Padma Bridge Rail Link

From 1871 a passenger going by rail from Calcutta to Dhaka got down at Goalundo, on the bank of the Padma, and finished the journey by steamer. The break in the railway left a recipe behind it. Food writers credit the boatmen on the run to Narayanganj with a thin, fiery chicken curry, cooked for themselves in a makeshift galley and later sold to passengers who followed the smell. The dish is still known by the name of the ghat.

The Padma now has a railway across it, downstream at Mawa, on the lower deck of a bridge that opened to road traffic in June 2022. The first scheduled train crossed on 1 November 2023, and the new line reached Jashore and Khulna on 24 December 2024.

It has remade the map of the south-west. The Jahanabad Express covers the 212 kilometres from Dhaka to Khulna in three and three quarter hours. The Chitra Express still goes the long way round, north over the Jamuna, and takes more than nine. Khulna is the city for the mosques of Bagerhat and the edge of the Sundarbans.

Bangladesh Railway's newest main line is 1,676 mm broad gauge, single track and built for 120 km/h. China Railway Group laid it, and CRRC Tangshan supplied 100 coaches for it. Motive power on the routes through Bhanga includes Class 6600, Progress Rail GT42AC diesels of 3,250 horsepower, in service since 2021. No. 6623 hauled the special on inauguration day. The Jahanabad Express has eleven coaches and 768 seats.

South from Kamalapur

The Chitra Express leaves Dhaka heading north for the Jamuna. The trains over the Padma turn south along the short dual-gauge stretch to Gandaria, and then the line rises on to a viaduct of about 23 kilometres. It crosses the Buriganga and two arms of the Dhaleswari, with an elevated station at Keraniganj.

The Jahanabad Express makes no call until Bhanga, an hour and three minutes out, and passes Mawa on the north bank without stopping.

The lower deck

The bridge carries a four-lane highway on top and the single track underneath, through 41 steel spans of 150.12 metres each, for 6.15 kilometres in all. It is the lower deck that gives the crossing its character: the river comes and goes between the diagonals of the truss, and the road traffic is overhead and out of sight. Its piles go down as far as 127 metres, reported as the deepest of any bridge in the world.

The money has its own history. The World Bank withdrew its commitment after allegations of corruption, and the Bangladesh government paid for the bridge from its own budget. The railway was financed separately, largely by a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China. Track-laying over the bridge finished on 29 March 2023, and a first trial train went across at very low speed six days later.

Two ways on from Bhanga

Bhanga is where the routes part. The Jahanabad Express and the Ruposhi Bangla Express take the new line south-west through Kashiani, Lohagora and Narail, and join the old Jashore line at Singia. The Sundarban Express and the Benapole Express turn west on the older route through Faridpur and Rajbari and round by Kushtia and Darshana, which is why they take almost eight hours.

Rajbari lies on the line to Goalundo, the railway's old end point on the Padma. The river there moved so often that the station changed its site about ten times in thirty years, and decaying red-brick buildings still stand there.

Into Khulna

The last miles from Singia are the old line through Noapara. Khulna station, which dates from 1884, was rebuilt in 2018 with six platforms, and the Bandhan Express to Kolkata starts from it too.

Times are Bangladesh Railway's own, from its train-information service, as of November 2026, in local time (BST, UTC+6). Of the intercity trains, only the Jahanabad Express uses the new line all the way to Khulna; the Sundarban Express crosses the Padma and then takes the older route by Rajbari and Kushtia.

Dhaka to Khulna

The Chitra Express leaves half an hour before the Jahanabad and arrives nearly five hours after it.

Khulna to Dhaka

Dhaka and Benapole, for the Indian border

Trains are retimed at short notice. The live version is at eticket.railway.gov.bd (opens in a new tab).

Bangladesh Railway sells its own seats, online and at station counters. Online tickets open ten days before travel, and buying online needs a registered account, verified against a Bangladeshi national ID or birth certificate.

The fares below are the ones announced for the Jahanabad Express when it began in December 2024, including VAT on the air-conditioned classes. The December 2025 revision of bridge charges did not list this route.

No rail pass covers Bangladesh. Interrail and Eurail are European products, the Indian and Sri Lankan passes stop at their own borders, and Bangladesh Railway has no tourist pass of its own.

With an air-conditioned chair to Khulna at Tk 851, a pass would have little to discount. Seats are limited by the ten-day booking window rather than the price, and no ticket type changes that. As of November 2026.

Khulna is the base for the south: the medieval mosques of Bagerhat to the east and the Sundarbans beyond Mongla. The Sundarban and Benapole expresses serve the other half of the region, with Kushtia Court as the station for Tagore's house and for Lalon's shrine, and Jashore as the one for Sagardari.

Khulna is the place to stay for Bagerhat and for boats into the Sundarbans. The Jahanabad Express reaches Khulna at 23:45, so a booked room matters; the morning Sundarban Express arrives in the middle of the afternoon.

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