El Chepe — Copper Canyon Railway

The Ferrocarril Chihuahua–Pacífico — universally known as El Chepe — is one of the world's great train journeys. The line runs 650 kilometres from Chihuahua over the Sierra Madre Occidental to Los Mochis on the Pacific coast, passing through the Copper Canyon system (Barrancas del Cobre) — a set of canyons deeper and longer than the Grand Canyon. The scenery through the Sierra Madre is extraordinary: pine forests, sheer cliffs, and the occasional glimpse down thousands of metres into the canyon floor.

Trains depart from Chihuahua's station in the morning. The full journey to Los Mochis takes about 16 hours, but most travellers break it at Divisadero or Creel and explore the canyon rim on foot. The first-class Express train offers restaurant service and panorama windows; the Regional service is slower and more basic but stops at villages along the way.

things to do sight
A story
The railway was an engineering fantasy for decades before it was finished — the central section through the Sierra Madre took 64 years to complete, finally opening in 1961. The problem was the Urique Canyon: too deep and too sheer for conventional construction. Engineers solved it with 37 bridges and 86 tunnels in a 300-kilometre stretch where the track drops more than 1,800 metres from the plateau to the canyon floor.