Bike is on it's way!!

For future reference it can be done easily, it just helps to have more than 5 words of Russian! After my miserable failure on the first day I recruited one of the staff at the hostel I was staying, by this stage I was a little sceptical but she was confident we could get it done, I liked her attitude! I'm not sure I would have gotten it done without her but even she was surprised by how helpful the station staff were when they realised what a poor stupid foreigner I was

We turned up at the main station entrance where the 'long distance' ticket booths are and confirmed that I could get a ticket on a train for tomorrow. I'm not 100% sure on this but if you want to trade on the same train as the bike you need to go by one of the higher number trains 010 and above. These are apparently older trains, not as comfortable, stop at more stations and take a few hours longer (73hrs v 68hrs in my case), the upside is they are normally a bit cheaper which was fine by me! Don't book your ticket just yet until you can confirm you can get your bike on the train.

From here we were pointed in the direction of the cargo station which is about 200meters to the right of the passenger terminal. Walk past the blue postoffice building with all the post trucks, through the alleyway and you will come out with some containers on your right and the goods station or your left. Take a hard left back the way you come and you will enter the cargo tickets area. The booths here are for people booking extra luggage and the like, you want to go down the corridor on the left and take the first door on the right. Tell the guy here you want to ship your bike, the weight and the train you want to travel on and he will look up a table and give you a very cheap price, unfortunately it's only half the cost. If you have the bike with you take it up to the guys milling around goods station and tell them which train you want it on. There appears to be the railways owned cargo handlers it the first bay who will refuse to take your bike as it's too large and will direct you to the bay at the end of the station where there is a private shipping group who will crate the bike up for you. If you're in doubt try to find one of the older women who don't speak English but who everyone else is afraid of and will get things moving for you. Again it helps to have a translator so they can yell at each other for a few minutes while you stand by sheepishly.

The guys in the end cargo bay will have you ride the bike up the ramp at the end of the platform to so they can weigh the bike and give you a docket to take back to the first guy in the office. Confirm with him which train the bike will be going on and head back to the passenger terminal and buy yourself a ticket. By the time I had done this the train I wanted to go on had sold out (if you had more time it might not be a problem but I wanted to travel the next day). I ended up getting a ticket on a faster train 008 (Novosibirsk - Vladivostok) at the same price, the downside is I would be getting in at 8pm while the bike wouldn't arrive till 1am. Once you have your ticket go back to the guy it the cargo office, give him your ticket and packing docket, he will make up a few forms for you to sign and give you a final price. In my case this was 5,400 Rubbles for 178kg (their scales where shorter than my wheelbase so I think I shaved off a couple of kg!). Take the final form back to the guys who weighted your bike and show it to them, shake their hand and say good bye to the bike. As an added bonus your translator might even refuse payment and let you take her out for dinner!

I'll let you know how the other end works in a few days!!