Five Nations Railway Corridor
proposed rail link in Central Asia between Iran in the west, through Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan
The Five Nations Railway Corridor or FNRC or Five States Railway Corridor is a proposed rail link in Central Asia between Iran in the west, through Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and reaching China in the east. Around half of the length of the railway would pass through northern Afghanistan. A preliminary agreement for developing the FNRC project was signed in the Tajik capital Dushanbe in December 2014 and has moved sluggishly since then. The project with a length of 2100 kilometres will run through five countries- China, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Iran, connecting China with the Iranian ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas. About 50 percent of the total railway line, roughly 1148 kilometres, will cross through Afghanistan's Kunduz, Balkh, Jawozjan, Faryab, Badghis, and Herat provinces. A preliminary agreement for the railway link was first signed in 2014, with costs estimated at US$2 billion, however construction of the main section through Afghanistan was uncertain due to the conflict in Afghanistan.
Background
On 9 May 2023, the first trial run of cargo from Iran to Afghanistan via the Khaf-Herat railway was completed. This shipment included 17 wagons that transferred 655 tons of railway equipment that will be used in the further construction of the rail line. The Khaf-Herat railway is 225 kilometers long, with 140 km of the railway track traversing Afghanistan and the remaining 85 km running through Iran. The construction of the Khaf-Herat railway line, which links Khaf in eastern Iran with Herat in western Afghanistan, began back in 2007.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Five Nations Railway Corridor” is proposed rail link in Central Asia between Iran in the west, through Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Five, Nations and Railway, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108290993. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014, 1148, 2023 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Five Nations Railway Corridor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.