From Wikitravel

I don't know if this is of any interest to anyone now, but last summer I checked for tickets in Riga, Latvia for Mongolia (Ulanbataar) and it seems that you can actually get a ticket fro transsib in Riga and start from Riga as well. The price they gave me for a onway trip from Riga to Ulanbataar was around 140$ - This seems to be cheaper than the prices avilable online...hope this helps anyone

Could you please elaborate further on this? Did you go to a travel agency or just a train station? Also do you have contact information? Thanks. Sapphire 16:45, 9 April 2006 (EDT)

Sure, I can:) No, I didn't go to an agency. To my knowledge there are no agencies in Riga selling these tickets - you can get them at the train station. You go to the station and find the international tickets desk ("Starptautiskā biļešu kase" in latvian) or something like that, tell them where you want to go and they'll probably spend like a half an hour calculating your itenerary station by station (I don't know why they have to do that, but it was like that when we went to ask about going to Mongolia). And you can buy the ticket's there in advance - we asked in april for a ticket in august, if I remember correctly, so they can place all the reservations just fine.

What kind of contact details did you mean? If you need to know more about the train statin or routes from Riga try this: http://www.ldz.lv/en/sarakstsi.htm (some parts of the english site are missing, but anyway)

Also, there is a thing, that from April 2006 a new train route from Liepāja (westernmost coast city of Latvia) to Riga has been opened - this gives eager travellers the option to start from the westernmost part the old USSR railway system - go all the way from the Baltic Sea to Vladivostok or the other destinations on transsiberian if they want to.

I know that the railways in Blatics are not and have never been a part of the transsib, but I've done my owns searching of the net on transsib stories, and I realise that some people actually like to start their journey from the Baltics - maybe to make the trip even longer (for taking the longest train trip in the world anyway), to see the contrasts outside their window and to buy their tickets cheaper than from internet agencies, etc. I don't know the current details about going from Lithuania, but it should be similar IMHO. Hope this helps again:) If you someone is really interested in more details, I could actually go to the desk in the station in Riga to ask them more - I'm commuting frequently though that station...

Thanks. I'll add this information in later. Don't worry about the contact details. I was wondering what a phone number would be, but if all you have to do is show up at the train station then it really doesn't matter. What's the name of the main train station in Riga? Thanks. Sapphire 16:03, 11 April 2006 (EDT)

The central station in Riga is just that - in official documents it's sometimes called Rīga-Pasažieru meaning Riga passenger station and you can actually try calling a number given on the Latvian railway homepage for international traffic inqueries +371 7232820, however don't expect them to speak any english by default (although it's possible that someone actually speaks some english there from time to time - international train announcements are given in english as well, as far as I've heard them...)

This link is not working. http://trainline.ru/ 14:09, 30 August 2006 (EDT)