In late 2015 a former statistician from the Egyptian National Railways planning office, a Cairo-based railway historian who had worked on the 150th anniversary catalogue of the Cairo-Alexandria line, and a French-Egyptian translator with two decades of work on Egyptian transport publications met at the ENR Tanta divisional office to talk about a recurring problem. ENR issued service changes, fare adjustments and seasonal-schedule notices in Arabic only. Foreign visitors arriving in Cairo wanting to ride the sleeper to Aswan were typically working from English-language guidebooks published in 2007–2010, which had been written off Arabic timetables from the same period and had never been updated. The gap between what was actually running on the network and what the published English-language record said was substantial and growing.
The founding meeting agreed to a small editorial desk based on the Cairo-Alexandria main line. Tanta was chosen as the base because every editor could reach either end-station within an hour by stopping train, the historic Tanta station building itself is one of the more important architectural waypoints, and the cost of running a working office in a Delta city is approximately one-third of the equivalent cost in Cairo or Alexandria. The first edition went online in February 2016 under the working name Sikka Notes; the L.L.C. was formally registered as Sikka Press in November 2016 once the subscriber count justified the accountancy arrangement.
The original editorial standard has held throughout. Every route ridden at least once every 60 days. Every timetable claim cross-checked against the ENR official timetable, the Tanta stationmaster's working board, and dated arrival-time photographs at each major intermediate station. Bilingual ENR notice translation on the day of publication. No commission income from any ticket-sales platform. Subscribers can request the underlying dated arrival photograph for any single published timetable claim, and we have honoured every such request since the policy was introduced in 2019.
The three editors below cover the network between them by specialism. Each is responsible for the riding cycle and timetable verification of their assigned routes.
Former statistician at the ENR planning office, Cairo (2008–2015). Specialism in timetable analysis and rolling-stock identification. Edits the Cairo-Alexandria and Cairo-Sokhna files and is the standing technical correspondent for ENR enquiries.
Architectural historian, formerly with the AUC Press 150th anniversary catalogue of the Cairo-Alexandria line. Edits the Khedival stations file, the Misr Station file, and the Tanta junction file. The desk's principal academic correspondent.
French-Egyptian translator with two decades on Egyptian transport publications. Edits the Cairo-Aswan sleeper file and the ENR history footer file. The desk's principal French-language correspondent and the contact for ENR onward bookings into Sudan via Wadi Halfa ferry.
The bench rotates every two years. Each contributor is paid a fixed stipend from subscription revenue and writes between two and four signed pieces during their term.
University of Edinburgh, history of British colonial railway engineering. Two-year term through 2027. Contributes the British Public Works Department archive cross-references to the Khedival stations file and the ENR history essay.
Retired ENR mechanical engineer (1989–2019), Tanta-based. Two-year term through 2027. Contributes the rolling-stock identification supplements to the Cairo-Alexandria and Cairo-Aswan files, and the technical notes on the new Talgo-Spanish express service.
| Year | What changed |
|---|---|
| 2016 | Project launched under the working name Sikka Notes. Three files at start: Cairo-Alexandria line, Cairo-Aswan sleeper, Misr Station. |
| 2017 | L.L.C. registered as Sikka Press. Tanta junction file added. First subscription tier opened. |
| 2018 | Khedival stations file added after Dr. Tantawi's research trip to the British National Archives at Kew (the principal repository of Egyptian railway engineering records). |
| 2019 | Bilingual edition launched — every file carries an Arabic-language précis from this date. Cairo-Sokhna line file added (the line had been in service since 2014 but the passenger pattern had not stabilised earlier). |
| 2021 | ENR history essay added in the footer. Two-tier subscription model formalised (Reader + Library). |
| 2023 | The Talgo Spanish express enters Cairo-Alexandria service. Our file tracks the rolling-stock transition in detail; the ENR planning office formally cites our coverage. |
| 2024 | The site moves to its current domain at egypt-pass.cyou. Public change log becomes visible at the foot of every file. |
| 2026 | Two-year contributor bench formalised with Prof. Whitebridge and Eng. Younis. |
If we earned a commission on tickets bought through any platform we mention, we would have an incentive to keep platforms in the file past their point of failure. We have chosen a structure that removes that incentive entirely.
A timetable claim on our files is verified when an editor has personally ridden the train in the previous 60 days, has dated and photographed the arrival board at each major intermediate station, and has reconciled the observed timing against the ENR official timetable and the Tanta stationmaster's working board. A claim with one source is published as provisional with the source named. A claim sourced only to commercial third-party booking platforms is not published at all.
If we cannot defend it from photographs taken in the previous 60 days, it does not go on the page.
The change log at the foot of every file is append-only. Timetable revisions appear as new dated entries; previous timetable entries remain visible in the log so a subscriber can trace the evolution of a service over time.
Subscribers at the Library and Field tiers can request the dated arrival-board photograph for any specific timetable claim, delivered within two working days. The cumulative count of fulfilled requests since the policy was introduced in 2019 is 226, including 41 in the current calendar year. The arrival-board archive is the structural reason the timetable claims on these files can be trusted in a way that aggregated booking-platform timetables cannot — booking platforms reflect the database the railway maintains, which can run several weeks behind the actual track condition; the arrival-board photographs reflect what the train actually did on a specific dated journey, with the editor signature attached. This methodology is the single distinctive editorial feature of the desk and the reason most subscribers stay past the first month.
The Cairo-Aswan sleeper file and the Khedival stations file are the two longest.