Nothing is further from perfection and efficiency than the Cuban rail system. Machines and wagons are old, forget about high-speed trains and forget about punctuality. To travel by train in Cuba you must love adventure. Still, many young tourists experiment a bit and take a usual tour: they go from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, from east to west.
Between Havana and Santiago de Cuba there are 765 kilometers and today the train trip lasts about 15 hours. Of course, the train may suffer a breakdown or stop more than necessary at a station or in the middle of the journey. Things that happen in countries like this, so you have to be patient. But if you are open to living different experiences, this type of trip can be the sea of adventurer. There are trains with a rather simple service and luckily, if you have days of tremendous heat, very strong on the island, you can take the train with air conditioning.
If before the trains of Cuba had a dining room and other luxury services, that is now a thing of the past. There are street vendors who come up at the stations and it is from them that you buy your food and drinks, if you do not take with you. The ticket is around 30 dollars. The truth is that it is a bit sad to see the state of the trains in Cuba, after all it was the first country in Latin America to have a rail system.
The truth is that since 1989 not much has been invested in the sector and that is why it has declined a lot. If you don't want to go that far you can always take the Hershey Train which is cheap and connects Havana with Hershey, a city where a chocolate factory operated a long time ago, responsible for the train precisely.