History of the Allegro Train

The Helsinki to St Petersburg train service has been running since 1870, and has been served by lots of different trains over its 150-year existence. First of all was a sleeper train which took 12 to 14 hours to complete its journey, and later the very first express train was introduced in 1897. During the Soviet period, regular tourist sleeper trains between Finland and Russia were introduced in the 1950s, and two decades later a fancy branded sleeper train was launched on the Helsinki-Leningrad route and named after the eminent Russian artist Ilya Repin. Another train, named after Finnish composer Jan Sibelius, was introduced to the line in 1992.  

As early as the 1990s, it was discussed to launch a high-speed service from St Petersburg to Helsinki. This idea finally came to fruition in late 2010, when the Repin and Sibelius services were retired and replaced with the high-speed Allegro train. Allegro is the most convenient and efficient of all the Finland to Russia trains, with a journey time of less than 3 ½ hours and multiple daily departures. The service includes customs and passport checks en-route, eliminating the need for disembarking and long queues at the border and allowing for an even quicker journey. Other on-board services include a kids’ play area, currency exchange, free drinking water, and a Finnish-Russian restaurant menu. What’s more, passengers travelling from St. Petersburg to Helsinki on the Allegro train are entitled to a free train journey to Helsinki Vantaa Airport, if they travel within 80 minutes of the Allegro’s arrival (this is also the case for arrivals to Helsinki airport who are travelling on to St Petersburg with Allegro).

Prior to the pandemic, half a million passengers travelled annually on the Allegro train – the service made Russia’s cultural capital one of the top tourist destinations for Finns, nearly as popular as Stockholm and Tallinn. Although the Allegro was suspended in March 2020 due to the pandemic, as of October 2021 the Russian and Finnish governments have agreed to resume the service, with hopes that Allegro will finally be running again by New Year of 2021!