Béchar to Tindouf

On 1 February 2026 Algeria opened a railway 950 kilometres long across the western Sahara, and the next morning it began carrying passengers. The line runs from Béchar, at the foot of the Saharan Atlas, to the iron-ore deposit at Gara Djebilet in the far south-west corner of the country, and the passenger train works the 810 kilometres of it between Béchar and Tindouf. It ran by day when the line opened; it is now a night train, leaving Béchar at seven in the evening and arriving at twenty past six the next morning — eleven hours and twenty minutes across hamada and erg, with six stops in between and almost nothing else, five nights a week southbound and four northbound.

Everything about it is new. The track was laid in twenty-four months by Chinese and Algerian contractors, to a 32.5-tonne axle load and a design speed of 160 km/h, over 1,431 engineering structures including a viaduct 4,111 metres long across the bed of the Oued Daoura. The train that uses it is ordinary by comparison — first and second class, a dining car, and a fare of 1,655 dinars — but it is the only way to ride the newest long-distance railway in Africa, and it turns Tindouf from a two-day drive into one night out of Béchar. Beneath it runs the reason the line exists at all: ore trains from Gara Djebilet to the steelworks near Oran, eventually two kilometres long.

Béchar is the end of the old railway and the beginning of the new one. The line up from Oued Tlelat, outside Oran, reached here in 1906 and was rebuilt in 2010; until 2025 it stopped, and the hundred kilometres south to Abadla were a branch. Now the rails carry on, and the seven o'clock departure runs off the edge of every map the town grew up with.

The first stretch is the greenest the train will see. Abadla sits in an irrigated plain fed by the Oued Guir and the Djorf Torba dam, a place of date palms and cereal fields, and its station is ninety-eight and a half kilometres out. Forty kilometres further is Hammaguir, a name that means something to anyone who followed the space race: the French army's rocket range stood here, with four launch pads called Bacchus, Blandine, Béatrice and Brigitte, and from Brigitte in November 1965 France put its first satellite, Astérix, into orbit. More than 271 rockets went up from this ground before the French left in July 1967.

The long middle

After Hammaguir the country empties. The railway runs out onto the hamada — the stony desert plateau that covers most of this quarter of Algeria — and stays high and level for hundreds of kilometres: 565 metres at Tabelbala, kilometre 308; 550 at Hassi Khebi, kilometre 440; 537 at Oum El Assel, kilometre 640. Tabelbala is the one real surprise on the run, a palm grove strung out over twelve kilometres between two ergs, whose people speak Korandje — a language related to nothing else nearby and carried here from the Niger bend by the salt trade.

Oum El Assel is the last stop, a little before four in the morning. From there the line drops towards the bed of the Oued Daoura, crosses it on the long viaduct, and comes into Tindouf at 399 metres and kilometre 810. Gara Djebilet, the mine that pays for all of this, is another hour and twenty minutes beyond.

By night

On today's timetable most of the run is in the dark. Southbound, leaving at 19:00, there is evening light as far as Abadla in summer and none in winter, and the train reaches Tindouf at 06:20, before sunrise. Northbound, the summer dawn comes up for the last stretch from Hammaguir, at 05:26, into Béchar at 07:35.

What is pulling it

SNTF has not said which class of locomotive works the passenger train. What the railway did say at the launch is that it has first and second class, berths and a dining car, and that it runs at about 80 km/h for now, with a plan to lift that to 120 and bring the journey down to eight hours. The freight is the heavy work: 34 wagons and roughly 2,000 tonnes at first, 500,000 tonnes of ore in 2026, and from 2028 trains of 170 wagons stretching 2.2 kilometres.

One night train runs in each direction: southbound five nights a week, northbound four.

Béchar to Tindouf — train B235, Sunday to Thursday

Tindouf to Béchar — train B236, Monday to Thursday

The run takes eleven hours and twenty minutes southbound and eleven thirty-five northbound. The train carries seats in both classes and couchettes. When the line opened in February 2026 it ran by day, leaving Béchar at 08:00; the timetable has changed since, and may change again.

Getting to Béchar

The Oran to Béchar night train runs every day: it leaves Oran at 22:30 and reaches Béchar at 08:10, which gives a day in Béchar before the 19:00 departure south. Northbound, the 07:35 arrival from Tindouf leaves the day in Béchar before the 22:00 train to Oran. From Oran, trains run on to Algiers several times a day — see Algiers to Oran.

As of November 2026, from SNTF's own timetable search. SNTF's site is sntf.dz (opens in a new tab); it could not be opened from outside Algeria while this page was written, and these times were read from its search engine through a third-party front end. Check them at the station before travelling.

Tickets go on sale at the station counters from 08:00 each day. SNTF says reservations can also be made through its website; that was not working on the day the line opened, and the site is not reachable from outside Algeria, so plan on buying at the station.

Fares are set by SNTF and quoted in Algerian dinars: 1,655 in first class and 1,175 in second, Béchar to Tindouf, for a seat. A couchette costs extra, and SNTF's timetable search does not show the supplement, so ask at the counter. There is a dining car on the train.

No rail pass covers Algeria. Interrail and Eurail sell One Country Passes for 33 European destinations, and the network stops at the northern shore of the Mediterranean — no North African railway is in it. SNTF has no domestic pass or multi-journey product either, so every leg is bought as an ordinary ticket.

Nothing is lost by that here. First class from Béchar to Tindouf is 1,655 dinars for eleven hours and twenty minutes of travelling, which is among the cheapest long-distance rail fares anywhere on this site, and the northern connections are priced in the same way. What is worth planning is the sequence rather than the spend: Algiers to Oran, Oran to Béchar overnight, then the desert train the same evening.

As of September 2026, from Eurail's own Global Pass page.

Five of the six stops are settlements the railway has just put back within reach of one another, and the sixth — Hammaguir — is a former military range with nothing to visit. What follows runs south in the order the train calls, beginning with the excursion everybody makes from Béchar before they board.

Both ends of the line have hotels, and neither end sells a room online. Béchar is a provincial capital and the base most travellers use, partly because it is also the jumping-off point for Taghit ninety kilometres south. Tindouf's tourism directorate lists seven establishments in the town — the Jbeilat, the Sugi, the Qir, the two Al Khaimah houses, Awlad Gedo and a furnished tourist house — and publishes a telephone number and an email address for each, which is how rooms are taken.

The train is the bed for the crossing itself, with couchettes on board. Arriving in Tindouf at 06:20, you want a room you can walk into early, and the return leaves at 20:00. At the Béchar end, the 08:10 arrival from Oran and the 19:00 departure south leave a day in the town, and a room for it makes the wait comfortable.

Buy at the counter. Ticket windows at Béchar and Tindouf open at 08:00, and the train leaves in the evening, so you can buy on the day — earlier is better if you want a couchette.

Mind the days. The train runs south on Sundays to Thursdays and north on Mondays to Thursdays. There is no train south on Fridays or Saturdays, and none north from Friday to Sunday.

The connection is easy now. The night train from Oran reaches Béchar at 08:10 and the Tindouf train leaves at 19:00, so there is a whole day in hand.

The train runs all year, and the desert does not care. The line crosses open hamada for most of its length, at between 500 and 570 metres, with the stops hours apart. Tindouf sees over 45°C in summer and about 27 millimetres of rain in a year; autumn to spring is the sensible window. There is a dining car, but nothing between stations.

Gara Djebilet is not a destination. The line continues an hour and twenty minutes past Tindouf to the mine, which is an industrial site and the reason the railway was built, not a place to visit.

Planning this trip and stuck on something, or spotted a time, fare or detail that has changed? Send us a message about Béchar to Tindouf. We read every one, and we update this page when something has changed.