Maputo to Ressano Garcia

Every morning at a quarter to eight a train leaves Maputo for Ressano Garcia, the border town where Mozambique meets South Africa. It covers the 88 kilometres in three hours and forty minutes, stopping at some twenty stations and halts on the way, and a ticket for the whole run costs 50 meticais. At half past twelve it turns round and comes back. This is CFM's own railway, and the state company says on its own site that it pays 85 % of the cost of every passenger's ticket.

The line is older than the city's name. It opened from Lourenço Marques to the frontier on 1 March 1890, and Paul Kruger presided at the opening of the whole route to Pretoria on 8 July 1895. It still links the port of Maputo with South Africa, and the ore trains that come down from Komatipoort share the single track with the passenger service. The train starts from a domed terminus finished in 1916, which CFM's own history says is often counted among the most beautiful stations in the world, and which now houses the railway's museum.

The train leaves from Maputo Central, on the Praça dos Trabalhadores, from under an iron canopy that runs the length of the main platform. The building behind it was begun in 1908, opened on 19 March 1910 and finished in 1916; its façade and dome are the work of the architect Ferreira da Costa. The station replaced a wood-and-zinc building a little further down the hill, which Paul Kruger had opened in 1895.

Through the city

For the first hour the train is a suburban service in all but name. It calls at Cabine "B", Infulene, Machava, Liberdade and Daniel before reaching Matola Gare, twenty kilometres out, where CFM's commuter trains from the city turn back. The timetable allows a few minutes at each, and the stops come every ten minutes or so.

Tenga to Moamba

Beyond Matola Gare the halts are further apart — Siduaba, Lhangueni, Tenga, Ka Mubuno and Pessene, at kilometre 39 — and the line runs out past the edge of the Maputo conurbation. Moamba, at kilometre 53, comes at about ten o'clock. In July 2026 a derailed ore locomotive at kilometre 63 cut the passenger service back to Moamba for two days; the full run was restored on 22 July.

Movene to the border

The last thirty-five kilometres take the train through Secongene, Movene, Chanculo, Incomati and Mussone to Ressano Garcia, kilometre 88, on the Incomati river. The station is the end of the Mozambican line. South Africa, and the town of Komatipoort, lie immediately across the frontier, where the railway continues as Transnet's line to Pretoria; the passenger train does not cross.

What runs it

The locomotive on this page is D-609, photographed at Ressano Garcia in September 2013 at the head of train 114 back to Maputo. It was built for Indian Railways' metre gauge as YDM-4 number 6481 and is one of several of that class exported to Mozambique and renumbered in CFM's D-600 series; D-609 was put to work on the southern lines out of Maputo. Behind it run CFM's green-and-white third-class coaches. In May 2026 CFM added diesel railcars to its timetables on the Ressano Garcia and Limpopo lines, at first on the short suburban workings out of Maputo.

CFM runs four passenger trains over the whole line: one pair every day of the year, plus a train into the city before dawn and one back out in the evening.

Maputo to Ressano Garcia

Ressano Garcia to Maputo

Three hours forty minutes out and four hours back, for 88 kilometres. The intermediate calls, in order: Cabine "B", Infulene, Machava, Liberdade, Daniel, Matola Gare, Siduaba, Lhangueni, Tenga, Ka Mubuno, Pessene, Manguanza, Moamba, Secongene, Movene, Chanculo, Incomati and Mussone.

Planning around it

The day trip works and nothing else is needed. Train 113 reaches Ressano Garcia at 11:25 and train 114 leaves again at 12:30, so an hour at the border and back in Maputo by half past four is the whole of it. Trains 110 and 117 run the opposite way round the clock, into Maputo before dawn and out in the evening; take 117 and you reach the border at five to ten at night.

Heavy rain can stop the line. In January 2026 floods and landslides halted CFM's southern passenger trains for twelve days, so in the rainy season ask at the station before setting out.

As of November 2026, from CFM's published timetable for the southern network on cfm.co.mz (opens in a new tab), which matches the departure board at Maputo station.

Tickets are bought at the ticket office of the station or halt, and CFM's southern tariff is a flat table by zone: 50 meticais for the whole run from Maputo to Ressano Garcia in third class, and 25 meticais at the concession rate for students, children, veterans and older passengers. Shorter journeys cost 13, 20 or 35 meticais depending on how many zones they cross.

The fare is low because CFM keeps it low. The company states that it pays 85 % of the cost of each ticket, and the tariff has stood unchanged since 1 December 2021.

No rail pass covers this journey, and none covers Mozambique. Interrail's Global Pass is valid in 33 European countries and Mozambique is not among them, nor does any One Country Pass reach it. CFM sells no network ticket of its own; each journey is priced end to end from its southern tariff.

Nothing is lost by it. The whole 88 kilometres costs 50 meticais, bought at the station window, and no pass could make that cheaper.

Checked against interrail.com's Global Pass page, November 2026.

This journey has a capital at one end and a frontier at the other. Maputo is where most travellers will stay, and the station itself, with its museum, is worth an hour before the train leaves. Ressano Garcia is a small border town with an hour to spare before the train goes back.

The timetable makes this a day trip from Maputo: out at 07:45, back at 16:30, with no need to sleep anywhere but the capital, where the choice of hotels runs from the historic to the very simple.

Ressano Garcia is a border town rather than a place to stay. The frontier post is in the town, and road and railway both cross there into South Africa, towards Komatipoort.

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