2012-2013 Egypt All-Lines Timetable

We’ve trawled through information in Arabic about all Egypt’s trains during the 2012-2013 timetable year and are pleased to present them here in English as a downloadable PDF of 108 pages. 

We have made a number of improvements to our earlier booklet, including:

a) creating a composite table of all trains running between Cairo, Qalyub and Benha and presented it at Table 6, to replace the defunct Fariskur Branch table. 

• b) adding an index of Train Numbers, of all 816 listed trains, complete with accommodation type, origin station and table number. Trains can consist of combinations of 6 different classes of accommodation.

This is in addition to a station index covering all of Egypt’s 732 stations (not including the growing Cairo Metro system), a schematic map of Lower Egypt services that makes sense of the complex network of lines in the Nile Delta between Cairo, Alexandria and the Suez Canal, and a full Egyptian railway system map.

This timetable is broadly similar in layout and style to our popular previous timetable booklet but is fully updated with current train times laid out in an easy-to-follow tabular format and using the classic Lucida Grande font. Every footnote and symbol is faithfully 

included, using timetable best practice to improve comprehension.

Trains are presented in the following tables, in which over 90% of the trains listed run every day of the week:

Table 1: the 111 express trains between Cairo & Alexandria.

Table 1a: daily locals between Tanta & Damanhur

Table 2: 62 express trains between Cairo and the Suez Canal.

Table 2a: daily locals between Benha & Ismailia

Table 3: the 14 trains between Ain Shams & Suez

Table 4: the 18 trains between Ismailia & Suez

Table 5: the 24 trains between Alexandria, Cairo, Mansura & Damietta

Table 5a: the 44 daily locals between Tanta, Mansura & Damietta

Table 6: **new** composite table showing all 192 trains between Cairo, Qalyub & Benha

Table 7: the 46 trains between Cairo, Zaqaziq & Mansura

Table 8: the 26 trains between Abu Kebir & Salihiya

Table 9: the 14 trains between Faqus & Sama’na

Table 10: the 18 trains between Mansura & Matariya

Table 11: the 48 trains between Cairo, Minuf & Tanta

Table 12: the 22 trains between Minuf & Kafr el-Zayat

Table 13: the 26 trains between Minuf & Benha

Table 14: the 22 trains between Benha & Zifta

Table 15: the 29 trains between Tanta, Zifta & Zaqaziq

Table 16: the 16 trains between Santa & Muhallet Ruh

Table 17: the 51 trains between Tanta, Qallin & Damanhur

Table 18: the 34 trains between Qallin, Kafr el-Sheikh & Shirbeen

Table 19: the 12 trains between Bassili & Disuq

Table 20: the 10 trains between Bassili & Qassabi (Bahri)

Table 21: the 24 trains between Alexandria, Ma’mura & Rosetta

Table 22: the 22 trains on the Western Desert line to Mersa Matruh

Table 24: the 39 trains between Cairo, Khatataba & Etay el-Barud

Table 25: the 44 trains between 23 July & Shibeen el-Qanatir

Table 26: the 72 trains between Cairo & Upper Egypt down the Nile Valley via Luxor and Aswan

Table 26a: the 74 3rd class locals on the Upper Egypt mainline

Table 27: the 20 trains between Wasta & Fayoum Oasis

Table 30: the 2 trains per week between Qena & Kharga Oasis

Table 31: trains between Kharga Oasis & Paris Oasis.

Most of this information is simply not available anywhere else, in English or in Arabic, and certainly not in such an accessible format. Not surprisingly Egyptian Railways publishes most of its information in Arabic, but that has left a lot of travellers either scratching their heads in puzzlement about Egypt’s large, busy and historic train network, or simply catching a bus instead. While information about the air-conditioned services run between Governorate capitols by Egyptian Railways is available on their website, information about its multiplicity of other trains has been almost impossible to get away from the stations themselves.