Few railways in the world have a story as odd as this one. The Ombilin line ran from the coal mines of Sawahlunto in West Sumatra down to the sea at Padang, built by the Dutch in the 1890s to carry coal that colonial industry wanted for ships and engines. To get from the highlands to the coast it had to cross the steep Anai valley, and the engineers solved it with a rack section, a toothed central rail gripped by a cog on the locomotive, the Abt system, which crawls up grades that normal wheels could not hold.
Today parts of the line still survive, and the rest is a ghost of embankments, stations and bridges. Look for the old stations in the highland towns, with their heavy colonial roofs. Steam locomotives, including the famous Mak Itam, have worked tourist trains on the Sawahlunto section, though schedules come and go. The whole railway, together with the mines and the town built around them, was listed by UNESCO in 2019 as a mining heritage landscape.
For a rider the real pleasure is the country the line passes through. This is Minangkabau land: steep green hills, rice terraces, and the cone of Marapi volcano above the clouds. The road from Padang climbs through the Anai gorge, where a waterfall tumbles beside the carriageway, and it is a busy, bendy highway thick with trucks and buses. Take it slowly and early in the day, before afternoon rain, which is regular in this part of Sumatra.
Solok, eighteen kilometres from the site, is a good place for fuel and food, and Sijunjung, a little further, will do if you are heading east. Eat rendang, the slow-cooked beef curry that Minangkabau cooks are famous for, at any of the Padang-style restaurants, which put out dishes on the table and charge only for what you touch.