Saudi Arabia
B.alotaby / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
Saudi Arabia covers most of the Arabian Peninsula — about 2,150,000 km², the largest country in the Middle East and the fifth largest in Asia, with 33.7 million people and its capital at Riyadh. Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait lie to the north; Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the south-east and Yemen to the south. It is the only country with a coastline on both the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. Most of the terrain is arid — desert, steppe and lowland — including the Rub' al Khali, the largest continuous sand desert in the world, and the mountains of the Asir in the south-west.
Rail travel here is recent and it comes in two quite different forms. In the west, the Haramain High Speed Railway runs at 300 km/h between Mecca and Medina by way of Jeddah and King Abdullah Economic City, with online booking and a published timetable. In the centre and north, the state operator's 1,242 km line from Riyadh to Qurayyat near the Jordanian border is worked overnight by Spanish-built 200 km/h push-pull sets. There is also a freight network to the Gulf, and a fast-growing set of city metros.
Rail journeys in Saudi Arabia
Good to know
Who can travel on the whole Haramain line?
Entry to Mecca is restricted to Muslims, so the southern terminus and the 77 km of line below Jeddah are open only to them. Medina is open to all visitors; the restriction there covers the Prophet's Mosque and its courtyard rather than the city. That leaves four of the five stations open to every traveller, and a real journey inside them — Jeddah to Medina, 372 km in about an hour and fifty minutes. Any honest description of this railway says which part is which before it says anything else.
Why was the Haramain line built?
For the pilgrimage. It links the two holiest cities in Islam with Jeddah, the port and airport through which most pilgrims arrive, and it was designed to move very large numbers of people during the hajj and umrah seasons. It is the fastest railway in the Middle East and it exists for a religious rather than a commercial purpose.
What is the North Train?
The state operator's long-distance service from Riyadh to Qurayyat, 1,242 km near the Jordanian border, calling at Majmaah, Al-Qassim, Hail and Al-Jouf and taking a little over eleven hours. It runs on six CAF-built 200 km/h diesel push-pull sets ordered in 2012, and it crosses the Nafud, one of the great sand deserts. Unlike the Haramain line, it is open to everyone.
Are there rail passes for Saudi Arabia?
No. There is no pass scheme and no national multi-journey ticket; the high-speed line and the state network sell separately, through their own channels. Arabic is the official language and English is widely used in transport and business.