The plan to purchase new trains from the French engineering company Alstom and upgrade of the infrastructure on the route between Helsinki, Finland and St.Petersburg, Russia will see the current rail journey time of five and half hours be reduced to around three hours by 2010.

 The twice-daily service currently carries 200,000 people annually and the hope is that the new improvements will see this number triple.

As well as improvements to the infrastructure on both sides of the border the hope is that crossing formalities will take place onboard the train enroute to speed up the over all journey.

the rail company, Karelian Railways (a joint venture by Finnish Railways VR and Russian Railways OAO RZD) are looking to compete with and better  the services offered by the airlines. The current door to door flying time between central Helsinki and St. Petersburg is four hours.

The trains, which will have a top speed of 220 kilometres an hour, will have seven coaches and a total of 350 seats. The trains will have a restaurant, a business class, services for disabled passengers, and places for passengers travelling with pets.