Dostyk

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Dostyk (Kazakh: Достық) or Druzhba (Russian: Дружба) is a small town in Kazakhstan's Almaty Province, near the country's border with China. It is a point of entry (by highway and railroad) from China.

[edit] Railways

The agreement between the Soviet Union and the PRC to connect Kazakhstan with Western China by rail was achieved in 1954. On the Soviet side, the railway reached the border town of Druzhba (Dostyk) (whose names, both Russian and Kazakh, mean 'friendship' in each respective language) in 1959. On the Chinese side, however, the westward construction of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway was stopped once it reached Urumqi in 1962. Due to the Sino-Soviet Split, the border town remained a sleepy backwater for some 30 years, until the railway link was finally completed on September 12, 1990.

The point of entry on the Chinese side is Alashankou.

The railway networks of the two countries use different gauges, so there is a break of gauge. It proposed to build a standard gauge Transcontinental Railway to link Europe and China to bypass this break of gauge.