Scenic route
Southern Line
Cape Town → Simon’s Town · South Africa
Southern Line in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 36 km
- Fastest time
- 1 h 20 min
- Average speed
- 27 km/h
- Top speed
- 90 km/h
- Operator
- Metrorail Western Cape (PRASA)
- Train
- X’Trapolis Mega EMU
- Countries
- South Africa
- In service since
- 1890
- Runs
- 1–2× hourly weekdays; reduced weekends
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
From Muizenberg the rails run on a False Bay sea wall so close to the surf that winter swells spray the carriage windows at Kalk Bay.
Cape Town’s Victorian resort line rounds the back of Table Mountain, finds the ocean at Muizenberg and refuses to leave it. For the final quarter-hour the rails sit on a stone sea wall through St James and Kalk Bay, where fishing boats bob metres from the track and False Bay swells rake the windows. The 1890 extension was built for the Royal Navy, and the line still ends beside Simon’s Town’s dockyard, a stroll from the penguins at Boulders Beach.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 948941 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 3 m from it
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Observatory and the Liesbeek valley
- Wynberg’s Constantia views
- Muizenberg surf beach
- St James tidal pool
- Kalk Bay harbour sea wall
- Simon’s Town dockyard and Boulders penguins
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