Updated on Saturday, December 27, 2008, 00:00 IST

St Petersburg, Dec 27: Cheerful sounds of brass and sparking Bengal lights opened the inauguration ceremony of Russia's first high-speed train.

The ceremony took place yesterday on Platform Four of Russia's oldest railway station in St Petersburg. Despite the snow and chilling gusts of wind from the Baltic Sea, the ceremony gathered a large crowd of railway specialists, journalists and passengers.

Deputy Prime Minster Alexander Zhukov said the presentation ceremony was a remarkable event.

"Back in the 1960s and 1970s Russia made attempts to create a system of high-speed train traffic, but there proved not very successful then," Zhukov said. "Three years ago, the Russian railways company RZD undertook to implement this project, and now we have in front of us the first such train."

Zhukov believes that the high-speed train called Sapsan (the Russian name for peregrine falcon - the world's fastest-flying bird) sets a high benchmark of quality for Russian high technologies and industry to seek to achieve.

The train is engineered and built by specialists of Germany's Siemens concern.

For his part, RZD president Vladimir Yakunin explained that the train Siemens had built for Russia was by no means an exact replica of what the company manufactured for other countries.

"'Sapsan' incorporates 30 patented know-hows and four inventions," Yakunin said.

He described the new train as a New Year present from the industry to all passengers. St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko recalled not without a pride that Russia's first railways were laid from St Petersburg.

The new rocket-looking express train, which develops a speed of up to 250 kilometres per hour, will begin to be used on the line connecting St Petersburg and Moscow.

Bureau Report