Pichi Richi Railway

The Pichi Richi Railway runs 39 kilometres from Port Augusta, at the head of Spencer Gulf, up through the Pichi Richi Pass in the southern Flinders Ranges to the old railway town of Quorn. It is the southern end of the narrow-gauge line begun in 1878 to reach the centre of Australia — the line of the original Ghan, which climbed this pass on its way to Oodnadatta and, from 1929, Alice Springs, until 1956, when a new line to the west of the ranges took the trains away.

When the last trains stopped running through the pass, there were plans to pull the line up, bridges, stone walls and all. People in Quorn saw what would be lost, and on 22 July 1973 the Pichi Richi Railway Preservation Society was incorporated — to save the dry-stone walls and the bridges laid in 1878, not to run trains. Within a year it had run its first train, to Summit. Its volunteers relaid the line a stage at a time, back to Stirling North in 1999 and into Port Augusta on new track in 2001, and they still run all of it.

Steam hauls most trains, between March and November, on selected dates. The Afghan Express takes the whole line from Port Augusta to Quorn and back; the Pichi Richi Explorer runs from Quorn into the pass and back; and the Commissioner's Train, the Coffee Pot and the Sundowner Explorer run on a few days each season.

Port Augusta to Stirling North

The Afghan Express leaves from platform 2 at Port Augusta station, where the society built a two-road shed, a run-around loop and a turntable brought from Kapunda for its steam engines. For the first seven kilometres the narrow gauge runs on new track beside the standard-gauge main line, then drops into an underpass near Stirling North to pass beneath the branch to Leigh Creek. At Stirling North the old alignment begins, and the train heads north-east over red earth and bluebush plain with the ranges drawing closer ahead.

Into the Pichi Richi Pass

Beyond Stirling North the line enters the Pichi Richi Pass, and this is the part the society was formed to save. Surveyors and engineers advised keeping the line west of the ranges; the decision makers wanted the copper prospects and farmland of the district instead, so the line went through them, with the steepest grades of the whole route to Alice Springs: deep rock cuttings, embankments held up by walls of dry stone, and iron bridges over the creeks. At Woolshed Flat, 269 metres up, the line crosses Waukarie Creek under Devil's Peak; it is the turning point of the Explorer, and refreshments are served at the station. The climb continues past Pichi Richi, at 344 metres, the site of a former township of the same name. The name is believed to come from pituri, a stimulant of leaves and ash that Aboriginal people chewed and traded along this route.

Summit and Quorn

Over Summit, where the society ran its first train in 1974, the line comes out of the pass and runs down into Quorn, past the restored goods shed, the grain silos and the long yard of a junction that once handled more than fifty trains a day. The Afghan Express arrives at about a quarter past twelve and leaves again at half past two.

The trains

The Afghan Express is hauled, wherever it can be, by NM25, built in 1925 at Castlemaine in Victoria for the Central Australia Railway and one of only two of its class left; it was back in steam in 2003. Its carriages are timber-bodied Ghan stock of the late 1920s. On diesel days it is NSU52, one of the two British-built locomotives that hauled the first diesel Ghan into Alice Springs on 26 June 1954, or NT76. The backbone of the steam fleet is the W class 4-8-2s, built by Beyer Peacock for Western Australia, among them W22, restored in 2003 as Silverton Tramway W22. The Commissioner's Train runs behind Yx141 of 1892, with the three carriages converted in 1929–30 for South Australian Railways officers on inspection, and the Sundowner is a 1928 Brill railcar, the "Barwell Bull", named after the premier of the day and the sound of its horn. Among the carriages in the collection is NIA 36, which carried General Douglas MacArthur from Alice Springs to Adelaide during the Second World War.

The railway runs on selected dates from March to November — no trains run from December to February. Every train is a return trip.

The rest of 2026: the Commissioner's Train on Friday 16 October; the Afghan Express on Saturdays 17, 24 and 31 October (on the 31st steam runs out to Quorn and a diesel brings the train back); and the Sundowner Explorer on Saturdays 7, 14 and 21 November.

2027:

• Afghan Express — Saturdays 3 April (diesel out, steam back, to be confirmed), 1, 15 and 29 May, 26 June, 24 July, 7 and 21 August, 4 and 18 September, and 16 October.
• Pichi Richi Explorer — 27 to 29 March; nine days between 10 and 24 April; Mother's Day, 9 May; 12 to 14 June; nine days between 3 and 17 July; and ten days between 25 September and 9 October. Most Saturday trains run in the afternoon, the rest in the morning.
• Sundowner Explorer — 6, 7 and 20 March, and 6, 13 and 20 November.
• Commissioner's Train — 16 April, 8 May, 5 June and 23 July.
• Coffee Pot — 7 August, 11 September, and 2 and 9 October.

If railcar 106 is not available, the Sundowner runs with a heritage diesel and carriages, and the railway may change the locomotive on any train for operational reasons.

Getting there

Port Augusta station is on Stirling Road, about three hours' drive north of Adelaide on the A1. Quorn is 40 kilometres on, half an hour by car — turn off the highway at Stirling North. Quorn station, on Railway Terrace, is also the Flinders Ranges Visitor Information Centre. The ticket office at Port Augusta opens only on running days, 30 minutes before departure.

Dates and times are from the railway's published timetable for 2026 and 2027 — as of October 2026. Check the day on Pichi Richi Railway's timetable and fares page (opens in a new tab) before travelling.

Tickets are sold by the railway — online, on 1800 777 245, or at the Quorn visitor centre and the Wadlata Outback Centre in Port Augusta — and booking ahead is recommended; seats left on the day are sold at the station the train leaves from. An adult return costs A$126 on the Afghan Express and A$78 on the Explorer or the Sundowner, with concession, child (4 and over) and family fares.

The Commissioner's Train, at A$215 with afternoon tea, takes 50 guests, and the Coffee Pot, at A$320 with lunch, takes 22 adults, with no concession or child fares. Groups of 15 or more save 10 per cent on the three regular trains. The carriage steps are narrow and steep: a passenger in a wheelchair can travel if the chair folds and companions help them aboard.

No rail pass covers the Pichi Richi Railway. Interrail and Eurail are European schemes, and Australia is not among the 33 countries in Interrail's list of covered railway companies (opens in a new tab). The railway sells its own tickets, one train at a time.

Checked October 2026 against Interrail's list of covered railway companies (opens in a new tab).

Port Augusta is the place to stay before the Afghan Express; Quorn, at the other end, is a base for the southern Flinders Ranges, with the Dutchmans Stern on its edge and Kanyaka on the road north.

The Afghan Express leaves Port Augusta mid-morning, so a night there before the train is the easy way to catch it. In Quorn, the old hotels on Railway Terrace and the town's cottages are listed on the Flinders Ranges Council's visitor pages (opens in a new tab), and most take bookings by phone.

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