Night train route
Sethu Express (Boat Mail)
Chennai → Rameswaram · India
Sethu Express (Boat Mail) in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 603 km
- Fastest time
- 9 h 40 min
- Average speed
- 62 km/h
- Top speed
- 110 km/h
- Operator
- Indian Railways (Southern Railway)
- Train
- ICF sleeper rake behind WAP-4 electric
- Countries
- India
- In service since
- 1914
- Runs
- 1× nightly each way
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Heir to the 1914 Boat Mail that fed the Ceylon ferry, it now reaches Rameswaram island over India’s first vertical-lift sea bridge, opened 2025.
The Boat Mail began running south from Madras in 1914, feeding steamers that crossed the Palk Strait to Ceylon, and today’s Sethu Express carries the pilgrimage overnight to Rameswaram. Since April 2025 it has crossed the new 2.07 km Pamban bridge, India’s first vertical-lift sea span, whose 72.5 m section rises in minutes to let ships pass. On the island approach, waves break directly beneath the rails.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from 3 OpenStreetMap relations, their own nodes end to end: relation 1289108 (103 km), relation 1289109 (178 km), relation 9196840 (89 km) — 370 km of the route between them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 8 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Indian Railways — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Tiruchirappalli’s Rockfort skyline
- Chettinad mansion country at Karaikudi
- Ramanathapuram coastal scrub
- Pamban vertical-lift bridge crossing
- Ramanathaswamy temple corridors
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