Pichi Richi Railway over time as more rollingstock and track is restored and rehabilitated. The Afghan Express is a return trip to Quorn from Port Augusta (78 kilometres return). This train usually consists of Ghan carriages from the 1920s and is often hauled, wherever possible, by an original Ghan steam locomotive, NM25, and recreates the type of travel experienced on the Ghan in the 1930s and 1940s. A shorter journey, the Pichi Richi Explorer, is a return service to Woolshed Flat departing from Quorn (32 kilometres return). Travel on this train is either in South Australian Railway carriages circa 1900 to 1915 hauled
The Ghan contrary view is that the name was a veiled insult. In 1891, the railway from Quorn reached remote Oodnadatta where an itinerant population of around 150 cameleers were based, generically called "Afghans". "The Ghan Express" name originated with train crews in the 1890s as a taunt to officialdom because, when an expensive sleeping car was put on from Quorn to Oodnadatta, "on the first return journey the only passenger was an Afghan", mocking its commercial viability. By as early as 1924, because of the notorious unreliability of this fortnightly steam train, European pastoralists commonly called it "in ribald fashion The