Karaelmas Ekspresi

In the early 1930s Karabük was thirteen households and a small station on a railway being built to carry coal from Zonguldak to Ankara. The railway is the reason it did not stay that way. When the young Republic chose a site for its first steelworks, it picked Karabük — on the line, and close to the coalfield — and laid the foundation in the rice fields on 3 April 1937. Two and a half years later the blast furnaces made the first Turkish pig iron, and a city grew up around them. The Karaelmas Ekspresi runs through it in the early hours, on its way to the coal the line was built for.

It is a sleeper. On four Friday nights in October and November a train of six sleeping cars and a restaurant car leaves Ankara Gar at eleven, carrying 120 passengers. At seven the next morning it stops for three hours in the forests at Yenice, then follows the Filyos river down to the Black Sea and reaches Zonguldak at one. It comes back on the Saturday night, stopping for the morning in Çankırı and the afternoon in Kalecik.

It is not sold as a train. The development agency that runs the project hands out whole carriages to travel agencies, and what a traveller buys is an agency's tour — usually the sleeper one way, a night in Zonguldak, and a coach home by way of Safranbolu.

TCDD Taşımacılık runs the train, and the Western Black Sea Development Agency (BAKKA) runs the project, with the Governor of Zonguldak and the province's special administration. For 2026 it is six sleeping cars and a restaurant car, seven vehicles and 120 berths; the first season, in 2025, ran four sleepers, a couchette car and two diners. The first paying passengers reached Zonguldak on 14 June 2025, after two promotional runs.

It leaves Ankara at 23:00 and runs east on the main line to Irmak, where it turns north onto the Irmak–Zonguldak railway — 415 km of single track built between 1931 and 1937 to bring Zonguldak's coal to the capital. The first coal train out of Çatalağzı reached Ankara on 20 November 1936, twenty-two hours after it set off. Kalecik and Çankırı go by in the dark; Karabük, its yards laid through the middle of the town, comes in the small hours.

The Filyos valley

Between Karabük and Yenice the line follows the Filyos river into a gorge, crossing it on stone arch bridges with the rock close on either side. It is early morning by then. At Yenice the train stands from seven until ten while the passengers go up into the forest for breakfast; the stretch below it, down the valley through Gökçebey and Çaycuma to the sea at Filyos, is in full daylight. There the railway turns west along the coast, past the junction at Çatalağzı, and ends at Zonguldak's harbour at one in the afternoon.

The ordinary trains on the line are regional railcars between Zonguldak and Karabük or Gökçebey — the train on the bridge at the top of this page is one of them, MT15441 on a Zonguldak–Karabük working. Everything else is coal and steel.

Black diamonds

Kara elmas, black diamond, is Zonguldak's word for its coal, and it was the name of the last scheduled passenger train between Ankara and Zonguldak. That Karaelmas Ekspresi ran three times a week until 1 January 2010, and the coalfield had no through train again until the tourist one borrowed its name.

The return leaves Zonguldak at 23:00 on Saturday and makes a day of Sunday: Çankırı from seven until noon, for the Underground Salt City and the old town, then Kalecik from two until six, before the last run into Ankara at half past seven.

Four round trips in 2026, out on a Friday night and back on the Saturday night. Times and dates are TCDD's, as of September 2026; TCDD gives them as planned times, not a guarantee.

Ankara → Zonguldak

Zonguldak → Ankara

Which weekends

The train stops nowhere else for passengers. Agencies usually pair one direction of the train with a coach the other way, so most travellers ride only one of them.

⚠️ The 2025 season ran to different times — out of Ankara at 21:00 and into Zonguldak before noon — and at least one agency's 2026 itinerary still gives the 21:00 departure. The 23:00 above is TCDD's own figure for 2026; check the time with whoever sells you the tour.

The train, the dates and both timetables are on TCDD Taşımacılık's Turistik Karaelmas Ekspresi page (opens in a new tab).

There is no ticket for the train alone. BAKKA allocates the train to travel agencies by the carriage — at least two cars, forty people, per agency — and each agency sells its own tour. An Ankara-departing tour has to include at least one night in Zonguldak, so the usual shape is the sleeper out, a hotel night, and a coach home through Filyos and Safranbolu.

Prices are the agencies'. One three-day package for the 16 October departure costs 11,500 to 13,000 TL a person depending on group size, with the berth, a hotel night on half board, a guide and the coach back included and museum entries extra. Compare what each tour includes. Prices checked in September 2026.

No pass is worth buying for this train. Turkey is in the Interrail and Eurail area, and Interrail's table of railway companies lists what a pass covers on TCDD Taşımacılık: regional, main-line, high-speed and night trains. It excludes two by name, the Marmaray and the Turistik Doğu Ekspresi. The Karaelmas is not on it, but the question does not arise: the berth is only sold as part of an agency tour, so there is nothing for a pass to buy.

A pass still has a use around it. The regional railcars between Zonguldak and Karabük are covered, and so are the night trains east from Ankara and the high-speed lines. Checked against Interrail's railway-companies table, last updated 28 August 2026, in September 2026.

The tours are built around the stops: breakfast in Yenice's forest on the way out, then an afternoon in Zonguldak — the lighthouse quarter, the Mining Museum and the Gökgöl cave. The second day usually goes by coach along the coast to Filyos and inland to Safranbolu.

The first night is on the train. The second is in Zonguldak, and it is part of the rules: every tour leaving Ankara on the train has to include at least one hotel night there, and the agency books it. The hotel below is in the city centre.

The train leaves Ankara Gar at eleven at night, so the night before needs no planning. Coming back the other way, it arrives at half past seven on a Sunday evening, and Ulus, the old quarter around the station, is the easy place to stay.