<kuid:581493:101325> Qena to Safaga through the Red Sea Mountains

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A long desert run along the ancient trade route connecting the Nile Valley and the Red Sea port of Safaga.

Your choice - take a load of phosphate from Abu Tartur through to unload at Port Safaga; or load up with bauxite at the port, and haul through the mountains to the aluminium smelter at Nag Hammadi.

Or (purely fictional, but remembering the route is also a centuries-old route for pilgrims performing the Hajj by making the sea crossing to Arabia) - go on, take a rickety old third-class train across to the Hajj terminal.

Leave the verdantly fertile Nile valley behind, for the long climb up Wadi Qena to the Halfway Loop at the summit.

Then wind your way along a tortuous pass, threading through the Red Sea Mountains, descending steeply. Across a desert plateau, and a couple more tortuous passes.

Drop down to the Red Sea coastal plain, for the last few miles into Port Safaga.

There really was such a railway - built by New Zealand, Indian, and South African sappers during WW2 to connect a deep water harbour to the main Cairo-Aswan railway line.

When the British military forces occupying Egypt were removed in 1952, they ripped up the line and took it home with them. Still resented by people in Qena in the late 1970s :-).

It has recently been rebuilt, to allow Egyptian State Railways to transport phospate from the Abu Tartur project (WAY out in the New Valley). Paddling around on t'internet, it seems there MAY be two trains a week; I also found a news report that suggested the opening train broke down halfway to Abu Tartur, and that the line was not 'fully operational'.

Whatever the case, in 2017 the Egyptian Government revealed plans to rebuild the line to passenger standards, and extend it to Hurghada.

Apologies, folks. There is ... 'not a lot of scenery'! The rolling stock is ... 'not in Egyptian State Railways livery'.

Hmm - there are precious few Egyptian resources on the download station. No matter - there's enough there for me to recreate memories of living in Egypt back in the 1970s! Use your imagination, folks :-).