Sabah State Railway

Borneo is enormous. Three countries share it, and between them they have managed one railway.

This is it. A hundred and thirty-four kilometres of metre-gauge track from Tanjung Aru, on the coast at Kota Kinabalu, inland to a small town called Tenom. That is the entire rail network of the island — and it exists because in the 1890s somebody needed to get tobacco down to the sea.

Construction began in 1896, under an engineer named Arthur Joseph West, and the line — then called the North Borneo Railway — opened on 3 February 1898. It has been running, more or less, ever since.

Now, the honest part, because this is the thing you are probably here for.

There is a heritage steam train called the North Borneo Railway: a 1954 Vulcan locomotive, built by the Vulcan Foundry of Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire, hauling colonial-livery carriages from Tanjung Aru down the coast to Papar, with a tiffin lunch. It is beautiful and it is all over the internet. We cannot tell you whether it is running. The operator's own web page is dead. One source says the steam tour stopped during Covid and never came back. Agencies are selling 2026 departures. Others say the Vulcan is under maintenance and a diesel is pulling the train instead. We are not going to resolve that from a desk in Europe — contact them before you plan a trip around it, and do not assume steam.

Which is fine, because the steam train isn't the reason to come.

The reason to come is the ordinary train, and specifically the stretch inland from Beaufort to Tenom, where the railway leaves the road behind and follows the Padas river into its gorge. Jungle walls, white water underneath, and no other way through — this is the piece of railway that justifies the whole thing. The train is a battered railcar. The conductor writes your ticket out by hand. It stops where people need it to stop, because for the settlements along the Padas there is no road, and the railway is simply how you get out.

That's the trip. Not a heritage attraction, not a steam engine in a resort livery — a small working train doing a necessary job through some of the most dramatic country in Malaysia, for the price of a sandwich.

Borneo has one railway. Ride the useful bit.

The line starts at Tanjung Aru, just south of Kota Kinabalu, and runs down the coast — Putatan, Kinarut, Papar, Kimanis, Bongawan — through a flat green landscape of paddy and palm with the South China Sea somewhere off to the right. It is pleasant enough. It is not why you came.

You came for what happens after Beaufort.

Beaufort is the junction, and it is where the railway stops being ordinary. The line turns inland, the road gives up, and the train follows the Padas river into the Padas Gorge — a deep, narrow, jungle-walled canyon that the water has cut through the interior highlands. There is no road in here. There is the river, and there is the railway, and that is all there has ever been.

The train is a railcar: small, loud, elderly, and completely unbothered. It runs along a ledge above the water with the jungle pressing in on one side and the drop on the other, and below you the Padas is doing what it does — big, brown, and genuinely violent in places. People raft this river. From the train you look straight down onto the rapids they pay to be thrown around in.

Inside, the railway is doing its actual job. The conductor works down the car with a book and a pen, writing tickets by hand. People get on at halts that are not really stations, carrying shopping and produce and children, and get off again at places that look like nothing and are somebody's home. Nobody is sightseeing except you.

Somewhere along the way you will probably change trains at Halogilat. The track beyond it is in poor enough condition that it needs lighter locomotives and smaller carriages, so the through journey gets handed from one to another. It is an inconvenience that tells you everything about how this railway survives.

And then Tenom: the end of the line, 134 kilometres from the sea, a small town in the interior with a railbus sitting at the platform and not much else going on. There is an agricultural research park nearby, and coffee — Tenom coffee is a real thing, and worth the detour on its own.

The full journey is only a couple of hours from Beaufort. It is not long, it is not luxurious, and there is no dining car. But it is the only railway on Borneo, doing the only thing it can do, through country that would otherwise be unreachable — and there is nothing else quite like it in Malaysia, or anywhere much else.

This is an ordinary service railway with a handful of trains a day, not a tourist attraction with a published brochure. Treat the timings below as the shape of the day and confirm locally.

How it runs:

Good to know:

• Beaufort to Tenom is the journey. The coastal stretch from Kota Kinabalu is fine but ordinary. If you have one ride in you, make it the gorge.
• The change at Halogilat is normal. Track conditions beyond it need lighter locomotives and smaller carriages, so the service is split. Don't panic when everyone gets off.
• Confirm before you travel. The Sabah State Railway's own site was down for maintenance when we checked, timings shift, and services on this line have a long history of being suspended for track work. Ask at Beaufort or Tenom station the day before.
• Two trains a day means two chances. Miss the afternoon one and you are staying in Tenom. That's not a disaster — but plan it rather than discover it.
• Go in the drier months. Roughly March to September is the better window; heavy rain in the gorge means landslips, and landslips mean no train.
• Sit on the river side out of Beaufort for the drop into the Padas.
• The heritage steam train is a separate thing entirely, on a different part of the line (Tanjung Aru to Papar, Wednesdays and Saturdays), and we can't confirm it's running. See Tickets.

There are two entirely different propositions here. The ordinary train from Beaufort to Tenom is the one to ride: bought at the station or from the conductor on the day, for a few ringgit, with no booking system, no class and no fuss. It is a public service, and that is exactly why it is worth riding — and it is the one that goes through the Padas Gorge.

The North Borneo Railway heritage train is a different matter, and we have to be straight: ⚠️ we could not confirm it is currently operating, or running under steam. The operator's own page 404s, one source says the steam tour never restarted after Covid, and others say a diesel is substituting while the Vulcan is maintained. Contact Sutera Harbour directly before building a trip around it, and ask two questions: is it running on your date, and will it be under steam.

Sabah is the reason most people come to Borneo, and the railway is a small, excellent part of a much bigger trip. Beaufort, the junction town where the line turns inland, gets no entry of its own — nobody's idea of a destination, but this is where you catch the train that matters.

The rest divides neatly in two. The west coast is the railway's own country: Kota Kinabalu, the Padas Gorge, Tenom and the mountain that stands over all of them. The east — Sepilok, the Kinabatangan, the islands off Semporna — is a separate expedition by road or air, and worth every hour it takes.

Kota Kinabalu is the base for everything, and the coastal end of the line is right there at Tanjung Aru. The city has the full range — big resorts along the water at Tanjung Aru itself, a solid mid-range in the centre, and plenty of cheap, cheerful guesthouses. Prices are reasonable and the seafood is the point.

But the railway that matters starts at Beaufort, and that's the planning problem.

Beaufort is about a couple of hours from Kota Kinabalu by road, and the good train leaves in the morning. You have three options:

• Very early from Kota Kinabalu. Doable with a car or a shared van, and what most people end up doing.
• A night in Beaufort. There are a couple of simple hotels — nothing to write home about, but it puts you on the morning train without a pre-dawn drive. This is the sensible choice if the gorge is the reason you came.
• A night in Tenom. Ride in on the afternoon train, sleep at the far end, come back the next morning. Tenom has a few basic places, decent coffee, and almost no visitors. If you want to do this line properly rather than tick it, this is how.

Two practical notes. First, there is nowhere to stay in the gorge itself — no road, no settlements of any size, nothing. It's the train or the river. Second, if you're combining the railway with rafting the Padas, the operators run out of Beaufort and will usually sort transport from Kota Kinabalu, which quietly solves the early-morning problem for you.

And if you're heading on to Sepilok, the Kinabatangan or Mount Kinabalu afterwards, note that none of them are on the railway. Borneo has one line, it's short, and it goes exactly one place.