Kazakhstan has put into service its first passenger train built with carriages from Swiss manufacturer Stadler, reported Baq.kz.
The first train left Astana’s Nurly Zhol station at 13:10 on November 11 on the daily Astana–Almaty route, train No. 3/4. A Nurly Zhol–Semey service is due to follow on November 13, and routes to Atyrau and to Kyzylorda via Zhezkazgan are planned later.
The carriages were built at Stadler Kazakhstan’s plant in Astana, the Swiss group’s first factory in Central Asia. It opened in 2023 and began serial production in 2025. Under the contract, Kazakhstan is to receive 557 carriages by the end of 2030, and more than 100 had been delivered by the launch. A sleeper carriage seats 40 passengers and an open-plan carriage 58. The design speed is 160 km/h. “The main difference is that the body is made of aluminium, which makes the structure lighter,” said Medet Makhatov, a director at the state passenger operator.
The first journey took 19 hours 20 minutes, longer than the 17 and a half hours by Spanish-made Talgo trains but well below the roughly 24 hours of conventional trains. The operator blamed infrastructure limits on the first runs. The project, delayed from its original 2022 timetable, is part of Astana’s effort to replace Soviet-era rolling stock and build up a local rail manufacturing industry with European partners.
CentralasianLIGHT.org,
November 11, 2026