Laureenje

Greetings
I want to travel to Ulaanbaatar from Beijing by train number 23 from the Beijing Train Station. This train stopped running in 2020, but wonder if is now running. Hope someone knows. And also how to book it.

temppeternh

International railway tickets are sold oddly in Beijing, and, unless there have been recent changes, not at railway stations or through the Chinese railways website. As far as reaching Ulaan Baatar goes the only place for authoritative information is the CITS International Railway Ticket Office in the Beijing International Hotel, just north of Beijing Station on Jianguo Men Wai Dajie. There's limited English spoken and you could try calling the hotel and being put through (+86-10-65126688).

However, if you don't mind paying a premium, and if you want to book more than the 30 days in advance that such tickets are typically available, you could see if this information is actually up to date (I doubt it).

Ticket agency

If it's possible to sell tickets on this route, then these people will certainly sell you them, although they should be avoided for domestic tickets, and indeed there's no need of them for those.

Historically, tickets for the trains that only run to Ulaan Baatar have been easier to obtain than those for the full trans-Mongolian to Moscow train, when the aim is to alight partway.

Note that if you're planning to return to Beijing they will likely not be able to help you, and obtaining tickets in UB to go elsewhere is, or used to be, a matter of who you know. There's bribery to be dealt with and you would certainly need to use an agency in UB for that.

It's also possible (or was) to take a train from Beijing to the border at Erlian (daily, if I remember correctly), walk over the border and then take a bus. But this was an experience for the more rugged traveller, and the Chinese railway site isn't showing trains even on that route at the moment, although that might be some sort of technical error, or a matter of all the dates I looked at being sold out. This route is what they call the New Silk Road, with small traders loading up bales of goods, mostly clothing, purchased cheaply in Beijing for sale in Mongolia or Russia, and perhaps, if the cross-border trains are not running, they're booking up all the alternatives. There are, however, many trains shown to the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot, and it might be possible to proceed from there.

There are flights, presumably, but the train is better in several ways, if it can be arranged. Unless some new route has been built, which is always possible these days, it takes the switchback route built by Zhan Tianyou, and goes through the Great Wall near Badaling. The border crossing is accomplished late evening, and involves hoisting up the carriages to slide in bogies of the broader Russian gauge used in Mongolia.