Cairo-Ain Sokhna — the newest ENR line, opened 2014.

What you are looking at

The Cairo-Sokhna line is the youngest passenger-carrying line on the Egyptian National Railways network, opened to full service in 2014. The line runs 170 kilometres south-east from Cairo through the eastern desert to the industrial port of Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea coast. The primary commercial purpose of the line is freight — Ain Sokhna is the principal Egyptian Red Sea container port and the line carries the inland-distribution of imports landed there. The passenger service was an addition to the original freight design, opened in October 2014 with two daily round trips and expanded to four in 2019.

The route is engineered to a higher specification than the older ENR network. The track is fully welded continuous rail (the older main lines still have jointed rail in many sections), the maximum gradient is 0.8% (the older Aswan line has gradients up to 2.4%), and the line is built for 140 km/h passenger speeds (compared to 100 km/h on the older main lines, ignoring the new Talgo Cairo-Alexandria expresses). The signalling is fully ATC (Automatic Train Control), making this the first ATC line on the network; the older lines use a mix of mechanical interlocking and intermittent ATP.

For passenger visitors the line offers two things. First, the rapid Red Sea access — Cairo to the Red Sea beach at Ain Sokhna in 1 hour 50 minutes, compared to 2 hours 30 minutes by road (the desert highway runs alongside but parallel and slightly south of the rail line). Second, the visual experience of riding a modern Egyptian railway built to international engineering standards — the contrast with the Cairo-Aswan sleeper (1980s rolling stock on 1900s alignment) is striking and instructive.

On the ground

The line departs Cairo from platform 13 at Misr Station (the new platform added in 2014, south of the historic twelve platforms covered in the Misr Station file). The Ain Sokhna terminus is a small 2014-built station serving both the port and the beach destination, with taxis to the Ain Sokhna resort cluster (12 minutes south along the coastal road) and free shuttle service to the port itself for ENR ticket-holders.

Use case: a weekend Red Sea day trip from Cairo by train works well. Depart Cairo on SK-4 at 14:00, arrive Sokhna 15:48, taxi to the beach by 16:30, swim and dinner at one of the beach restaurants, return on SK-7 (or stay overnight). The line is not yet at the capacity where it draws major beach-tourism traffic — most beach visitors still drive — but the weekend share of passenger traffic has grown from 18% in 2019 to 34% in the most recent ENR planning-office statistics.

What the line is not yet: a viable connecting service to Hurghada or further south. The Egyptian rail network south of Cairo follows the Nile valley to Aswan; the Red Sea coast south of Sokhna has no rail. Visitors going from Cairo to Hurghada continue by road from Sokhna (3 hours 30 minutes) or fly direct from Cairo International. The Cairo-Sokhna line is therefore a self-contained service rather than a stage in a longer Red Sea journey.

Reading list

• Younis, M. The 2014 Cairo-Sokhna Line — Engineering and Passenger Service. Sikka Press subscriber monograph, 2024.
• ENR Planning Office. Cairo-Sokhna Line Passenger Statistics 2019-2025. Annual bilingual reports.
• Sikka Press field notebooks 2016–2026, "SK" tag.