Scenic route
Linha do Douro
Porto → Pocinho · Portugal
Linha do Douro in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 170 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 20 min
- Average speed
- 51 km/h
- Top speed
- 120 km/h
- Operator
- CP Comboios de Portugal
- Train
- Série 592 railcar
- Countries
- Portugal
- In service since
- 1887
- Runs
- 5–6× daily each way (more as far as Régua)
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Clings to the Douro’s waterline for some 100 km on ledges blasted out in the 1880s, passing UNESCO-listed port-wine terraces at Régua and Pinhão.
Beyond Régua the valley narrows until vineyard terraces rise straight from the water, shaped by hand across three centuries of port-wine making. The rails once continued over the Spanish frontier: that lonely section closed in 1988, leaving Pocinho as a dead end deep in wine country and all the better for it. Pinhão is the set-piece stop, its station faced with azulejo panels of the vintage, and in late September the harvest spills down to the quays below the line.
How this line was checked
- The 163 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 1724300 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within 31 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 9 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: CP Comboios de Portugal — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- São Bento azulejos, Porto
- Douro riverside from Mosteirô
- Peso da Régua wine quays
- Pinhão’s tiled station
- Valeira gorge
- Pocinho — gateway to Côa rock art
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 Portugal.

