Heritage route
Savannahlander
Cairns → Forsayth · Australia
Savannahlander in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 424 km
- Fastest time
- 36 h
- Average speed
- 12 km/h
- Top speed
- 60 km/h
- Operator
- Cairns Kuranda Steam
- Train
- 1963 “Silver Bullet” 2000-class railmotors
- Countries
- Australia
- In service since
- 1910
- Runs
- 1× weekly round trip (Wed–Sat, Mar–Dec)
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Sixty-year-old railmotors take two unhurried days to cover 424 km from coastal rainforest to the 1910 gold-rush railhead at Forsayth.
Two 1963 stainless-steel railmotors nicknamed the Silver Bullet leave Cairns each Wednesday and grind up the Kuranda range’s tunnels before wandering inland across the tablelands. The pace rarely beats 40 km/h, and that is the charm: four days out and back through mango farms, bush pubs and gulf savannah to the 1910 railhead at Forsayth. Passengers sleep in outback hotels along the way and side-trip by coach to Chillagoe’s limestone caves or Cobbold Gorge.
How this line was checked
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 4 m from it
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Barron Gorge tunnels above Cairns
- Kuranda rainforest village
- Mareeba’s coffee and mango farms
- Lappa Junction bush pub
- Einasleigh’s Copperfield Gorge
- Forsayth gold-rush railhead
More heritage routes
- Durango & Silverton
1882 gold-rush narrow gauge: steam-hauled ever since, on the Highline ledge blasted 120 m above the Animas River gorge.
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Theroux’s Old Patagonian Express: 750 mm gauge, 1922 steam locomotives and wood-stove-heated wooden coaches across the steppe.
Wikipedia ↗ - Sagano Scenic Railway
A retired JR alignment above the Hozugawa rapids: twenty-five slow minutes of maples and gorge that the modern main line skips through tunnels.
Wikipedia ↗ - SL Gunma
Restored D51 498 “Degoichi” and C61 20 haul retro coaches up the Joetsu Line on weekends: steam echoing off the Tone gorge under Tanigawa’s wall.
Wikipedia (JA) ↗
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