Scenic route
El Chepe
Los Mochis → Chihuahua · Mexico
El Chepe in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 653 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 16 h
- Average speed
- 41 km/h
- Top speed
- 70 km/h
- Operator
- Ferromex
- Train
- Chepe Regional
- Countries
- Mexico
- In service since
- 1961
- Runs
- 2× weekly each way
- Highest point
- 2,400 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Sea level to 2,400 m through Copper Canyon: 37 bridges and 86 tunnels in country deeper than the Grand Canyon.
Dreamed up in the 1860s as a shortcut from the American Midwest to a Pacific port, the crossing of the Sierra Madre defeated its promoters for nearly a century until completion in 1961. The engineering set-piece comes at Témoris, where the track stacks itself three levels high to escape the Santa Bárbara canyon; at Divisadero the train pauses long enough to walk to the rim and look 1,800 m down. This is Rarámuri homeland, and vendors board at the mountain halts with baskets, violins and pine-needle weaving.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 5977762 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 116 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 28 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Ferromex — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- El Fuerte river country
- Témoris triple-level loop
- Divisadero canyon rim
- Creel highland town
- Chihuahua high desert
More scenic routes
- Glacier Express
“The world’s slowest express”: 291 bridges, 91 tunnels and the 2,033 m Oberalp Pass at an average of 36 km/h.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bernina Express
A UNESCO World Heritage railway: 7 % grades with no rack, the Brusio spiral, and the highest rail crossing of the Alps at 2,253 m.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bergensbanen
Northern Europe’s highest main line: over the bare Hardangervidda plateau at 1,237 m, through 182 tunnels.
Wikipedia ↗ - West Highland Line
Regularly voted the world’s most scenic railway: around Rannoch Moor and over the 21-arch Glenfinnan Viaduct of film fame.
Wikipedia ↗
More train routes in Mexico.