The Central Park of Culture and Rest is Karagandy's main green space — a Soviet-era park built on the model that every self-respecting Soviet city was supposed to have: a place where workers could take their leisure in an organized and improving fashion. Today it functions more loosely, as a park for walking, sitting, and watching the city go about its business.
The park's most charming feature is the children's railway — a narrow-gauge miniature railway that runs through the grounds, operated (in season) by children under adult supervision, a Soviet tradition that persists in a number of former Soviet cities. It is small, slow, and oddly delightful. The park also has the usual post-Soviet mixture of maintained flowerbeds and faded amusements. Come in summer when it is actually in use; in winter the park is bleak in the way that only steppe cities in winter can manage.