Sikka Press is a small editorial desk in Tanta on the Cairo-Alexandria main line. Since 2016 we have maintained a single dated reference covering the Egyptian National Railways: the Cairo-Alexandria express that opened in 1856 as the first railway in Africa, the Watania sleeper service down the Nile to Aswan, the new Cairo-Ain Sokhna line, the Khedival-era stations still in use, and the practical logistics of travelling by train in Egypt today.
Each file is a maintained working reference — dated last-verified line, current timetables and ticket conditions, station-by-station notes, and a public change log. Six sit in the top navigation; the seventh — the broader ENR history file — is in the footer because it's an essay rather than a working document.
The main spine of the Egyptian network. First section between Alexandria and Kafr el-Zayyat opened in 1854; the full line completed in 1856, the first railway built in Africa. The current "Spanish" Talgo VIP service runs the route in 2h 30m. Eight daily express services and the standard hourly stopping pattern.
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The Watania (Egyptian National) sleeper down the Nile to Aswan. Trains №84 and №86 daily, departing Cairo around 20:00 and arriving Aswan around 13:30 the next afternoon. Two-berth cabins, dining car, the classic overnight experience that has barely changed since the 1960s.
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Mahatta Misr — Cairo's central railway terminus, the busiest station in Egypt. Built 1893 by the Italian architect Edward Matasek in Beaux-Arts style, refurbished 2011. Twelve platforms, the railway museum next door, the standard arrival point for international visitors going down the Nile.
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Our base. The principal Delta junction on the Cairo-Alexandria main line, with branches west to Damanhur and east to Mansoura. Six platforms, the 1880s station building intact, the most reliable mid-Delta connection point. The desk's working office is six minutes' walk from the platform.
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The newest line on the network. Cairo to the Red Sea coast at Ain Sokhna, opened to full service in 2014. The route serves the industrial port, but the passenger service has built a small commuter market and weekend Red Sea traffic. The line is the first new ENR construction in three decades.
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The ten major Khedival-era stations still in service: Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta, Mansoura, Damanhur, Zagazig, Asyut, Minya, Luxor, Aswan. Built between 1856 and 1903 in a mix of British, Italian and French railway-architectural traditions. The single most coherent body of 19th-century industrial architecture in Egypt.
Open the fileTrain timetables and rolling-stock conditions change faster than the standard quarterly cycle accommodates. We work to a 60-day rotation on the practical operational sections of each file, while the architectural-history sections rotate annually.
Every route in the file is ridden by an editor at least once every 60 days on the standard service. The ticket is paid for at the normal class; we do not accept ENR press-pass complimentary tickets.
Every published timing is cross-checked against the ENR official timetable, the Tanta station-master's working board, and our own dated arrival-time photograph at each major intermediate station.
ENR service changes, fare adjustments and seasonal-schedule notices are issued in Arabic only. We translate the relevant ones in full on the day they are posted.
Every published claim carries the date it was verified and the editor signature. Earlier entries appear in the change log; the log is append-only.
The desk was founded in February 2016 by a former ENR planning-office statistician, a Cairo-based railway historian, and a French translator with twenty years' work on Egyptian transport publications. Tanta was chosen as the base because it sits on the main line equidistant between Cairo and Alexandria — every editor's commute to either end-station is approximately one hour, in either direction.
The notes below come from active subscribers quoted with permission. They give a fair picture of who the desk serves.
For independent travellers planning the Cairo-Aswan sleeper, the Sikka Press file is the only English source that tracks the carriage rolling stock between the two daily services and the actual on-the-ground booking procedure at the Ramses ticket office.
When ENR introduced the new Talgo express in 2024, the desk's translation of the technical bulletin was up within three days. The Cairo press did not cover the technical detail; the desk did.
The Khedival stations file is the academic resource I use in my own architectural history teaching. The bilingual catalogue cross-references against the original British Public Works Department archive — nobody else has done this.
The Cairo-Aswan sleeper file and the Khedival stations file are the two longest. Either is a fair test of whether the editorial standard is what we say it is.