Tren Turístico de la Sabana — Bogotá to the salt cathedral

Colombia's railways were beaten by its geography. Three ranges of the Andes run the length of the country, the valleys between them took the cities, and by the time the lines were finished aviation had taken the traffic. The Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Colombia were wound up in 1991, and what track still carries anything carries coal. One passenger train came through the closure. Since May 1993 a private company, Turistren, has worked a tourist service out of Bogotá over the old Ferrocarril del Norte — a 914 mm narrow-gauge line that reached Zipaquirá in 1898 and runs almost level the whole way, across the high plain the capital stands on at 2,600 metres.

It runs on Saturdays, Sundays and Colombian public holidays, once a day, and only as a return: 08:45 from beside the Gran Estación shopping centre, 09:15 out of Usaquén, into Zipaquirá at 10:45 behind a restored locomotive and a rake of 1960s carriages with numbered, reclining seats. The train then stands for four and a half hours while its passengers go up to the cathedral cut into the salt mine above the town, and leaves again at 15:15. The whole day takes eight and a half hours and costs 96,000 pesos for an adult bought at the station. Seats go on sale about a fortnight ahead and weekend dates sell out.

The train no longer starts where it ought to. For thirty years it left from the Estación de la Sabana, the 1917 terminus in the centre of Bogotá, and in March 2024 Turistren moved its locomotives and coaches out to a depot at Kilómetro 5 and stopped using the old station for anything but selling tickets. The operator calls the change permanent. Boarding is now at a platform on Carrera 66, beside the Gran Estación shopping centre, opposite the Plazoleta de Los Alfiles — a stretch of running line with a canopy, in the middle of the city's western office district.

From there the line runs north and east across Bogotá, then turns up the middle of Avenida Carrera 9. This is not the alignment the Ferrocarril del Norte was built on: its own rails ran up what became Avenida Caracas and were lifted when the avenue was made, so the trains took over the Ferrocarril del Nordeste's corridor instead. The result is a railway in the central reservation of a city avenue, with a level crossing at almost every intersection, and about half an hour of Bogotá going past the window before the train reaches Usaquén.

Usaquén, and the edge of the city

Usaquén was a village outside Bogotá until the city swallowed it, and its station is still the small, white, green-trimmed building the Ferrocarril del Norte put up, with the company's initials on the gable and a glass office tower directly behind it. The train arrives at 09:05, waits ten minutes and leaves at 09:15; this is where most passengers get on, and where tickets are sold on the morning itself if any are left. North of here the avenue thins out, the eastern hills come closer, and the buildings give way to the Sabana de Bogotá: flat pasture, dairy farms, eucalyptus windbreaks, and the long white roofs of the greenhouses that make this one of the world's largest cut-flower districts.

At kilometre 34 the line reaches La Caro, in the municipality of Chía, where the Norte and Nordeste routes met and separated again. The station is a low building with a tiled roof and a steel water tower beside it, and the tower is not decorative — a steam locomotive working this line still fills from it. A little further on is Cajicá, whose station has been restored in cream and blue, and then the last few kilometres into Zipaquirá, where the train draws up in a wide grassed yard below the town at 10:45.

The locomotives, and what is likely to be on the front

Turistren rebuilt its fleet out of what was left in the national railway's yards after 1991: five Baldwin steam locomotives, three General Electric U10B diesels of 1,000 horsepower, and three Swedish-built ASJ railcars. The steam engines are the reason the company exists. Number 85, the one most often photographed at the head of this train, came out of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia in April 1947 as works number 73057, weighs about sixty tonnes and was built for the 914 mm gauge; number 76 and number 72 have both worked the Zipaquirá train too, sometimes double-headed.

What Turistren will not say is which locomotive works a given date. Its own pages promise only a "classic locomotive"; the agencies that resell the trip say "steam or diesel"; and an emissions study published in August 2025 describes the service flatly as a diesel operation, putting its fuel use at about 246 litres for the round trip. The honest expectation is a diesel with the steam engines kept for the days that warrant them. Either way the train behind it is the same: a water tanker, then a rake of carriages from the 1960s in red, blue and cream, with numbered seats and a lavatory in every second coach.

The return

The train leaves Zipaquirá at 15:15 and runs the same road back, reaching Usaquén at 16:45 and Carrera 66 at 17:15. Only the full return is sold — Turistren does not sell one leg, and the day cannot be started anywhere but Bogotá. Trains seen on this line midweek are not a service anyone can join: they are contract workings for universities along the corridor.

Something larger is coming to the same rails. The RegioTram del Norte, a tram-train of 48.8 kilometres and seventeen stations, is planned to run from Gran Estación to Zipaquirá over this corridor, with commercial operation projected for 2034 — from the same platform where the tourist train now begins.

There is one train a day and it runs on Saturdays, Sundays and Colombian public holidays only; there is no weekday service. Times below are as of August 2026, from Turistren (opens in a new tab)'s own itinerary and its ticketing partner's listing for the same date.

Two hours out, two hours back, and four and a half hours standing at Zipaquirá in between — eight and a half hours from first departure to last arrival. Turistren asks passengers to be back at the station by 15:00 for a 15:15 departure.

What the timetable does not show

The train calls only at those three points. La Caro and Cajicá are passed, not served, and the Estación de la Sabana in central Bogotá — the terminus for the first thirty years of this service — is now a ticket office and nothing more. Turistren describes that as permanent.

Trains do appear on this line midweek. They are private contract workings for universities along the corridor and are not open to the public, which the operator states plainly on its own FAQ page.

In December the same rolling stock runs a different service. The most recent Tren de la Navidad ran nightly from 15 December 2025 to 11 January 2026, with no operation on 24 or 31 December: an evening run out to Usaquén for photographs with the illuminated locomotive, on to La Caro for fireworks, and back into Bogotá. Nothing has yet been published for the 2026 season.

Only the whole return is sold, for a named date, and the day has to start in Bogotá. Seats are numbered and go on sale about fifteen days ahead. Turistren sells at two counters — the Estación de la Sabana, for advance sales only, and Usaquén, which also sells on the morning itself — through its ticketing partner online, and on the day aboard the coach marked D.

Children under three travel free if they do not take a seat, and fifteen or more travelling together get ten per cent off. Nothing else is included: no food, and no entry to the salt cathedral, though tickets for that and for the shuttle bus up from Zipaquirá station are sold aboard the train, in cash, on the way out. Fares below are as published in August 2026.

No rail pass reaches Colombia. Interrail and Eurail cover Europe only, and there is no South American equivalent; nor is there anything national to buy, because there is no national passenger network left for a pass to cover. This journey is the passenger railway, and it is sold as a single product on a single date.

That leaves two decisions worth making. The first is where to buy: the fare at Turistren's own counters is 96,000 pesos for an adult, and the same seat bought online through the operator's ticketing partner came to 119,000 pesos once its service charges were added, checked in August 2026 for a departure the same weekend. The second is whether to buy at all before arriving — weekend dates do sell out, and the selling window only opens about a fortnight ahead, so a fixed date in Bogotá is worth booking and a flexible one is not.

The point of the day is at the far end: a working church carved out of a salt mine, 1.7 kilometres uphill from Zipaquirá station. But the line passes three older places on the way, and the four and a half hours the train waits are enough for the town as well as the mine.

The train leaves Carrera 66 at 08:45 and Usaquén at 09:15, which in Bogotá traffic argues for sleeping somewhere the boarding point can be reached on foot or in a short ride. Usaquén is the obvious answer: it is the second stop, ten minutes from the platform, and the pleasanter half of the city to spend an evening in. Zipaquirá is the other option, for anyone who would rather stay up on the savanna than be back in Bogotá by six.