Traveling by Train from Urumqi Station 乌鲁木齐南站

The journey is finally over. We took a train during Spring Festival and actually survived!  We left from the Urumqi train station at midnight and arrived 38 hours later in Xi'an no worse for wear.  Although I wouldn't recommend riding the rails during major Chinese holidays (buying train tickets was a painful process), it was an adventure we won't soon forget.  If you ever find yourself in Urumqi or are looking to take a train within Xinjiang, I think you'll find some of the following information useful.

The Urumqi Train Station

The Urumqi train station, located in the southwestern portion of the city (see map below), looks like any other major train station in China.  Three floors of waiting rooms filled with hundreds of chairs, a few snack stalls, and one measly bathroom for everybody to share.  There are many different waiting halls spread along each floor reserved separately for hard seat and standing tickets (economy class) and for hard sleeper (business class) and soft sleeper (1st class) ticket holders.  As you can tell from the pictures below, the waiting room seating accommodations are fitted accordingly.

 

Hard Seat Waiting Hall during Spring Festival

 

Soft and Hard Sleeper Waiting Hall during the same Spring Festival.  Definitely the place you want to be.  It even had a huge TV.

Trains in China

Xinjiang trains are no different than any other China train, but if you've never taken a train here you'll find it to be quite a unique experience.  Most every train (with a few exceptions) is divided into three sections, listed from the cheapest to most expensive: hard seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper.  Some trains are also fitted with a soft seat section, but I haven't found these to be common in China and I've never seen it on a train here in Xinjiang.  The names pretty much describe what it is, but here are a few pictures to give you a better idea:

Soft Sleeper: 4 beds in a room with a lockable door

 

Hard Sleeper: 6 beds with no door.  Much more crowded but not unpleasant.

 

Hard Seat: Like the name says, these are no Lazy Boy recliners.  Imagine sitting for hours on end in your dining room chair.

 

Train Stations in Xinjiang

 

There aren't a lot of train tracks in Xinjiang, although the government announced in October of 2008 that they were going to expand the railway.  At present this makes things pretty simple, though.  There's only one way into the rest of China, and that's through the Gansu province to the southeast.  Future plans have a couple more lines running into Qinghai, Mongolia and past the borders out west.  That'll take another decade.  For now, this simple map should suffice.

  

 

Train Tips:

• If you're taking any train longer than 8 hours (which is most all of them here in Xinjiang), for your own sanity you really ought to avoid the hard seats.  It's just not fun.  I'm sure there are plenty of people who've lived here a few years in China that could tell some good stories.
• The Urumqi train station is about a 20-25 minute taxi ride from the center of town.  If you're leaving during peak traffic hours, you'll need to adjust accordingly.
• Urumqi is the primary point of departure, although there are a couple trains that begin in Kuytun.  The Kashgar train line currently only runs to Urumqi.
• I would love to post train timetables here, but over the next few years these will be changing frequently and I don't intend on keeping this article updated.
  

View Larger Map
Sorry, I could only get this map in Chinese for now.