"From May 30, 2004 new passenger route No. 381/382 between Grozny and Moscow will become operational," the press service official said.
There will be two trains that will go from the Chechen capital to Moscow on Sunday and Wednesday and back on Tuesday and Friday. This will be a 46 hours' haul to the north, 43 hours back. These trains will have one sleeper 1st Class (two berths in a compartment), five sleepers 2nd Class (four berths in a compartment), five sleepers 3rd Class (fifty-four berths in a carriage, compartments separated by bars), and a restaurant carriage.
Security will be provided by a specially placed armed police team that will be onboard from the starting to destination points.
The new route will be heir to current No. 182/182 Gudermes-Moscow route (Gudermes is Chechnya's second-largest city) whose last haul to Moscow began on May 27; the train will return to the base on May 31.
The press service of the Russian Railways emphasized that the state-run firm had allocated as much as RUB22.4m (USD772,000) to repair the Grozny-Moscow route, which "has enabled [us] to start service on the route as soon as May 30."
