Trans-Siberian Railway adventures. The railway is often associated with the main transcontinental Russian line that connects hundreds of large and small cities of the European and Asian parts of Russia. At a Moscow–Vladivostok track length of , it spans a record eight time zones. Taking eight days to complete the journey, it is the third-longest single continuous service in the world, after the Moscow–Pyongyang and the Kiev–Vladivostok services, both of which also follow the Trans-Siberian for much of their routes. The main route of the Trans-Siberian Railway begins in Moscow at Yaroslavsky Vokzal, runs through Yaroslavl, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Ulan-Ude,
West Siberian taiga Siberian taiga ecoregion, which is colder and more rugged in terrain. The southern edge of the region lies north of the belt of temperate forests and forest-steppe that runs along the Trans-Siberian railway. Because the West Siberian ecoregion is thus outside of the normal agricultural and developed strip of southern Russia, it is sparsely populated, although the city of Yekaterinburg is at the extreme southwest corner of the region. The city of Surgut is the largest city in the interior (with just over 300,000 inhabitants). To the north is the tundra of the Yamal-Gydan tundra ecoregion (covering the Ob River