Why georailway.com

Hello. I decided to start a blog where I’ll talk about the development of this website (it’s not as simple as it seems) and about the Georgian railway. Yes, both at the same time. Let’s see what comes out of it.

First, I’ll tell you why georailway.com is needed in the first place.

Georgian Railways (GR) is not the largest or most developed railway network in Europe. I probably won’t be wrong if I say that most tourists only encounter GR when using the Tbilisi - Batumi express trains, the double-decker Stadlers. Beautiful, relatively modern, and they teleport you from the capital to the sea and back in 4-5 hours. Tickets for these trains are sold on many websites, no problem there.

It’s more complicated with other trains. You can’t buy tickets online anymore, and the official website offers you a schedule in a table like this. Try finding the route you need right away. There’s simply no information about intermediate stops.

At the station, you will be greeted by a similar sheet stuck to the ticket office window. The last time I was at the central station in Tbilisi, there wasn’t even that. But that’s actually good because the schedule is still wrong.

You can find railway route maps on the internet, but they are all outdated and can only give a general idea of how the tracks are laid. Often, they are also inaccurate. In general, an ordinary tourist (or maybe even a local resident) can easily get confused, give up on everything, and go look for a minibus at the Didube bus station.

In its current state, far from what I would call final, georailway.com already solves several problems:

• It shows the entire railway network and most stations on an interactive map. Now it’s easy to understand where you can get by train.
• It shows all routes on the map.
• For many routes, there is a detailed schedule, not just the starting and ending stations.
• For those routes where you can buy tickets online, there are links to purchase. And this is not obvious at all because tickets for different trains are sold on different websites.

But there’s still a lot of work to do. We’ll keep going.