So, A few have done it before, but also the information found here is unfortunately not up to date anymore so here is the latest one, from 3 days ago. Since I knew I would make a post about this, I took some pictures so at least you can visualize the whole thing once there.

At the main train station of Irkutsk:



you go to the right about 200m to these coordinates:

N 52°16.859
E 104°15.603

It's at the back of the building and at that point you should see this entrance:



Go in, you will see a few cashregisters and then turn left, 5 meters further you will see this door on your right:



Go in and on the left side there is a desk with two computers. (as you can see on the picture) One of the guy's called Rostislav and he's the one you need. His english is almost non-existent but he will use google translate with you to talk. He's really a good guy that will go out of his way to help you. He's the guy for the shipping of the bike, and he will also build the "crate" your bike needs to be in.

Rostislav is in the middle of this picture with the bike ready to be put on the train:



If you're lucky or if you have time you can get on the same train as the bike. For us this was unfortunately not possible so we had to take a train 2 days before the bikes. (high season, trains are rapidly full)

You pay by weight and the tank needs to be (nearly) empty and disconnect the battery. That's it. Paperwork is half an hour, and it's cheaper to put the bikes on the train than to drive them and an experience and more relaxing. Trying to figure out on what train you will be and on what train the bikes will be can take way longer.

Rostislav's details, I told him that I would make a post of this but please keep in mind he's 'just' a clerk and not the boss of the company or anything before calling/texting or mailing him. If you call or text do it with a Russian number so he doesn't have to pay for receiving it!

Rostislav Vetrov
phone: 89041260772
email: ROSTHELP <<{AAATT}>> MAIL <{DDOOTT}> RU
the company is www.fpclog.ru

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Something went wrong with the previous post, everything after the url has gone...
Anyway, here the short version:

Rostislav is also on CS so you can stay with him if you want and we ended up paying 155€ for two DRZ400 incl crating for Irkutsk to Novosibirsk (2000km).

Hope this helps and if there are any questions, you know where to find me...

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Very nice post Seb cheers

Nice job. I'm sorry you couldn't get hold of Alexei, I didn't stay in touch with him so I don't know what happened to him.

I hope you get sorted as easily at the other end. Finding where to get the bike in Moscow was my biggest problem. Seeing those pics of Irkutsk took me right back to my trip.

Happy Days

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Hey no need to apology!
It's because I saw last year that you did it that we looked around on how to do it, although it were a few stressful days to be honest!

We stopped at Novosibirsk and won't go to Moscow, as we're heading down to the Pamir now but we didn't fancy a 2000km main road on the DRZ's... Train should arrive tonight and I'll be waiting to get the bikes off, as we are supposed to do that ourselves...

Will let you know tomorrow if it was smooth, but I hope so!

I just hope this will help some others as I've seen that some are looking to do it...

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We waited on the platform for the train to arrive and stayed with the bikes once the luggage-wagon was opened. Initially they wanted some money for taking the bikes off, but since we saw them unload everything else without anyone paying for it, and I went in to help them, we got the bikes out the train without paying anything. Which should be the way anyway...

The only thing is, received the bikes like they were: crated and no way they had any (or gave them in any case) tools to help to get rid of the crate. So just used my tire lever to uncrate the whole thing and within an hour we were on our way.

So my conclusion is: No problems doing this, if ever needed again, I will certainly do it again! The method of working is the same all along the TransSib so you should be able to put the bike on the train from Vladivostok to Moscow the same way!

Afterthought: Should have done this trip the other way around, first the Pamir, then Mongolia, then to Irkutsk so we could have taken the train back to Moscow... as it was that "easy" to do this.

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Thanks for the tips, useful info.

Good to hear you didn't have to bribe anyone to get the bike off the train!

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Thanks so much for this useful info :-)

Thanks much for this!!

Everything went like you said. We had a grill party with Rostislav last night, and it looks like we will be taking a train along with our bikes tomorrow!

The only recent info I can add is that the logistics companies are working with reduced capacities as a number of their wagons are stuck in the east because of the flooding. For this reason we could not be guaranteed transport a few days ago.

--Adam

Happy to have been of some help and that it worked out for you!

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Well done Seb, thanks!

Now, if I could persuade you to do a quick post on the shipping the bike page with a link back to here for the photos that would be super cool!

See here to create a new Shipment:
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/node/add/shipping

thanks!

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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
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Thou asked and ye shall receive...

I made a new shipping entry about it.

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Seb,

Great post thanks very much!

Did you have to book the train in advance or did you just turn up and book on the spot?.

Tom.

Did everything on the spot.
You could book it in advance, but I didn't as first through an agent it's always more expensive and second I wanted to be sure the bikes would get shipped out... once I knew (more or less) on what train the bikes would be, we bought the train tickets for us on what was left available...

hope this helps!

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