Luxury route
The Ghan
Adelaide → Darwin · Australia
The Ghan in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 2,979 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 54 h
- Average speed
- 55 km/h
- Top speed
- 115 km/h
- Operator
- Journey Beyond
- Train
- Expedition sleeper
- Countries
- Australia
- In service since
- 2004
- Runs
- 1× weekly, 2× in peak season (Jun–Sep)
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Named for the Afghan cameleers: 2,979 km straight through the Red Centre, completed to Darwin only in 2004.
The Ghan sells silence: hour after hour of saltbush and red sand in which the main event is a wedge-tailed eagle riding the thermals. Journey Beyond breaks the crossing with off-train expeditions (a dawn pause at Marla, the MacDonnell Ranges at Alice Springs, a cruise between the sandstone walls of Nitmiluk Gorge at Katherine) before the light turns tropical and Darwin’s mango humidity rolls in. The consist itself is an outback spectacle, often nudging a kilometre of stainless steel behind twin locomotives.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1148765 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 26 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 6 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Journey Beyond — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Flinders Ranges beyond Port Augusta
- Marla sunrise stop
- MacDonnell Ranges at Alice Springs
- Nitmiluk (Katherine) Gorge cruise
- tropical Top End into Darwin
More luxury routes
- Venice Simplon-Orient-Express
Belmond’s restored Art Deco sleepers of the 1920s–30s: black tie encouraged as the Alps slide past the champagne bar.
Wikipedia ↗ - Rocky Mountaineer
All-daylight luxury through the Canadian Rockies: glass-domed coaches, an overnight hotel stop and the Kicking Horse Pass.
Wikipedia ↗ - The Blue Train
A five-star hotel on rails: butlers, marble bathrooms and the Karoo semi-desert rolling past for 1,600 km.
Wikipedia ↗ - Indian Pacific
Ocean to ocean across Australia, including the world’s longest railway straight: 478 dead-level kilometres on the Nullarbor.
Wikipedia ↗
More train routes in Australia.