From the Trans-Iranian to Mexico’s Chepe Express: Eight evocative stories of great train journeys

Journalist Pablo Zulaica Parra (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 1982) has been recording his train journeys and his conversations aboard since 2010. He compiled 20 of his many adventures in his fourth book, 'Paisajeros' (Landscapes). Below, he summarizes eight of them. La Circumetnea, Mount Etna’s ‘trenino’ [little train]. On the map of Sicily, the Ferrovia Circumetnea resembles its first initial, the letter C. It is a sloping, open C to the east, and it is 110 kilometers long. Since 1895, it has encircled the volcano Mount Etna, and it stops and starts along the coast of the Ionian Sea, as if it had been traced with a huge compass. "The route from Riposto to Randazzo is more touristy and the line from Randazzo to Catania is commercial," says Salvo, the engineer. He also explains where you can board some of the relics that still remain on the Sicilian tracks, such as the one where he works. "The tourist one has more old trains and the one in Catania is more modern. And then there was an 'engine' [railcar] during the fascist period. It is preserved [in Bronte], but now without 'fascio' [fascists]." From Catania, the metric track advances among the orange trees and pistachio plants, over the merciless malpais, or hard lava. The lava flows not only perforated the rock at several points but also engulfed sections of the line several times. Transferring at Giarre is one way to reach Taormina slowly; it’s been one of the main destinations since the start of Sicily’s era of tourism. Pablo Zulaica

The Pacific Surfliner, a low flight along the Californian coast. Riding the Surfliner, which runs between the border of San Diego and San Luis Obispo, is a good way to get acquainted with California, its people and its idiosyncrasies. Still less popular than taking a private vehicle, the unelectrified railroad line passes through several of the state’s surfing meccas and allows you to get off in downtown Los Angeles. It also rewrites California’s Camino Real, a route that is now full of places saint names because Franciscans founded it in the name of the Catholic faith and the Bourbon monarchy in their advance north from what was then called New Spain. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (in 1543), Sebastián de Vizcaíno (in 1602) and perhaps pirate Francis Drake (in 1579) explored these coasts. In Los Angeles, you can also take long-distance trains such as the Coast Starlight, which heads north to Seattle, or the California Zephyr, which goes cross-country to Chicago. Pablo Zulaica

The Nordlandsbanen, a train to the Arctic Circle. "In recent years, flying has become very cheap," says Tore Bjorn Hansen, the manager of NSB in the arctic city of Bodø, "although it's still cheapest to buy train tickets on sale. But it's a 10-hour journey as opposed to one [hour]. However, by plane you spend a lot of time waiting in line, and if you like the train... you have to travel by train! The Nordlandsbanen departs from the city of Trondheim and climbs up the landscape to Bodø, 10 hours of silent travel… During the winter, [the train] passes through white, mountainous country. Although the convoy does not follow the coastline, there are innumerable fjords that bring the sea closer to the track. On the way, a small monument announces when the traveler enters the Arctic Circle. A later trip to see the northern lights and learn about the city of Narvik’s mining and war history and the history of the explorers of Tromso completes a more introspective railway trip than the magnificent, albeit touristy, Flåm train alternative. From Narvik, you can board the Swedish train that crosses the border mountains and descends through pine forests, via Kiruna to Stockholm, just a few hours from Oslo. Pablo Zulaica

The Trans-Iranian: if oil were water. In Iran, oil still justifies many things, not just the country’s decision to drill in the enormous Zagros Mountains to link the Gulf with Tehran back in the 1930s. In 1908, Persia was still a bankrupt, disconnected and dusty state. But the subsoil was something else entirely. That was the year when William Knox D'Arcy, an English tycoon who was drilling on the shores of the Gulf, found oil on Persian soil, too close to present-day Iraq. Thus, all the world powers wanted to build the Trans-Iranian Railway. Mahmud was traveling in the next compartment, spoke good English and worked for the National Iranian Oil Company, the local heir to the British company… that was nationalized after decades of shakedowns. His position was in the Health Department at a plant in the city of Ahvaz. He told me he liked his job, and I was happy for him. I thought he meant improving the workers’ health, but he clarified that his “job contributes to ensuring cheap oil for everyone." Pablo Zulaica

El Chepe and the sights of the Sierra Tarahumara. In the novel 'El tren pasa primero [The train goes by first]' (2005), Mexican author Elena Poniatowska writes: "Trains and the station were two very good reasons to be on the ground and to look at the sunny side of life. For the teenager, the station was a portal to the unknown, to that great country that was his own and through which he would travel one day, to the wide and generous world to which he wanted to belong." Mexican railroads were privatized in the early 1990s. Since then, along with the 'de facto' exception of 'La bestia [the beast]'—the cargo trains boarded by migrants to the United States for decades—only one passenger train survived: the Chihuahua-Pacific (known by its acronym El Chepe). It has remained because of its dual purpose of providing tourists with an amazing trip to the edge of the Copper Canyon and giving locals a more pleasant journey than the hellish mountain roads. Recently, the company that operates the train, Ferromex, redesigned its offerings for tourists as a more exclusive trip, but it is still possible to board the convoy of local trains, which afford a more genuine and realistic approach to the Canyon’s complexity. Pablo Zulaica

Bolivian 'buscarriles': inventiveness in the face of scarcity. "I liked the line from Cochabamba to Aiquile the best," Roland Felix from Luxembourg told me the day I met him, between Potosi and Sucre. "When I walked it, there were landslides. It is more primitive, and the 'buscarril' only worked on the first and last days. It's a yellow '55 Dodge, but it lost the letter d, so now it's Odge." I literally met Roland on the track, walking a section of it after we got off the one that links the two Bolivian cities through the mountains. The genuine 'buscarril'—basically a nice old bus mounted on rails—is the solution for linking remote Bolivian towns with their regional capitals, although the vehicle does not appear on the train timetables. Since 2021, other, more visible 'buscarriles' have been operating in Bolivia. The Empresa Ferroviaria Andina (Andean Railroad Company) withdrew the two trains that had linked Villazón (on the border with Argentina) and Oruro (in the center of the altiplano [highlands]) for many years; the locomotive travels for eight hours through bare ravines and deserts. Among them is the famous town of Uyuni, which has an enormous salt flat; it is still possible to get there by train, in a double railcar that’s also called a 'buscarril.' Pablo Zulaica

Silk Road trains. "That train corridor was evolving into a miniature Silk Road. The vendors, mostly women, appeared constantly, up to two each minute…Their pace increasingly resembled that of an urban Central Asian bazaar. They carried everything in transparent bags, displaying their offerings as they walked slowly, without stopping and without yelling out their goods; at most, they whispered the product [they were selling]. But whether in Osh, Murghab, Jorog, Khujand or Bukhara, whether in a municipal building designed for bazaars or at a row of containers in the open, the essence remained of these societies in which small commerce was as common as air, and unfolded in the aisle, despite strict management, as happens in the streets of any bazaar". ' Certainly, one boards an Uzbek train to become acquainted with the Shahristan of Samarkand, the walls of Bukhara or the labyrinth of mud and tile that is Khiva, but you may disembark from the train with the sense of having learned something valuable onboard. Pablo Zulaica

Narrow gauge branch lines in India. "There is a bus from Gwalior to Sheopur that takes five hours," said the boy traveling next to me. "But it costs 90 rupees and the train [is] only 50, and the bus is also full." We were sitting on the roof of the carriage of a slow-moving train, which is forbidden but still happens on some old narrow-gauge branch lines in remote India. The century-old line from Gwalior to Sheopur Kalan, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, south of the famous city of Agra, was dismantled in 2020 to modernize it into broad gauge to serve the needs of a growing population, and other small railroads, which are called “toy trains” are following suit. However, three of these modest lines are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites because of their value and uniqueness: the Kalka to Shimla, in the Indian Pre-Himalayas; the Darjeeling train, near Bhutan, and the Nilgiri Mountains, which crosses tea plantations in the southern state of Kerala. Pablo Zulaica