Heritage route
Nanyuki Safari Train
Nairobi → Nanyuki · Kenya
Nanyuki Safari Train in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 237 km
- Fastest time
- 7 h 30 min
- Average speed
- 32 km/h
- Top speed
- 65 km/h
- Operator
- Kenya Railways
- Train
- Metre-gauge diesel with vintage coaches
- Countries
- Kenya
- In service since
- 1930
- Runs
- 1× weekly each way (Fri out, Sun back)
- Highest point
- 1,950 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Crosses the equator on its final approach to Nanyuki, where Mount Kenya’s 5,199 m massif fills the carriage windows.
Kenya Railways woke this 1930 settler branch from a long sleep in 2020, and its weekend train is now the cheapest safari in the highlands. Eight metre-gauge hours out of Nairobi, it climbs through Thika’s pineapple estates and the coffee towns of Murang’a, Sagana and Karatina, crossing the equator on the final approach. On a clear day Mount Kenya’s glaciated summit hangs above the plains for the last hour into Nanyuki.
How this line was checked
- The 190 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 2551184 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within 39 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 17 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Kenya Railways — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Thika pineapple estates
- Murang’a coffee ridges
- Sagana and the Aberdare foothills
- Karatina market town
- Equator crossing before Nanyuki
- Mount Kenya massif
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