Tehran to Mashhad

Mashhad is Iran's second city and the home of the Imam Reza shrine, which draws nearly 30 million pilgrims a year — more than any other pilgrimage site in Islam. Around twenty trains a day leave Tehran for Mashhad, and almost all of them are sleepers: four- and six-berth compartments, dinner served in some, a station platform at dawn.

The way to see the line is the one that runs by day. Raja's Pardis leaves Tehran at 07:45 and covers the whole 926 km in 8 hours 45 minutes, stopping only at Semnan, Damghan, Shahrud and Nishapur. All day the Alborz runs along one side of the train and the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir, the Great Salt Desert, along the other. The stations are the towns between them: Semnan with its Qajar gate, Damghan with one of the oldest mosques in Iran, and Nishapur, the city of turquoise.

The line reached Mashhad in 1957. By 1976 French turbotrains had cut the journey from sixteen hours to eight and a half. The Pardis does it in about the same time today, and reaches Mashhad in the late afternoon.

The Pardis leaves Tehran at 07:45 heading south-east across the plain. At Garmsar, where the Trans-Iranian main line carries on north into the Alborz towards the Caspian, the Mashhad line turns east. From here the pattern of the day is set. To the north, on the left, the Alborz stands along the horizon. To the south lies the Dasht-e Kavir, a salt desert some 800 km long. The railway runs along the strip of farmland and towns between them.

Semnan comes at 09:35. Its Qajar gate stands at a crossroads in the middle of the town, and the mountains behind it are close enough to show snow in the colder months. Damghan follows at 10:46. Near the town the train passes the low mound of Tepe Hissar, lived on for two thousand years before 1900 BC. In the town is Tarikhaneh, a mosque probably of the 8th century.

East of Shahrud

Shahrud is at 11:31, and Bastam, with the shrine of the Sufi Bayazid Bastami, is six kilometres north of it. Then comes the longest stretch without a stop, nearly three and a half hours. The towns thin out and the desert comes up to the line: gravel, scrub and low ranges on the skyline. The overnight trains stop at Neqab here. The Pardis does not stop again until Nishapur at 14:56, the city of the turquoise mines in its hills. From there it is an hour and a half more to Mashhad, which it reaches at 16:30.

The train

The Pardis is not a locomotive and coaches. It is a self-propelled trainset of five saloon cars, with seats in rows and no compartments. Raja, the state passenger company, overhauled five of these sets in 2023–24. The night trains are a different world. Nine companies sold tickets on the route in November 2026 — Raja itself, Fadak, Bonrail, Noor-al-Reza and five more — and their trains carry names and star ratings like hotels. Raja's own five-star Zendegi serves dinner in the compartment or in a restaurant car, and some private trains offer two-berth luxury compartments.

Most of the long-distance trains are hauled by diesels. Iran's railway still runs American-designed EMD locomotives and Siemens ER24PC units, and both have been photographed on this line.

How the line got here

Work on the line began in 1937. The Allied occupation of 1941 stopped the work at Shahrud, and the line did not reach Mashhad until 2 May 1957, when Mohammad Reza Shah and Queen Soraya arrived on the royal train to open the station. The present station building, which Heydar Ghiai modelled on Parthian palaces, followed in 1966. In 1976 four French RTG turbotrains cut the journey from more than sixteen hours to about eight and a half. The line was double-tracked in stages between the early 1990s and about 2010.

Raja runs two day trains each way, the Pardis and the Saba. They ran at the same times on both dates we read, a week apart in November 2026, and the times below are their own calling points as the seller lists them. Nearly every other train on the route runs overnight.

Tehran to Mashhad

Mashhad to Tehran

Take the Pardis 370. It covers the whole line in daylight in every season, and it is the faster of the two by more than three hours. The northbound Pardis leaves Mashhad at 04:45, before dawn in every season, so its first stretch is in the dark.

The night trains. About twenty more trains a day leave each end, most of them between mid-afternoon and midnight, taking about ten to eleven hours. Their departure times moved, some by hours, between the two dates we checked, so read them for your own date. Raja's five-star Zendegi, for example, left Tehran at 20:30 on 11 November and at 18:15 a week later.

Book early. Read on 7 November, every train from Tehran on 11 November was already full. For 18 November, eleven days ahead, only the two day trains still had seats.

As of November 2026. Times and seats: alibaba.ir/train/THR-MHD (opens in a new tab).

Fares are in toman, ten rials to the toman. A seat on the Pardis is 2,115,000 toman and the slower Saba is 1,060,000. A berth in a five-star sleeper with dinner is 4,160,000, and the three-star six-berth trains run from about 1,100,000 to 1,400,000. In November 2026 alibaba.ir was selling most of these trains 14 per cent below the full fare.

Tickets are sold online by Iranian agencies such as alibaba.ir, in Persian. Visa and Mastercard do not work in Iran, so pay in cash, with a Central Bank rial card for non-residents, or through an Iranian agency. This is a pilgrim route and the trains fill up: buy as soon as your dates are fixed.

No rail pass covers Iran. Interrail's One Country Pass list, checked in November 2026, stops at Türkiye; Iran does not appear on it, and there is no Iranian national multi-journey ticket either.

Nor would one help here. What matters on this route is buying early, because the trains sell out.

Every stop the Pardis makes is a town worth getting off at. The places below run in the order the morning train reaches them, ending at the shrine that most of the route's passengers are travelling to.

The 07:45 means a night in Tehran before you go; the card below is a central hotel twenty minutes from the station. The two Mashhad cards both link to the hotels' own websites. None of the cards has a photograph: Iran has no freedom of panorama, so a picture of a modern building cannot be published freely.

Around the anniversary of Imam Reza's death the railway has run 26 extra trains to Mashhad, and the city fills with pilgrims. Book rooms early if your dates fall near it.

Which train. Eastbound on the Pardis 370, Tehran 07:45. It is the only train that runs the whole line in daylight all year round.

Which side. Eastbound, the Alborz is on the left, to the north, and the desert is on the right. Sit on the left for the mountains.

Language. The railway, its stations and its ticketing work in Persian. There is no English timetable and no English booking channel. Have the station names written in Persian script — تهران Tehran, دامغان Damghan, نیشابور Nishapur, مشهد Mashhad — and an offline translation app.

Money. Sanctions keep Visa and Mastercard out of Iran entirely. Bring cash to change, or arrange a rial debit card for non-residents.

Season. The trains run all year. Summers on the desert edge are very hot. October is the saffron harvest in Khorasan.

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