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What information is available for rail and bus travel in Africa? So far, the only information I've been able to find come from first-hand accounts of people who made the trips themselves. I'm interested in rail and bus schedules mostly (even though I know they're notoriously late).

Edit: In Europe, The European Rail Timetable does a spectacular job of compiling train data. This is the sort of thing I'm interested in for Africa, but I haven't been able to find anything similar.

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  • I'm sure the information is available - you just may have to get in contact directly with the companies in question to obtain it.
    – dlanod
    Mar 11, 2014 at 22:49
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    There's some info on Seat61.
    – gerrit
    Mar 11, 2014 at 22:51
  • I've looked at Seat61, but that's essentially a collection of on-the-ground information that can be really old. They don't have coverage for some countries that clearly have passenger rail lines.
    – ColeS
    Mar 11, 2014 at 22:52
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    Do you have a particular country in mind? There are over 50 of them....
    – Mark Mayo
    Mar 12, 2014 at 3:56
  • I had mostly the eastern side of the continent in mind (Sudan down to Zimbabwe and Zambia), but I'm really looking for international routes.
    – ColeS
    Mar 13, 2014 at 4:26

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Rome2Rio is surprisingly effective in some African countries. Again, they won't cover every local minibus - most of them won't have timetables and certainly won't be online. This is why so many references to them are on blogs etc.

However, for those that do, take for example, Harare to Cape Town on the site - it shows flight, bus & train, and driving options, including times and prices.

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  • Rome2Rio is really impressive. It looks like they have decent coverage from South Africa north to Uganda and Kenya. Thanks!
    – ColeS
    Mar 13, 2014 at 4:32
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Travel guides (either printed or pdf editions) like Lonely Planet usually have extensive sections on overland transport. The issue with them is that they are not really updated very often (they print a new edition every year in many cases, but most of the content stays the same). From my personal experience, this issue is getting worse and worse.

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