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I'm going to take a weekend regional-express train from Bialystok, Poland (a major railway station in northeastern Poland, just like two hours away from Warsaw) to Kaunas, Lithuania.

Apparently, it's the only way to travel from Poland to Lithuania by rail. The train is operated with a diesel multiple unit and utilizes a standard-gauge track built fairly recently (unlike most of other Lithuania railways, which are 1520 mm/1524 mm). But this track terminates in Kaunas, so the abovementioned train terminates there as well.

How can I get then from Kaunas to Talinn? Most of connection search engines of European rail operators (most are based on Hafas software) doesn't even seem to have any data for most of Latvian train stations, like Riga. Lithuanian and Latvian websites are also failing to find a connection between, say, Kaunas and Riga.

In Tallinn I'm going to hop on a ferry to Helsinki, if that matters.

How can I make this connection, then? I'm almost sure it could be possible.

Peter Mortensen
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MobileDevelopment
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2 Answers2

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According to Seat61, there's a connection between Białystok and Vilnius (change trains at Kaunas).

From there, you would be able to reach Tallinn in two days, with a change at Riga. But note that since 2020, Vilnius-Daugavpils trains only run to Turmantas at the border, so you may be out of luck after all. This may also be the reason your own searches didn't give any result.

If you manage to get to Daugavpils (bus, taxi?), you can buy train tickets from there to Riga here.

Alternatively, there seems to be a direct bus from Warsaw to Tallinn, which also stops in Białystok. This would take just over 16 hours.

Another option that minimizes time spent on buses is this:

  • From Vilnius, take the local train to Turmantas
  • Cross the border on foot, and follow the railway tracks 2.5 km north to Zemgale. Google Maps doesn't show any roads, but OpenStreetMap does
  • Take bus 6173, which will take you to Daugavpils in only 40 minutes (schedule, 3 times daily)
Berend
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The reason for the lack of good connections from Warsaw to Baltics is gauge difference. The rail connections between Latvia and Estonia are surprisingly poor partly because both were part of Russian Empire when the railway network was developed - thus the focus was connecting Riga and Tallinn to St Petersburg and Moscow rather than each other.

These issues will be solved by the Rail Baltic project that will connect all the Baltic capitals and Warsaw with a semi-high-speed railway. Until the completion of that project, taking trains between the Baltic capitals is quite impractical.

However, if you insist opting for rail, here is how to get from Riga to Tallinn by train.

Take a train from Riga to Valka/Valga (cross-border town). From Valga there are connections to Tallinn (which also stop at Tartu, capital of South Estonia and the second largest town in Estonia).

The whole affair takes about twice as much time as it would to take a bus from Riga to Tallinn.

Markku P.
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