Right from the heart, it can be heartwarming news for many as well from Russia. St. Petersburg-Murmansk train has newly added a new stop at a far-off station on its route to pick up a school girl and her grandmother so that they can easily commute to and from school.  

As per BBC report, Karina Kozlova, 14, she has been traveling to and from school with her grandmother Natalia Kozlova from their remote area of Poyakonda. The train from Saint Petersburg to Murmansk runs twice a day, along a 630-mile route that takes 26 hours from end to end. Poyakonda is a rural place in the north-west part of Russia. “We considered and approved the request of the Kandalaksha district administration for an additional stop at the Poyakonda station along the number 21 train route from Murmansk to St. Petersburg,” the spokesman for the local railway’s company told TASS.

Quick facts

Poyakonda is the rural locality in Kandalakshsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located beyond the Arctic Circle at a height of 6 meters above sea level.

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For many years, Karina Kozlova has joined them on the route to get to the nearest school in Zelenoborsky. Her grandmother, a former nursery school teacher, had been escorting along with her and other children along the route. Now, Karina Kozlova is the only, single child left in her village and, according to Russia’s Gudok newspaper, the train is introducing a new, official train stop near Poyakanda to help her get to school and back, with time to do her homework at the end of the day.

The village has only fifty residents and has only one 14 year old girl. She attends school at the village of Zelenoborsky. She regularly takes one of the suburban trains to reach school. The morning train leaves at 7:30 a.m. and the return leg gets them home at close to 9 at night. But with the new stop, Kozlova will no longer return home late in the evening. The Poyakonda station was excluded from the schedule of long-distance trains in December. Sending a school bus to pick up the school kid is quite impossible as her village can only be reached by 10 km forest road.

And that’s why her mother, who works for Moscow State University asked the railway authorities to sort out the issue by putting a stop.

In 2016, a similar train station on the Japanese island of Hokkaido made headlines when it closed after its sole patron graduated from high school.