Riding the El Chepe Express: A Scenic Journey Through Copper Canyon

 

Boarding El Chepe Express

We were excited about boarding El Chepe Express. We had heard and read plenty about it. But getting our ticket and then getting on the train was work. It can be this way in Mexico. When we attempted to buy our tickets online while still in Baja, the Chepe website was a disaster even though we followed every rule (in Spanish) to the letter (perhaps this was the problem?).  Finally I called FerroMex, El Chepe’s rail company, and after many entanglements with our misaligned languages managed to get an email that proved we had paid for our tickets. But did we actually HAVE a ticket?  I wasn’t sure.

Nevertheless, here we were now in the city of Los Mochis, determined to board the train that the marketing brochures wrote would take us through “350 km (220 miles) [passing] Sinaloa up to Creel, into the heart of the Sierra Tarahumara, passing through the majestic Copper Canyon.” The trip would take 9 hours. We would rise 8,000 feet to the land of the Tarahumara people, famous for their ability to run extraordinary distances up and down the mountains. While researching my book Thumbs, Toes and Tears, I had learned that when hunting these native people could run deer down until the animals collapsed.

That morning, a glum taxi driver had juddered us through the dawn light grossly overcharging us before we and our bags were deposited outside the Los Mochis train depot. It was cool and humid. Brooding clouds slowly crept across the sky. At 7:15 the FerroMex-operated Estacion opened. A man dressed smartly in a FerroMex uniform herded passengers with boletos (tickets) into one line, and everyone else in another.  But which line did we belong in? We didn’t exactly have a ticket, but we had payment confirmation. The uniformed agent waved away our concerns. We would be fine; just board when we got the word.

But a few minutes later the train’s conductor, in Spanglish, clarified that we did need tickets. Dutifully, I lined up while Cyn held the fort with our bags. Six people stood in front of us. Departure in 45 minutes. 

We waited. The line was moving at a glacial pace. Evil thoughts began to arise in my mind. We had come several hundred miles out of our way to board this train and didn’t want to miss it, and if we did we were pretty sure that getting our money back would be a nightmare. I fervently wished I was fluent in Spanish. Why couldn’t I make the sounds I needed to make to solve the problems I wanted to solve? The voice in my head spoke: Control what you can. Let the rest go.

A father with two boys and his wife was in the same boat as we were.  He was Mexican, but had worked several years in Texas and spoke excellent English. He had paid for the ride and like us had the proof right there on his cell phone, but he too was told he needed tickets. Now it was 7:30 and a mere two people had moved down the line. The glacial pace, it turns out, was thanks to a FerroMex employee at the ticket counter who was regaling each buyer, in minute detail, about the train’s many amenities.

Our friend was thinking the same thoughts I was. He snagged another railway agent who looked to be in charge and urgently explained our situation. Yes, we still need tickets, she answered in Spanish. Our friend tilted his head in the direction of the ticket agent making the point that we can’t get tickets unless we get through the line before the train departs. She seemed unconcerned, but walked to the ticketmistress and told her to move things along. Six people have now joined the line behind us and four are still in front.

At 7:50 the family in front of us finally makes it to the counter. A pantomime unfolds. The father speaks to the ticket agent. Rapid Spanish ensues.  He holds up his phone. More head waggling on both sides of the plexiglass.  Tick-tock. I can feel things are getting heated. Now the man’s wife enters the picture. She offers the agent encouragement.  Heads begin to nod. Finally the ticketmistress picks up the phone and a minute later she is printing their tickets. Done! I take solace in this. Now that this nice man and his wife have plowed the bureaucratic road for us surely Cyn and I will breeze through.

I step to the counter and show her the email on my phone.

“You must forward your email to to FerroMex,” she says in Spanglish, “and then they will issue her permission to print us a ticket. I jab a finger at my watch.

"No tiempo!” I say, voice rising.

Again, I thrust my phone up to the plexiglass and point at the 8400 pesos (about $500) noted in the email when the mother of the family in front of us re-enters the conversation, earnestly speaking through the plexiglass to the ticketmistress. I love her. In my mind I think of her as “The Virgin Mother of Los Mochis.”  It's now 7:53. Seven minutes and the great Chepe will be gone.

Cyndy sits stoically 50 feet away beside our bags in the now empty train station. By now nearly everyone has boarded. The Mother of Los Mochis implores the agent in Spanish so rapid I cannot possibly comprehend it. Then suddenly, the wife turns, smiling and gives me a thumbs up.

"It's good!"  She says.

“Muchas gracias!” I blurted. I wanted to embrace her. For every difficult human, there are always several good ones.  An instant later we had our tickets in hand. I turned to thank the Virgin Mother, but she and her family had already disapparated.  Was this a miracle?

Cyn and I wheeled away with our bags, tossed them to a waiting porter and bound onto the Premiere Class coach in search of our seats. We plopped down, and then with a bang, the engine of the mighty Chepe began to haul us out of the station precisely on time.   

I grinned at Cyn. “After all of that,” I said, “this better be good!”

Departing Los Mochis

The train’s windows are broad, made to reveal the views. We watched its 12 cars pull us through an immense garbage dump. This didn’t look promising, but trains everywhere travel through the backsides of cities and the views are rarely stunning. We gathered speed and watched shanties fashioned from whatever people have been able to find — cardboard, plasterboard, tarps, plywood, plastic — parade by. White circular tubs stood outside, a flat square of dirt where people can wash. Little flags of plastic or cloth provide a morsel of privacy as the train slides by. Here and there skeletal corrals of old wood teeter in the dirt. A few chickens peck in the dust, an emaciated goat or two munches on tiny clusters of grass, while hand washed clothes hang languidly in the humid breeze and a single rooster patrols a little dirt yard, wings spread, squawking a clear message to all chickens that he is boss. I am reminded of John Steinbeck's descriptions in Grapes of Wrath of the shanty towns during the American Depression.

A few moments more and I witnessed an image that will always remain with me: a solitary young man, maybe 21-years-old, tall, slim with dark hair, raggedly dressed. His paper COVID mask was strapped on his ears as he stood unmoving and unmoved amidst 100 yards of garbage and tumbling plastic bags, gazing blankly into the wreckage. What thoughts, I wondered was he thinking? What dreams did he dream? What dreams was he allowed to dream? And then the train moved on.

As we gathered speed the level of homes upgraded. Slowly the boarded slats and plywood houses we had been looking at morphed into small enclosed yards with porticos and cement walls and proper rooms capped with red corrugated roofs. Ranches began to appear as we came into the foothills, small brick buildings among scrub, rock, cactus, dry arroyos, dust and hard chunks of grass. A cowboy on his horse clopped through a flat plain of dry prairie grass, his battered straw hat swatting at a few horses and brahmin cows as he herded them into a nearby corral.

In time we broke into broad rows of corn filling the plains through which the train resolutely passed. Before the day was done, the train would haul us into canyons the guide books told us were five times the size of the Grand Canyon. It swayed left and right, but its progress was steady as we moved towards the beckoning Sierra Madre. I thought if there was one set of tracks that would be carefully maintained, it would be this one. The express was the most popular attraction in northern Mexico, and it brought tourists in by the hundreds of thousands each year. Now that COVID seemed to finally be abating, the income was deeply appreciated.

Life On Board Chepe

El Chepe’s Premiere Class passenger coach offered a startling counterpoint to the world through which the train passed. It was indeed first class, recently renovated we were told. Leather chairs throughout, brown leather cloth and metal scones for lighting, a linen like ceiling with more recessed lighting, tan with valances recalling the fine Spanish architecture of the old days, and an entire car devoted to anyone who wanted a drink in the first class section. In the bar car all of the big windows had been opened and the train now chugged up the mountains through fresh, cool air while the patrons helped themselves to drinks and had the party going strong by 10:30 am.   

In all of our experience in Mexico, we had never run into anyone who was unkind or the least bit bad-tempered. That changed on the Chepe. The surliest people that we came across were those riding in Premier class. Many of them considered themselves wealthy, entitled to be loud, rude, insistent on their constant care for the battalion of servers on board, seemingly unaware of the poverty around them or even feeling superior because of it. They would order drinks and food and toss away their trash and expect someone else to take care of it which the servers dutifully did.  I wondered if sometimes I acted like this, being just as thoughtless, entirely unaware that I too was a jerk. If so I could only hope this trip would help humble me, help me realize how truly we are all in the same boat and at least deserve an equal shot.  But everywhere it was so clear that so many did not get equal shots and yet they seemed to continue with a smile on their face, working hard, themselves humble and perfectly happy with the state of their lives. Had I been born into those circumstances, I wondered, would I feel the same?

Climbing Into Copper Canyon

Now the views of the river plain below became stunning. We crossed over one of the highest train trestles in the world, the river valley gaping hundreds of feet below. Onward El Chepe rocked, always higher; we rose amongst cliffs of hanging trees and flowers of vivid yellow, pink and periwinkle. We were leaving civilization. In time a broad snaking river appeared, tumbling out the mountains, the Septentrion, which means “going to the ocean.” It seemed to be in a hurry.

For a few hours the rails followed the channel the Septentrion had formed over the epochs. The higher we ascended green rather than brown became the color of choice - pine (Tule) and White Stick trees, Huisache and Jute bushes. The river became a chasm filled with rocks the size of small homes, igneous domes toppled from the ragged cliffs above.

Despite rocking and rolling upward, a small battalion of waiters with perfect, gleaming teeth glided through the aisles carrying platters of snacks and wine, mojitos or tequila from one car to the next. The service was impeccable and we were often asked if we needed anything. Lunch would be served in the dining car around noon and we chose chicken soup with light Seminola and three small roasted pork chops in green sauce.

Higher … now the turns grew sharper, twisting the train into taut switchbacks, and El Chepe made every noise a machine could make, cracking, clapping and rattling, screeching and hissing on its beds, but it never wavered in its journey. Soon the canyon walls approached like closing, volcanic hands, sometimes no more than 10 feet from our window.  Rail workers had had to blast through every one of the railway’s 27 bridges and 86 tunnels to take us on this route. It was truly one of the world’s great engineering feats. The idea for the railroad was inspired when Mexico granted a rail concession to Albert Kinsey Owen, founder of the Utopia Socialist Colony in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen’s goal was to build a socialist colony in Mexico and he needed a way to get people there. Owen’s dream didn’t come true, but Arthur Stilwell who ran a company called the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway began construction in 1900. The route was so rugged, so challenging that last rail wasn’t laid to its terminus in Chihuahua until 1961.

Now the train’s big blue engine began snaking us through fresh stands of pine, and as we approached late afternoon the train seemed to level off a bit. We didn’t see the immense canyon walls you see in the Grand Canyon, there are too many trees, but the canyons are there, and we would catch glimpses, thick with forest hanging along the immense ravines.

Despite rocking and rolling upward, a small battalion of waiters with perfect, gleaming teeth glided through the aisles carrying platters of snacks and wine, mojitos or tequila from one car to the next. The service was impeccable and we were often asked if we needed anything. Lunch would be served in the dining car around noon and we chose chicken soup with light Seminola and three small roasted pork chops in green sauce.

Higher … now the turns grew sharper, twisting the train into taut switchbacks, and El Chepe made every noise a machine could make, cracking, clapping and rattling, screeching and hissing on its beds, but it never wavered in its journey. Soon the canyon walls approached like closing, volcanic hands, sometimes no more than 10 feet from our window.  Rail workers had had to blast through every one of the railway’s 27 bridges and 86 tunnels to take us on this route. It was truly one of the world’s great engineering feats. The idea for the railroad was inspired when Mexico granted a rail concession to Albert Kinsey Owen, founder of the Utopia Socialist Colony in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen’s goal was to build a socialist colony in Mexico and he needed a way to get people there. Owen’s dream didn’t come true, but Arthur Stilwell who ran a company called the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway began construction in 1900. The route was so rugged, so challenging that last rail wasn’t laid to its terminus in Chihuahua until 1961.

Now the train’s big blue engine began snaking us through fresh stands of pine, and as we approached late afternoon the train seemed to level off a bit. We didn’t see the immense canyon walls you see in the Grand Canyon, there are too many trees, but the canyons are there, and we would catch glimpses, thick with forest hanging along the immense ravines.

FAQ

Q1: Where does the El Chepe Express route begin and end?

A: The El Chepe Express runs between Creel, Chihuahua and Los Mochis, Sinaloa, passing through the heart of Mexico’s Copper Canyon. Most travelers ride from Creel to El Fuerte, or vice versa, to capture the most stunning scenery without committing to the entire 9-hour journey. The full El Chepe Express route between Creel and Los Mochis takes approximately 9 hours, though it can vary depending on the number of scenic stops and dwell time at stations. Shorter segments, like Divisadero to Bahuichivo or El Fuerte to Divisadero, offer gorgeous views in 3 to 5 hours.

Q2: What kind of travelers ride El Chepe Express?

A: You’ll find a mix of Mexican families, older tourists, and intrepid travelers, especially in Clase Turista (Tourist Class). The vibe is more low-key than luxury trains in Europe or Japan — but it’s authentic, unhurried, and social. Passenger behavior varied sharply by class. While many travelers were quiet, kind, and respectful — especially the servers and working-class passengers — those riding in Premier class were often loud, entitled, and dismissive of others.

Q3: What is the experience like on board El Chepe Express?

A: On our ride, the train was comfortable, clean, and modern, with huge windows, friendly staff, and surprisingly smooth rail. The food and drink options were solid (think sandwiches and beer), and the onboard vibe was relaxed — part transit, part sightseeing.

Q4: Is getting tickets for the El Chepe Express complicated?

A: It can be. Even with a payment confirmation in hand, travelers may still face confusion and delays when converting proof of purchase into actual tickets — especially at the station in Los Mochis. We had paid 8,400 pesos online but were still asked to line up again and submit the email confirmation to FerroMex before tickets could be printed. The process was glacially slow due to a chatty agent and unclear protocol.

Resource: https://vagabond-adventure.com/library/riding-el-chepe-express-through-mexico-copper-canyon