Qualla: Mauritania Railway

Mauritania Railway: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin sbg, CC BY-SA 3.0. It can stretch nearly three kilometers from the locomotives to the final car, so long that as the front rounds a curve the rear is still hidden over the horizon. The Mauritania Railway runs a single track across 704 kilometers of open Sahara, and the trains that grind along it rank among the longest and heaviest the world has ever built. There are no first-class carriages, no dining car, no schedule you would trust. What there is, instead, is one of the last great free rides on the planet: climb the ladder of an open hopper, find a perch on the iron ore, and let the desert carry you to the sea.

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Image: Martin sbg | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mauritania Railway: Backbone of a Nation

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emesik, CC BY-SA 3.0. The line opened in 1963, three years after construction began, built for a single purpose: to move iron ore. It links the mining center of Zouérat, deep in the desert near the Western Sahara border, with the Atlantic port of Nouadhibou, running through Fderîck and the railway sto...

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Image: Emesik | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mauritania Railway: A Train Like No Other

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cooperazione, CC BY-SA 4.0. The numbers strain belief. Two diesel-electric locomotives drag between 200 and 210 cars, each loaded with up to 84 tonnes of ore, for a train that can run close to three kilometers end to end. It was custom-built to survive the Sahara. The earliest French-made MIFERMA locomotive...

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Image: Cooperazione | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mauritania Railway: Hot, Free, and Dangerous

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthias-Tf, CC BY 4.0. The most famous passengers do not pay a fare at all. While an SNIM subsidiary occasionally attaches a passenger car, most riders simply climb atop the open ore hoppers and ride for free: local families, merchants moving goods, and a trickle of adventurous travelers. The journey i...

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Image: Matthias-Tf | CC BY 4.0

Mauritania Railway: Through Contested Ground

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TheMoonIsBlue, CC BY 3.0. The railway carries more than ore; it carries the region's tangled politics. Since the closure of the Choum Tunnel, a roughly five-kilometer stretch of the line cuts across the part of Western Sahara controlled by the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi independence movement, threading ...

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Image: TheMoonIsBlue | CC BY 3.0