Classic route
Luanda–Malanje Express
Luanda → Malanje · Angola
Luanda–Malanje Express in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 424 km
- Fastest time
- 11 h
- Average speed
- 39 km/h
- Top speed
- 90 km/h
- Operator
- Caminho de Ferro de Luanda (CFL)
- Train
- CFL long-distance express
- Countries
- Angola
- In service since
- 1909
- Runs
- 1× daily each way
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Angola’s oldest railway, silenced for decades by civil war, reopened end-to-end in 2011 after a Chinese-led rebuild of all 424 km.
Angola’s first railway started inland from Luanda in 1889 and reached the Malanje plateau twenty years later, only to be shattered by three decades of civil war. A Chinese-led reconstruction relaid all 424 km, and since 2011 a daily long-distance train has linked the Atlantic capital with the highlands again. It leaves the 1880s Bungo terminus, crosses the baobab plains of the Cuanza lowlands and climbs to N’dalatando before running out the plateau to Malanje, gateway to the Kalandula Falls.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 2148314 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 54 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 15 m from it
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Bungo terminus in old Luanda
- Cuanza lowland baobabs near Catete
- Climb to N’dalatando’s green hills
- Cacuso plateau farmland
- Malanje, gateway to Kalandula Falls
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