The Oriental Desert Express is a privately chartered

tourist train ''Tourist Train'' (Italian: ''Treno popolare'') is a 1933 Italian comedy film directed by Raffaello Matarazzo and starring Marcello Spada, Lina Gennari and Carlo Petrangeli. The film portrays the comic adventures of a group of summertime travelle ...

offered between

Oujda Oujda ( ar, وجدة; ber, ⵡⵓⵊⴷⴰ, Wujda) is a major Moroccan city in its northeast near the border with Algeria. Oujda is the capital city of the Oriental region of northeastern Morocco and has a population of about 558,000 people. It ...

and Bouarfa, Morocco. It runs along a little-used railway line, and was featured in the 2015 film ''Spectre''.

History

The line used by the Oriental Desert Express was originally built in the 1920s and 1930s as part of the Mediterranean–Niger Railway, but is now only used twice a week by trains carrying

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

, and

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

from local mines. Edi Kunz, a Swiss citizen living in Morocco, learned of the line and worked with Moroccan authorities for three years to start a tourist train along it, overcoming questions from the Moroccan government over the use of a historical "prince's wagon" passenger car and from the Swiss embassy in Morocco over the train's viability. Kunz ended up committing five million euros to the project. The first trip was made in 2006, and the train ran twice annually in years like 2013 and 2017. Outside camera shots of the Oriental Desert Express were featured in the 2015

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

film ''Spectre''.

Journey

, the total travel time of the Oriental Desert Express can take between eight or twelve hours. The express begins in Oujda in the early morning with an

EMD GT26CW-2 The GT26CW-2 is the Dash-2 variant of the GT26CW diesel-electric locomotive series created by the Electro-Motive Division (EMD) of General Motors for export to Iran, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, South Korea, Turkey and Yugoslavia. Various l ...

locomotive, known locally as a DH-370, and a consist of cars that include both air conditioning and open windows. Traversing the

Hautes Plaines The Hautes Plaines ("High Plains", ar, الهضاب العليا), also known as Hauts Plateaux, is a steppe-like natural region located in the Atlas Mountains in northern Algeria. It stretches more than in an east northeast – west southwes ...

, the train makes a stop at the small town of Tendrara, Tagmoḍant. While the train generally travels at a speed of about , travel time between Tendrara and Bouarfa can vary greatly due to unplanned stops to clear sand from the railroad track, for which the train carries diagonal shovels, and meeting nomadic tribes. One such meeting was related by ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'':

... again the train stops. There are sheep outside and tents. We have arrived at nomads. The family leader invites us to tea in his tent. The women look at us curiously. But soon a conversation begins with hands and much laughter. The family belongs to the tribe of the Arabic-speaking
Beni Guil Beni Guil ( ar, بني غل) is an Arab tribe in Morocco, and are mostly nomadic Bedouins. In the 10th century, after migrating from the Arabian Peninsula, the tribe was given the right of grazing on the land of east Morocco and west Algeria by ...
, who have lived as nomads for over a thousand years.

References

External links

Official websiteYouTube videoRadio interview with Edi Kunz
(in German)
Sand, stars on board Morocco's Oriental Desert ExpressD’Oujda à Bouarfa à bord de l’Oriental Desert ExpressMorocco tourists make tracks on 007's 'desert express'Bond's 'Desert Express' for Morocco touristsD'Oujda à Bouarfa à bord de l'Oriental Desert Express
{{Africa in topic, Rail transport in Rail transport in Morocco