checks have delayed the trains by at least 30 minutes according to the time table.
During the first year of operation the service carried 280,000 passengers, far more than expected. The trips made by Finns to Russia were mainly business trips while Russians came to Finland largely on leisure trips.
All rail connections with Russia ceased in March 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The four trains are now redundant and Finland would like to donate them to Ukraine however they are jointly owned with Russian Railways - RZhD.
In December 2023, it was announced that VR Group had assumed the financial obligations of the Karelian Trains company since the latter could no longer meet them itself. VR Group plans to reuse the Sm6 rolling stock in domestic operations.