southern rail journey check

Important Alert:  Train number 12615 (Grand Trunk Express), is scheduled to originate from Tambaram (TBM) Station at 17:00HRS with effect from 09-FEB-2024. It will not touch Dr. MGR Chennai Central Station (MAS). Passengers are requested to board at (TBM) Tambaram (Departing at 17:00HRS) or (MS) Chennai Egmore(Departing at 17:40HRS).

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Southern Railway , in its present form, came into existence on 14th April 1951 through the merger of the three state railways namely Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, the South Indian Railway and the Mysore State Railway. Southern Railway’s present network extends over a large area of India’s Southern Peninsula, covering the states of Tamilnadu, Kerala, Pondicherry and a small portion of Andhra Pradesh. Serving these naturally plentiful and culturally rich southern states, the Southern Railway extends from Mangalore on the west coast and Kanniyakumari in the south to Renigunta in the North West and Gudur in the North East.

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This page provides information on how to refund or change your ticket when you buy your tickets from us.

We'll refund you in the same or similar way as you originally paid for your tickets. This is so we can comply with government money-laundering legislation.

If you would like a refund for your ticket that you bought from another retailer including another Train Operator you should contact them directly.

If you travelled and your journey was delayed by 15 minutes or more, you may be entitled to Delay Repay .

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If you’ve received a notification from us that there’s been a change to your booking, you have the following options:

• Travel on a different train

Depending on the type of ticket you have, the following options are available to you without changing your ticket:

Before going further, please check www.nationalrail.co.uk for alternative trains.

If you need to change your ticket or you’re unsure if you need to change it, please visit one of our Ticket Offices, where we will be happy to help.

Please note, if you had a seat reservation on the train that’s been cancelled, it will not be honoured on a different train.

Subject to availability we can reserve you a seat on the train you now plan to catch at one of our Ticket Offices.

• Obtain a full refund of your ticket

Please see the information below, about how to apply for your refund.

IMPORTANT – Once you’ve completed your refund application, we’re unable to reinstate your ticket

If you do decide to travel after you’ve completed your refund application, the price of your new ticket will be the best fare available at the time of purchase.

• Use your ticket on the retimed train, without having to do anything else.

Please note, if you now plan to catch a different train and had a seat reservation on the train that’s been retimed, it will not be honoured on a different train.

If you prefer not to receive these notifications for future bookings.

You just need to ensure that you don’t tick the option to receive notifications at the payment screen.

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This information is based on the different ticket types in place, if you hold a paper ticket and you’re not sure what type of ticket you have, please check the information printed on the orange stripe in the top left corner of the ticket for one of the following.

Travel on a different date

You can change the date of travel without paying a change of journey fee, so long as you request the change before the date of your original journey.

If you want to change your ticket, please visit one of our Ticket Offices, where we will be happy to help.

No longer want to travel

If you bought your ticket from us and no longer want to travel we can refund your ticket less a £5 admin fee, up to a maximum of 28 days from the expiry date of the ticket. Please see the ‘How to apply for a refund’ section below for full details.

You can change the time or date of travel at any of our Ticket Offices, before the departure of the first reserved train printed on your ticket.

You’ll need to pay any difference between the fare you’ve already paid and the best available fare for your new journey, plus a £10 change of journey fee for each ticket changed.

Unless the reason for your refund is covered by Condition 30.1 in the National Rail Conditions of Travel , then Advance tickets are not refundable.

If you are entitled to a refund you need to submit your refund request within 28 days of the date on your ticket.

For details of how to apply for your refund, please see the ‘How to apply for a refund’ section below for full details.

Moving home or changing your work location

You don’t need to refund your existing ticket.

Instead please visit one of our Ticket Offices, where we can change the origin and / or destination of your ticket.

Once you purchase your Season Ticket the start and finish dates cannot be changed.

If you bought your ticket from us and no longer want to travel:

You can refund your Season Ticket any time before the finish date of the ticket.

We will calculate how much is refunded based on the value left on your ticket on the day you submit your Season ticket, less a £5 admin fee for the refund.

If you’re sick and can’t travel

Your refund can only be backdated with evidence that illness prevented you from travelling.

For more information, including if you require a refund due to sickness that prevented you from using a Season ticket, see the  Season Ticket Conditions page .

In addition to the national process, we also have an arrangement if you have been off sick from work for a minimum of four and a maximum of eight weeks.

Which doesn’t involve you having to apply for a refund of your existing Season Ticket.

Please get in touch with our Customer Relations team, for full details of how to apply.

Please see our Contact us page  for full details of how to contact our Customer Relations team.

You should only activate a daily pass when you’re sure you’re travelling, as we can’t refund or change an activated daily pass.

You can refund your Flexi Season Ticket any time before the finish date of the ticket.

We will calculate how much is refunded based on the value left on your ticket on the day you submit your Flexi Season ticket, less a £5 admin fee for the refund.

Please do not date your carnet ticket until you know for certain that you are going to travel, as it is not possible to amend the date of travel with these tickets once dated.

If you no longer want to travel, we can only refund your Carnet tickets, less a £5 admin fee if they are:

• Within 28 days from the expiry date of the tickets
• A complete unused book of tickets

These tickets cannot be changed.

A full refund is available before the period of validity starts with no fees applied. Tickets cannot be refunded once the period of validity has started.

These tickets are not refundable. Please only purchase them if you are certain you will travel.

If you will not be using your car park season ticket for some time, you can request a refund here .

How to apply for a refund

Please see below information for different ticket formats.

Please note we can only refund tickets bought from Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern or Gatwick Express ticket offices, TVMs, on board trains or websites.

Online – Refunds are processed via our Online Refund Form .

Ticket Office – Visit any Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern or Gatwick Express ticket offices to obtain a refund, unless you purchased your ticket using Paypal.

Ticket Office staff are unable to process refunds for tickets paid for using PayPal, please use our Online Refund Form .

Online – Refunds are processed via our Online Refund Form .

Ticket Office – Ticket Office staff are unable to process eTicket refunds, please use our Online Refund Form .

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We do offer a Money Back Guarantee on a range of ticket types, please visit our Money Back Guarantee page  for more details.

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Southern On Track 4+

Uk train times + tickets, the go-ahead group plc.

• 1.6 • 269 Ratings

iPhone Screenshots

Description.

Straight to your pocket! Download our free On Track app for tailored information about your most used journeys, easy ticket purchase and more. Live departure times, platform changes, service updates and a nifty journey planner are all just a swipe, tap and scroll away. Features include: • Personalised dashboard for your regular journeys • Buy train tickets on the go and collect at the station • Live departure and arrival boards • Interactive map • Station facilities and parking • Tube updates • Submit delay repay claims

Version 2.13.3

Enhancements to Flexi ticket functionality.

Ratings and Reviews

269 Ratings

Appalling software - avoid

If you’re planning on taking a train journey on Southern Rail, my advice is to buy a paper ticket and avoid anything more high-tech entirely. The Key Smartcard system is a fiasco, and this app is a part of the mess. It’s meant to be able to load tickets onto a card that can be read by gates at the stations. Right now I the app is telling me that I have a ticket, and that I need to load it onto my Key Smartcard before I can buy any other tickets. And yet when I get the app to detect my card (a process that is 50/50 at best), the app tells me there are no tickets available to be transferred. I’ve had many, many other problems and wasted huge amounts of time with Southern’s buggy software. The staff at the stations don’t know what to do, and the customer service teams on the phone don’t know what to do either. Everyone is polite, but everyone also acknowledges privately that the system itself is a joke. Avoid Southern if you can, and avoid this app especially.

This App really is rubbish, i was after a quick way to have a phone purchased ticket that isn’t sitting somewhere in my email. The ticket wallet section of the app crashed when attempting to login into it. When I purchased a ticket via the app, it sent an email with a link to attach the purchased ticket to my southern account, clicking that on a phone doesn’t work and I’m redirected to a purchase page. Clicking the link on a desktop links it to my southern account, then I can see it in my ticket wallet (which successfully logs in when you have a ticket??), attempting to click the ticket for I assume the barcode crashes the app. In short.. looks like I’m digging through my emails for a ticket in the morning.

Totally unusable!!

Southern Rail are pushing everyone to use their smart card ‘The Key’ but make it impossible to book tickets on to it using this App. For a while it worked fine and you could could could select The Key at the start of the booking process but now that button doesn’t automatically appear. I have refresh the page, log in/log out and/or start booking a regular ticket and hope the button will appear. Occasionally it does, but most of the time it doesn’t and I have to try booking through the website instead (which often has the same problem but The Key button appears more often on this). It is becoming harder and harder to use this ‘smart’ card. PLEASE make this app easier to book The Key Tickets.

App Privacy

The developer, The Go-Ahead Group plc , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

Data Used to Track You

The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:

Data Linked to You

The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:

• Financial Info
• Contact Info
• Identifiers

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

• Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary based on, for example, the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

• Developer Website
• App Support
• Privacy Policy

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Until further notice the following alterations will be necessary: Services running between Alton and Farnham will be significantly reduced, with only a few services operating throughout the day.

We have arranged replacement buses to shuttle on the following route: Alton to Farnham calling at Bentley.

These services won't be running to a timetable, but will be shuttling between Alton and Farnham until the end of the day 06/04.

For further information or onward travel advice please speak to a member of staff or use a station help point.

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Further Information If you would prefer to use local buses to continue your journey please check  Traveline  - South Western Railway tickets are not valid on local buses unless stated above. Have you been delayed? Please see  here   for our compensation policy. If you would like to make a comment about your experience with us today, please call us on 0345 6000 650 or see  our contact us page  for other ways to contact us.

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• #Luxury travel
• #Unusual Moscow
• #Jewish Heritage
• #Russian traditions

Train stations in Moscow

Moscow is not only the capital of Russiabut also a center for education, politics, culture, transport, and economy. It hasa lot of history and attracts many tourists per year. The most common transportis the train and in the city, you will find nine different train stations. Thenames of them come from routes they are serving.

Address: 3 Komsomolskaya Sq.

It is the oldest train station in Moscowand located near the metro station Komsomolskaya. The trains from here go to North-WesternRussia, including St.Petersburg, Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, Murmansk, Finland andEstonia. The railway station got constructed by the architect KonstantinThron in the design of the Moskovsky train station in Saint Petersburg. It hadbeen built from 1844 to 1851. It has already had several names and wasrenovated in 1950 and 1972. It is notable that the amount of passengers isconstantly increasing.

Yaroslavlsky Train Station

Address: 5 Komsomolskaya Sq.

The train station is located near theLeningradsky train station at the matro station Komsomolskaya. TheTrans-Siberian route passes also this train station and trains from here leaveto Golden Ring, North-Eastern Russia, the Russian Far East, Mongolia and China.From all the nine train stations in Moscow, this one has the highest number ofpassengers.

Kazansky Train Station

Address: 2 Komsomolskaya Sq.

The train station is also located next tothe metro station Komsomolskaya. The trains leave to Kazan, Tatarstan, Urals,Central Asia and South of Russia. Times of construction of this modern trainstation was between 1913 and 1940 designed by the architect Alexey Shchusev.The train station in its design looks like the Söyembikä Tower in Kazan.

Belorussky Train Station

Address: 7 Tverskaya Zastava Sq.

The trains from here leave to Belorus,Kaliningrad (Russia), Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, the CzechRepublic. The architect Ivan Strukov constructed it and it was opened in1870 but renovated from 1910-1912. It is connected to the airport and alsotakes some local routes to the suburb of Moscow.

Kievsky Train Station

Address: 2 Kievskogo Vokzala Sq.

The train station is situated near themetro station Kievskaya and takes routes to the Ukraine and SoutheasternEurope. It was designed by  Ivan Rerberg and Vladimir Shukhov in1914-1918. It is the only train station in the city from which you can directlylook at the Moscow river.

Kursky Train Station

Address: 29 Zemlyanoi Val St.

The train station takes routes to Vladimir,Nizhny Novgorod, Oryol, Perm, Southern Russia, Caucasus, Eastern Ukraine,Crimea. Metro stations next to it are Kurskaya and Chkalovskaya. The firstconstruction has been made by N.P. Orlov in 1896 and it has been reconstructedby G.I. Voloshinov in 1972.

Paveletsky Train Station

Address: 1 Paveletskaya Sq.

The train station takes routes for longdistances to Almaty, Voronezh, Baku, Luhansk, Saratov, Donetsk, Tambov,Lipetsk, Volgograd, Yelets and Astrakhan. It has a connection to the Domodedovoairport. It is a very old train station first constructed by A. Krasovskiy in1900 and reconstructed by A.Gurkov, S.Kuznetsova and A.Vorontsov in 1987. Thenew construction is much bigger and has a high volume of traffic.

Rizhsky Train Station

Address: 79/3 Rizhskaya Sq.

It is situated next to the metro station Rizhskayaand takes routes to Baltic countries. It opened in 1901, designed by S. Brzhozovskywho was also involved in the construction of the Vitebsky station in SaintPetersburg. As well, the station has had already a lot of different names. Thetrain station received its current name in 1946. It is a very modern one and isalso mentioned in the Moscow Railway Museum.

Savyolovsky Train Station

Address: Savyolovskogo Vokzala Sq.

The train station takes routes to northern Moscow but also to long-distance destinations: Kostroma, Cherepovets, Vologda (Russia). There is also a connection to the airport Sheremetyevo. The nearest metro station is Savyolovskaya. The times of construction were between 1897 and 1902 and is named after a village that is located along the route. On occasion to its 90th anniversary, it had been reconstructed.

• Trains between Moscow and Saint Petersburg read

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Moscow - Vnukovo Airport (VKO) transfer to Moscow - Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO)

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Moscow - Vnukovo Airport (VKO) transfer to Moscow - Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO) map

Moscow - vnukovo airport (vko) to moscow - sheremetyevo airport (svo) transfer time.

51 minutes approximately

Moscow - Vnukovo Airport (VKO) to Moscow - Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO) distance

35 Miles approximately

57 Kilometres approximately

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In and around Moscow - Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO)

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Cheapest way from Moscow - Vnukovo Airport (VKO) to Moscow - Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO)

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2018 Primetime Emmy & James Beard Award Winner

In Transit: Notes from the Underground

Jun 06 2018.

Spend some time in one of Moscow’s finest museums.

Subterranean commuting might not be anyone’s idea of a good time, but even in a city packing the war-games treasures and priceless bejeweled eggs of the Kremlin Armoury and the colossal Soviet pavilions of the VDNKh , the Metro holds up as one of Moscow’s finest museums. Just avoid rush hour.

The Metro is stunning and provides an unrivaled insight into the city’s psyche, past and present, but it also happens to be the best way to get around. Moscow has Uber, and the Russian version called Yandex Taxi , but also some nasty traffic. Metro trains come around every 90 seconds or so, at a more than 99 percent on-time rate. It’s also reasonably priced, with a single ride at 55 cents (and cheaper in bulk). From history to tickets to rules — official and not — here’s what you need to know to get started.

A Brief Introduction Buying Tickets Know Before You Go (Down) Rules An Easy Tour

A Brief Introduction

Moscow’s Metro was a long time coming. Plans for rapid transit to relieve the city’s beleaguered tram system date back to the Imperial era, but a couple of wars and a revolution held up its development. Stalin revived it as part of his grand plan to modernize the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s. The first lines and tunnels were constructed with help from engineers from the London Underground, although Stalin’s secret police decided that they had learned too much about Moscow’s layout and had them arrested on espionage charges and deported.

The beauty of its stations (if not its trains) is well-documented, and certainly no accident. In its illustrious first phases and particularly after the Second World War, the greatest architects of Soviet era were recruited to create gleaming temples celebrating the Revolution, the USSR, and the war triumph. No two stations are exactly alike, and each of the classic showpieces has a theme. There are world-famous shrines to Futurist architecture, a celebration of electricity, tributes to individuals and regions of the former Soviet Union. Each marble slab, mosaic tile, or light fixture was placed with intent, all in service to a station’s aesthetic; each element, f rom the smallest brass ear of corn to a large blood-spattered sword on a World War II mural, is an essential part of the whole.

The Metro is a monument to the Soviet propaganda project it was intended to be when it opened in 1935 with the slogan “Building a Palace for the People”. It brought the grand interiors of Imperial Russia to ordinary Muscovites, celebrated the Soviet Union’s past achievements while promising its citizens a bright Soviet future, and of course, it was a show-piece for the world to witness the might and sophistication of life in the Soviet Union.

It may be a museum, but it’s no relic. U p to nine million people use it daily, more than the London Underground and New York Subway combined. (Along with, at one time, about 20 stray dogs that learned to commute on the Metro.)

In its 80+ year history, the Metro has expanded in phases and fits and starts, in step with the fortunes of Moscow and Russia. Now, partly in preparation for the World Cup 2018, it’s also modernizing. New trains allow passengers to walk the entire length of the train without having to change carriages. The system is becoming more visitor-friendly. (There are helpful stickers on the floor marking out the best selfie spots .) But there’s a price to modernity: it’s phasing out one of its beloved institutions, the escalator attendants. Often they are middle-aged or elderly women—“ escalator grandmas ” in news accounts—who have held the post for decades, sitting in their tiny kiosks, scolding commuters for bad escalator etiquette or even bad posture, or telling jokes . They are slated to be replaced, when at all, by members of the escalator maintenance staff.

For all its achievements, the Metro lags behind Moscow’s above-ground growth, as Russia’s capital sprawls ever outwards, generating some of the world’s worst traffic jams . But since 2011, the Metro has been in the middle of an ambitious and long-overdue enlargement; 60 new stations are opening by 2020. If all goes to plan, the 2011-2020 period will have brought 125 miles of new tracks and over 100 new stations — a 40 percent increase — the fastest and largest expansion phase in any period in the Metro’s history.

Facts: 14 lines Opening hours: 5 a.m-1 a.m. Rush hour(s): 8-10 a.m, 4-8 p.m. Single ride: 55₽ (about 85 cents) Wi-Fi network-wide

Buying Tickets

• Ticket machines have a button to switch to English.
• You can buy specific numbers of rides: 1, 2, 5, 11, 20, or 60. Hold up fingers to show how many rides you want to buy.
• There is also a 90-minute ticket , which gets you 1 trip on the metro plus an unlimited number of transfers on other transport (bus, tram, etc) within 90 minutes.
• Or, you can buy day tickets with unlimited rides: one day (218₽/ US$4), three days (415₽/US$7) or seven days (830₽/US$15). Check the rates here to stay up-to-date.
• If you’re going to be using the Metro regularly over a few days, it’s worth getting a Troika card , a contactless, refillable card you can use on all public transport. Using the Metro is cheaper with one of these: a single ride is 36₽, not 55₽. Buy them and refill them in the Metro stations, and they’re valid for 5 years, so you can keep it for next time. Or, if you have a lot of cash left on it when you leave, you can get it refunded at the Metro Service Centers at Ulitsa 1905 Goda, 25 or at Staraya Basmannaya 20, Building 1.
• You can also buy silicone bracelets and keychains with built-in transport chips that you can use as a Troika card. (A Moscow Metro Fitbit!) So far, you can only get these at the Pushkinskaya metro station Live Helpdesk and souvenir shops in the Mayakovskaya and Trubnaya metro stations. The fare is the same as for the Troika card.
• You can also use Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.

Rules, spoken and unspoken

No smoking, no drinking, no filming, no littering. Photography is allowed, although it used to be banned.

Stand to the right on the escalator. Break this rule and you risk the wrath of the legendary escalator attendants. (No shenanigans on the escalators in general.)

Get out of the way. Find an empty corner to hide in when you get off a train and need to stare at your phone. Watch out getting out of the train in general; when your train doors open, people tend to appear from nowhere or from behind ornate marble columns, walking full-speed.

Always offer your seat to elderly ladies (what are you, a monster?).

An Easy Tour

This is no Metro Marathon ( 199 stations in 20 hours ). It’s an easy tour, taking in most—though not all—of the notable stations, the bulk of it going clockwise along the Circle line, with a couple of short detours. These stations are within minutes of one another, and the whole tour should take about 1-2 hours.

Start at Mayakovskaya Metro station , at the corner of Tverskaya and Garden Ring,  Triumfalnaya Square, Moskva, Russia, 125047.

1. Mayakovskaya.  Named for Russian Futurist Movement poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and an attempt to bring to life the future he imagined in his poems. (The Futurist Movement, natch, was all about a rejecting the past and celebrating all things speed, industry, modern machines, youth, modernity.) The result: an Art Deco masterpiece that won the National Grand Prix for architecture at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. It’s all smooth, rounded shine and light, and gentle arches supported by columns of dark pink marble and stainless aircraft steel. Each of its 34 ceiling niches has a mosaic. During World War II, the station was used as an air-raid shelter and, at one point, a bunker for Stalin. He gave a subdued but rousing speech here in Nov. 6, 1941 as the Nazis bombed the city above.

Take the 3/Green line one station to:

2. Belorusskaya. Opened in 1952, named after the connected Belarussky Rail Terminal, which runs trains between Moscow and Belarus. This is a light marble affair with a white, cake-like ceiling, lined with Belorussian patterns and 12 Florentine ceiling mosaics depicting life in Belarussia when it was built.

Transfer onto the 1/Brown line. Then, one stop (clockwise) t o:

3. Novoslobodskaya.  This station was designed around the stained-glass panels, which were made in Latvia, because Alexey Dushkin, the Soviet starchitect who dreamed it up (and also designed Mayakovskaya station) couldn’t find the glass and craft locally. The stained glass is the same used for Riga’s Cathedral, and the panels feature plants, flowers, members of the Soviet intelligentsia (musician, artist, architect) and geometric shapes.

Go two stops east on the 1/Circle line to:

4. Komsomolskaya. Named after the Komsomol, or the Young Communist League, this might just be peak Stalin Metro style. Underneath the hub for three regional railways, it was intended to be a grand gateway to Moscow and is today its busiest station. It has chandeliers; a yellow ceiling with Baroque embellishments; and in the main hall, a colossal red star overlaid on golden, shimmering tiles. Designer Alexey Shchusev designed it as an homage to the speech Stalin gave at Red Square on Nov. 7, 1941, in which he invoked Russia’s illustrious military leaders as a pep talk to Soviet soldiers through the first catastrophic year of the war.   The station’s eight large mosaics are of the leaders referenced in the speech, such as Alexander Nevsky, a 13th-century prince and military commander who bested German and Swedish invading armies.

One more stop clockwise to Kurskaya station,  and change onto the 3/Blue  line, and go one stop to:

5. Baumanskaya.   Opened in 1944. Named for the Bolshevik Revolutionary Nikolai Bauman , whose monument and namesake district are aboveground here. Though he seemed like a nasty piece of work (he apparently once publicly mocked a woman he had impregnated, who later hung herself), he became a Revolutionary martyr when he was killed in 1905 in a skirmish with a monarchist, who hit him on the head with part of a steel pipe. The station is in Art Deco style with atmospherically dim lighting, and a series of bronze sculptures of soldiers and homefront heroes during the War. At one end, there is a large mosaic portrait of Lenin.

Stay on that train direction one more east to:

6. Elektrozavodskaya. As you may have guessed from the name, this station is the Metro’s tribute to all thing electrical, built in 1944 and named after a nearby lightbulb factory. It has marble bas-relief sculptures of important figures in electrical engineering, and others illustrating the Soviet Union’s war-time struggles at home. The ceiling’s recurring rows of circular lamps give the station’s main tunnel a comforting glow, and a pleasing visual effect.

Double back two stops to Kurskaya station , and change back to the 1/Circle line. Sit tight for six stations to:

7. Kiyevskaya. This was the last station on the Circle line to be built, in 1954, completed under Nikita Khrushchev’ s guidance, as a tribute to his homeland, Ukraine. Its three large station halls feature images celebrating Ukraine’s contributions to the Soviet Union and Russo-Ukrainian unity, depicting musicians, textile-working, soldiers, farmers. (One hall has frescoes, one mosaics, and the third murals.) Shortly after it was completed, Khrushchev condemned the architectural excesses and unnecessary luxury of the Stalin era, which ushered in an epoch of more austere Metro stations. According to the legend at least, he timed the policy in part to ensure no Metro station built after could outshine Kiyevskaya.

Change to the 3/Blue line and go one stop west.

8. Park Pobedy. This is the deepest station on the Metro, with one of the world’s longest escalators, at 413 feet. If you stand still, the escalator ride to the surface takes about three minutes .) Opened in 2003 at Victory Park, the station celebrates two of Russia’s great military victories. Each end has a mural by Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, who also designed the “ Good Defeats Evil ” statue at the UN headquarters in New York. One mural depicts the Russian generals’ victory over the French in 1812 and the other, the German surrender of 1945. The latter is particularly striking; equal parts dramatic, triumphant, and gruesome. To the side, Red Army soldiers trample Nazi flags, and if you look closely there’s some blood spatter among the detail. Still, the biggest impressions here are the marble shine of the chessboard floor pattern and the pleasingly geometric effect if you view from one end to the other.

Keep going one more stop west to:

9. Slavyansky Bulvar.  One of the Metro’s youngest stations, it opened in 2008. With far higher ceilings than many other stations—which tend to have covered central tunnels on the platforms—it has an “open-air” feel (or as close to it as you can get, one hundred feet under). It’s an homage to French architect Hector Guimard, he of the Art Nouveau entrances for the Paris M é tro, and that’s precisely what this looks like: A Moscow homage to the Paris M é tro, with an additional forest theme. A Cyrillic twist on Guimard’s Metro-style lettering over the benches, furnished with t rees and branch motifs, including creeping vines as towering lamp-posts.

Stay on the 3/Blue line and double back four stations to:

10. Arbatskaya. Its first iteration, Arbatskaya-Smolenskaya station, was damaged by German bombs in 1941. It was rebuilt in 1953, and designed to double as a bomb shelter in the event of nuclear war, although unusually for stations built in the post-war phase, this one doesn’t have a war theme. It may also be one of the system’s most elegant: Baroque, but toned down a little, with red marble floors and white ceilings with gilded bronze c handeliers.

Jump back on the 3/Blue line  in the same direction and take it one more stop:

11. Ploshchad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square). Opened in 1938, and serving Red Square and the Kremlin . Its renowned central hall has marble columns flanked by 76 bronze statues of Soviet heroes: soldiers, students, farmers, athletes, writers, parents. Some of these statues’ appendages have a yellow sheen from decades of Moscow’s commuters rubbing them for good luck. Among the most popular for a superstitious walk-by rub: the snout of a frontier guard’s dog, a soldier’s gun (where the touch of millions of human hands have tapered the gun barrel into a fine, pointy blade), a baby’s foot, and a woman’s knee. (A brass rooster also sports the telltale gold sheen, though I am told that rubbing the rooster is thought to bring bad luck. )

Now take the escalator up, and get some fresh air.

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