Five Railway Terminals in St Petersburg: Which Train Leaves from Where

St Petersburg has five working railway terminals, and none of them is a hub for everything. Buying a ticket without checking the departure station is the single most common way visitors miss a train here, and in 2026 it got worse: since 25 August, suburban trains on the Moscow direction no longer leave from Moskovsky station at all. They were moved to Rybatskoye and to Ladozhsky station while a new suburban terminal is built at Volkovskaya. Between 7 September and 1 October 2026 some of them start even further out, from Obukhovo.

Moskovsky: Moscow and the south

Nevsky Prospekt 85, open around the clock, with a direct exit into the Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro vestibule. All Sapsan high-speed trains to Moscow leave here, along with the Nevsky Express, the double-decker Avrora and the overnight Smena. The southern fleet is here too: Adler, Anapa, Novorossiysk, Volgograd, Vladikavkaz, Belgorod, plus two Tavria trains to Kerch and eastern services to Kazan, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod and Ufa. Long-distance ticket offices sit in the arrivals yard, not in the main hall, and close for one hour at 03:00.

Ladozhsky: the north and the Urals

Zanevsky Prospekt 73, metro Ladozhskaya, on the right bank of the Neva. Murmansk, the Arktika train, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Kostomuksha, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk all depart from here, and so do both Lastochka trains to Petrozavodsk. The building works vertically: long-distance desks on the fourth floor, suburban platforms fifteen metres underground. Note that the car park is closed and the approach from Zolnaya Street is fenced off — enter from the metro side.

Finlyandsky: Vyborg and Karelia

Ploshchad Lenina 6, metro Ploshchad Lenina. Double-decker Avrora-shuttle trains to Vyborg and trains to Helyulya, the station next to Sortavala, leave from here, together with local trains to Zelenogorsk, Sestroretsk, Sosnovo and Ladozhskoye Ozero. The suburban pavilions work 06:10–00:30 only.

Vitebsky: Belarus and Tsarskoye Selo

Zagorodny Prospekt 52, metro Pushkinskaya. Russia's oldest station, opened in 1837. Minsk, Brest, Gomel, Kaliningrad and Velikiye Luki run from here, as do the local trains to Pushkin and Pavlovsk.

Baltiysky: Peterhof and Pskov

Obvodny Canal Embankment 120, metro Baltiyskaya. Every train to Novy Peterhof, Oranienbaum, Gatchina-Baltiyskaya, Krasnoye Selo and Luga starts here — and, against most expectations, so do the Lastochka services to Pskov and Pechory.

The classic mistake is mixing up Finlyandsky and Ladozhsky, because both serve "the north". Petrozavodsk goes from Ladozhsky, Sortavala from Finlyandsky, and they are on opposite banks of the river. Read the station name printed on your ticket rather than trusting geography.

Photo: Alex Fedorov (Florstein) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0