20 most scenic train journeys in the world, and why slow travel wins

Flying moves you between two airports and shows you almost nothing in between: a departure gate, a few hours of recycled air, an arrival gate. Trains have reclaimed that missing middle. The shift even has a vocabulary. "Tågskryt," Swedish for train bragging, entered circulation in the late 2010s as the counterpart to flight shaming, and it marked a real change in how people talk about getting somewhere rather than simply arriving.

Part of the appeal is practical. Travelers $TRV have shown renewed appetite for overland routes, multi-day itineraries and trips where the hours in transit are the point rather than the cost. Part of it is environmental. Rail generally produces a substantially smaller carbon footprint per passenger than a short-haul flight, and France has moved to restrict domestic flights on routes where a quick train alternative already exists. And part of it is what a window does. A train moves slowly enough that the landscape changes in front of you. Prairie gives way to desert, rainforest to alpine pass, farmland to open coast. A plane compresses all of that into one descent.

This list gathers 20 of the most scenic train journeys in the world, including routes long featured in rail guides such as Lonely Planet's roundup of the world's great train trips. They span six continents and a wide range of terrain: Tibetan plateau above 16,000 feet, Gulf Coast bayou, Norwegian snowfield, Sri Lankan tea country, Australian outback. Some take four hours end to end. One takes 54.

Cost and formality vary just as widely. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is a luxury product with restored interwar carriages and a fare to match. The Tazara Railway between Tanzania and Zambia is working infrastructure that people ride to get home. What links all 20 is a shared premise: the hours spent in transit are what make the scenery visible at all.

Illustration: Quartz

The daily Tangier-to-Marrakesh service covers 360 miles (580 kilometers) in about five hours and 15 minutes, connecting Morocco's northern port city to its best-known inland destination. It takes the place of both a short domestic flight and a long day of driving.

Tangier sits on the Strait of Gibraltar, within sight of Spain when the haze lifts, which makes this route a natural continuation of a ferry crossing from Tarifa or Algeciras rather than a trip that has to begin at an airport.

The scenery accumulates instead of arriving in one headline view. The line runs south along the western flank of the Rif through cork oak and farmland before meeting the Atlantic corridor at Rabat and Casablanca. South of Casablanca the land flattens and dries out. Wheat fields and olive groves thin into scrub, then into the ochre plain around Marrakesh, with the High Atlas and its winter snow line standing behind the city on clear days.

ONCF, the national operator, has rebuilt much of this corridor. Al Boraq, the high-speed line between Tangier and Kenitra that opened in 2018, was the first of its kind on the African continent, and it removed hours from the northern leg. The remainder of the route runs on conventional track through Casablanca. First-class carriages are air-conditioned with assigned seats, and daily departures mean the trip fits into an itinerary without the advance planning that twice-weekly services demand.

Arrival puts travelers at the edge of a city built on contrast. Djemaa El Fna, the central square, functions as a market and transit hub during the day, then fills with food stalls and street performers after dark. The Jardin Majorelle, with its cobalt-painted walls and cactus beds, was bought and restored by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé in 1980. The Medersa Ben Youssef, a Saadian-era Islamic college rebuilt in the 1560s, holds some of the country's finest carved cedar, stucco and zellige tilework.

Illustration: Quartz

Norway's Bergensbanen links Oslo and Bergen four to six times a day, covering 308 miles (496 kilometers) in about six hours and 30 minutes. The line peaks at Finse, about 4,000 feet above sea level, the highest station on any mainline railway in northern Europe.

The terrain reorganizes itself several times in a single afternoon. Forested valleys and lakes follow the departure from Oslo, then the grade steepens through canyons and river gorges on the approach to Geilo. Above the treeline the route crosses the Hardangervidda, a broad plateau of rock, meltwater and bog where snow lingers into summer and snowsheds shield exposed sections of track. Finse station sits in the middle of it with no road connection — the only ways in are the train, a summer cycling route and skis in winter.

West of the plateau, the descent toward Bergen is quick and green. Tunnels and steep gradients bring the line down through Voss into fjord country, where rainfall and vegetation bear little resemblance to the bare ground crossed an hour earlier.

Vy, Norway's state operator, runs this as an ordinary intercity service rather than a premium sightseeing product, so fares sit in line with standard domestic rail. Advance tickets cost less than walk-up fares, and the frequency means a missed departure rarely costs a full day.

The Flåm Railway branches off at Myrdal, a steep 12-mile spur dropping to the fjord village of Flåm on the Aurlandsfjord, and many passengers break the journey there before continuing west to Bergen.

Season changes the ride more than it does on most European routes. A February crossing of the Hardangervidda is a white expanse broken by snow fences and power lines. A July crossing shows the same ground as grey rock, lichen and braided streams. The two versions of the plateau look like different countries.

Illustration: Quartz

Vietnam's Reunification Express covers 1,072 miles (1,726 kilometers) between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in roughly two days, with daily departures in both directions. The route traces nearly the full north-south length of the country, making it one of the most complete overland rail options in Southeast Asia.

The name refers to 1976, when the northern and southern halves of the line were rejoined after the war. The track itself is far older. It was laid in stages under French colonial administration and completed in the 1930s, then damaged and repaired repeatedly over the decades that followed.

Scenery arrives in distinct blocks rather than as one continuous view. North of Ho Chi Minh City, the train passes rice fields and small trackside towns before reaching the central coast, where the line runs close enough to the sea for passengers to watch fishing fleets and quiet beaches go by. The stretch over the Hai Van Pass between Da Nang and Hue is the section most travelers single out, with the track cut into cliffs above the water and tunnels bored through the headland.

Sleeper berths come in four-berth and six-berth compartments for the overnight legs, with seated classes sold below that. Because this is a scheduled domestic service rather than a packaged tour, tickets can be bought for individual segments, which makes it practical to break the trip in Hue, Da Nang or Nha Trang and rejoin a later train.

Speed is not the argument here. Vietnam Railways operates on older single-track infrastructure, and a flight between the two cities takes about two hours. What the train offers instead is the 1,000-plus miles of coast, paddy field and mountain that a flight erases, seen at a pace that makes the shape of the country legible from a window seat.

Illustration: Quartz

Amtrak's California Zephyr runs daily between Chicago and Emeryville, California, covering 2,438 miles (3,924 kilometers) in roughly 52 hours and 40 minutes. It is among the longest scheduled passenger routes in the U.S., and it crosses four distinct American landscapes without a transfer.

The opening leg is the least dramatic and the most useful for setting expectations. Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska pass as farmland and river crossings, including the Mississippi at Burlington, before the train reaches Denver on the second morning. The climb starts almost immediately after that, up the Front Range on curves that leave the city visible below, then into the Moffat Tunnel beneath the Continental Divide.

West of the tunnel comes the stretch most passengers book the trip for. The track follows the Colorado River for hours through Gore Canyon, Byers Canyon and Glenwood Canyon, and several of those miles have no highway alongside them, which means the view belongs to rail passengers and river rafters alone. Utah brings red rock and desert basin. Nevada brings high sagebrush plains. The final morning climbs the Sierra Nevada near Donner Pass before dropping into the Sacramento Valley.

Coach seating is the cheaper option and works fine for a single segment. Two nights in a reclining seat is a different proposition from two nights in a roomette, and Amtrak prices sleeper space dynamically, so fares climb as berths sell. The Sightseer Lounge car, with windows curving into the roofline and seats facing outward, fills up through Colorado and across the Sierra.

Daily departures matter here. Several routes on this list run twice or three times a week, which forces an itinerary to bend around the timetable. The Zephyr runs every day, year-round, making it one of the easier long-haul substitutes for a domestic flight for travelers starting from a U.S. city.

Illustration: Quartz

PeruRail's Puno-to-Cuzco service runs three times a week, covering 241 miles (388 kilometers) in about 10 hours across the Peruvian altiplano. The line stays above 11,000 feet for its entire length, which makes altitude as much a feature of the ride as the scenery is.

Departures from Puno begin near the shore of Lake Titicaca, which sits at roughly 12,500 feet and is commonly described as the highest navigable lake in the world. The track then runs north across open high plain, treeless and pale gold in the dry season, grazed by herds of alpacas and llamas belonging to families whose settlements are often the only structures in view for miles.

The climb tops out at La Raya, a pass marking the divide between the Titicaca basin and the Vilcanota river valley. Trains usually pause there briefly, and the stop gives the clearest sightlines to the glaciated peaks along the route. Past La Raya the terrain softens: the line follows the Vilcanota downhill through irrigated fields, eucalyptus stands and adobe villages before reaching Cuzco at about 11,150 feet. Cuzco was the capital of the Inca empire and remains the staging point for most Machu Picchu itineraries.

Altitude is the main practical consideration for passengers. Both endpoints are high enough that visitors arriving from sea level usually need a day or two to adjust. Travelers $TRV coming from Puno have already acclimatized to a similar elevation, which is one reason to approach Cuzco overland rather than fly in directly from Lima.

Three departures a week means this route requires more planning than the daily services elsewhere on this list, and fares are priced for tourists rather than at local commuter rates. In return, the journey delivers a continuous ground-level transition from lakeshore to mountain pass to Andean valley in a single daylight ride.

Illustration: Quartz

The Z21 train runs daily between Beijing and Lhasa, covering 2,330 miles (3,750 kilometers) in about 40 hours on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Sections of the line sit above 16,000 feet, placing it among the highest railways in operation anywhere.

Altitude shapes the entire trip. Carriages on the high-elevation stretch are supplied with enriched oxygen, and outlets are fitted near berths and seats for passengers who need them. Much of the track between Golmud and Lhasa was laid over permafrost, which required raised embankments and cooling measures to stop the frozen ground from shifting under the rails in summer.

The scenery arrives in stages. The first hours cross northern China's farmland and industrial cities. The route then runs west through dry basin country toward Xining, where the Tibet-bound section begins. Past Qinghai Lake, the country's largest lake, the land opens into a treeless plateau where yak herds, grazing antelope and scattered nomadic encampments stay in view for hours, with snow-covered ranges holding the horizon on both sides.

Planning matters more here than on most routes. Foreign travelers heading into the Tibet Autonomous Region generally need a travel permit arranged in advance through a licensed operator, in addition to a Chinese visa, and the paperwork is checked before boarding. Berth classes range from hard sleeper to soft sleeper, and soft-sleeper compartments sell out well ahead of Chinese holiday periods.

Forty hours is a long commitment. What it buys is a gradual, visible climb from sea-level eastern China onto a plateau higher than almost anything in the Alps. A flight into Lhasa covers the same ground in a fraction of the time, shows none of the terrain between the two cities, and sets passengers down at high altitude with no acclimatization at all.

Illustration: Quartz

The TranzAlpine covers 139 miles (223 kilometers) between Christchurch and Greymouth in four hours and 30 minutes, with daily departures in each direction. It is the shortest coast-to-coast crossing on this list and the quickest way to see three entirely different South Island landscapes without changing trains.

The first stretch runs flat across the Canterbury Plains, farmland laid out in long rectangles east of the mountains. The character changes once the line enters the Waimakariri River valley, where the track follows a braided riverbed through a gorge and crosses a sequence of steel viaducts. The climb into Arthur's Pass National Park is steady from there, topping out above 2,400 feet at Arthur's Pass station, a small alpine settlement ringed by beech forest and scree slopes.

West of the pass, the train enters the Otira Tunnel, which runs about five miles beneath the Main Divide and opened in 1923. The far end delivers passengers into a different climate. The West Coast receives far more rainfall than Canterbury, and the terrain turns to temperate rainforest, with ferns, moss and fast-running creeks lining the descent toward Greymouth on the Tasman Sea.

An open-air viewing carriage runs as part of the standard formation, which is uncommon on a scheduled service. It earns its place through the Waimakariri gorge, where window glare and reflections would otherwise interfere with photographs. KiwiRail operates the route under its Great Journeys banner, with onboard commentary keyed to landmarks along the way.

The timetable allows a same-day return, with the westbound service arriving around midday and the eastbound leaving in the early afternoon. That makes it workable as a day trip from Christchurch for travelers who want an alpine crossing without booking a sleeper, a hotel stop or a multi-day itinerary built around it.

Illustration: Quartz

The Tazara Railway runs twice weekly between Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast and Kapiri Mposhi in central Zambia, covering 1,160 miles (1,860 kilometers) in about 46 hours. It is one of the longest rail lines in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the few overland links between East and Southern Africa that does not depend on road travel.

Construction ran through the first half of the 1970s, financed and staffed with help from China. The purpose was commercial and political at once. Landlocked Zambia needed a way to move copper to a port without sending it south through white-minority-ruled Rhodesia and South Africa. That origin shows in the alignment, which arcs inland rather than taking the shortest commercial path.

Beyond Dar es Salaam, the train leaves the humid coastal plain and climbs into Tanzania's southern highlands. The track runs along the edge of protected wildlife country, including the Selous ecosystem. Elephants, giraffes and antelope are sometimes visible from the carriage window. Nothing about those sightings is dependable — they turn on season, time of day and where the animals happen to be grazing.

Two nights on board make a berth the practical booking. First class holds four passengers to a compartment and second class six, while third class is seated only. The rolling stock is older than what runs on most European or Japanese lines, and delays are routine. Station stops often run longer than the timetable allows, and platforms fill with vendors selling fruit, grilled maize and bottled drinks to passengers leaning from the windows.

This is a working railway rather than a heritage or luxury service. Farmers, traders and families ride it as ordinary transport. For travelers crossing southern Africa without a domestic flight or a long road transfer, it offers a continuous rail link between two countries. The terrain changes completely along the way, from Indian Ocean shoreline to Zambian plateau.

Illustration: Quartz

Amtrak's Sunset Limited links New Orleans and Los Angeles three times a week, a 1,995-mile (3,211-kilometer) run that takes roughly two days. It is the oldest named passenger train still operating in the U.S., first running in 1894 under the Southern Pacific Railroad.

The route's defining feature is the distance between its two climatic extremes. Trains leave New Orleans through Louisiana wetlands, crossing open water on long causeways before the ground dries out across Texas. Texas accounts for a large share of the trip, with the line running west past Houston and San Antonio into the Chihuahuan Desert scrub near Alpine and Marfa. By southern New Mexico and Arizona the terrain turns Sonoran: saguaro cactus, mesas and long sightlines broken by distant ranges. The final approach to Los Angeles returns the train to dense urban development.

Sleeper roomettes and bedrooms are sold for the two overnight legs, and a dining car serves those classes. Coach is the cheaper option, used mostly for shorter city-pair segments rather than the full run.

The three-days-a-week schedule is the main planning constraint. A missed departure can mean waiting two days for the next one, so connecting itineraries need padding. Eastbound and westbound timings also put certain scenic stretches after dark depending on direction, which is worth checking against the published timetable before booking.

Service east of New Orleans, which once continued to Florida, has not operated since Hurricane Katrina damaged that section of track in 2005. The route now terminates at New Orleans. Travelers $TRV after an American rail crossing built on desert rather than mountain passes will find it here, with bayou country and Gulf-adjacent lowlands at the eastern end before the landscape turns arid.

Illustration: Quartz

The Caledonian Sleeper covers 509 miles (819 kilometers) from London Euston to Fort William in about 13 hours and 30 minutes, departing in the evening and arriving mid-morning. Passengers sleep through the English Midlands and wake in Highland terrain, which is the design logic of the service.

The Fort William portion runs on the West Highland Line, among the most remote stretches of track in Britain. Its best-known section crosses Rannoch Moor, a peat bog with almost no road access, where the line rests on a bed of brushwood and ash floated across ground too soft to carry a conventional embankment. Rannoch and Corrour stations serve walkers and little else, and Corrour has no public road connection at all.

The final approach runs beside Loch Treig and then along Loch Linnhe, below Ben Nevis, which at 4,411 feet is the highest mountain in the U.K. Fort William serves as a base for the West Highland Way and for the Mallaig branch line that continues west.

Accommodation ranges from twin berths to ensuite rooms with double beds, and seated coaches are available for travelers who do not want to pay sleeper fares. A lounge car serves Scottish food and drink for passengers who would rather stay up than sleep through the early hours.

The train leaves London as one formation and divides at Edinburgh, with separate portions continuing to Fort William, Inverness and Aberdeen. Anyone booking this route should confirm the correct carriage before departure, since the sections uncouple while most passengers are asleep.

One fare covers both the journey and a night's accommodation, which is the practical argument for choosing it over a London-to-Glasgow flight and a hotel. The trade is time: the sleeper takes most of a night to deliver a landscape that no flight path over Scotland shows at ground level.

Illustration: Quartz

Rocky Mountaineer's Vancouver-to-Banff route runs twice a week, covering 594 miles (957 kilometers) over about 37 hours that include an overnight hotel stay in Kamloops. The service operates in daylight only, so passengers are awake for the full run through the Canadian Rockies.

The rolling stock is the other distinguishing feature. Glass-domed railcars carry windows that curve up into the roofline, built for looking at mountains rather than adapted from ordinary coaches. Leaving the Pacific coast, the line follows the Fraser River through its canyon, then heads east into the drier interior around Kamloops. The second day climbs into the Rockies proper. Banff sits inside Banff National Park, the country's first national park, so arrival puts travelers in protected alpine terrain rather than a transit hub.

The hotel stop changes the character of the trip. This functions as a packaged multi-day tour with a fixed schedule, included accommodation and onboard hosts who explain geology and railway history along particular stretches of track. Meals are served on board, and fares sit well above what a standard long-distance ticket costs elsewhere in North America. Priced against a Vancouver-to-Calgary flight, it belongs to a different category of travel altogether.

Twice-weekly departures make booking windows tighter than on daily services, and summer demand narrows them further, so dates are worth locking in early. Wildlife along the corridor is a possibility rather than a scheduled feature. Bighorn sheep, elk and bears all live in the region, but any sighting depends on season, timing and luck.

The guided layer is what separates this from the more utilitarian long-haul trains on this list. The landscape arrives explained, with context about the 1880s railway construction that drove a line through these mountains in the first place. For travelers who want the Rockies interpreted rather than simply watched, that structure is the proposition.

Illustration: Quartz

The Serra Verde Express runs daily between Curitiba and Morretes, covering just 42 miles (68 kilometers) in about three hours and 30 minutes — a short ride that crosses roughly 30 bridges and passes through 14 tunnels.

The line drops from Curitiba's inland plateau through the Serra do Mar, the coastal mountain range that separates southern Brazil's interior from the sea. The descent runs through Atlantic Forest, a biome that once covered much of the Brazilian coastline and now survives in fragments, some of it protected in the state parks the train skirts. Waterfalls, steep ravines and dense subtropical growth fill the windows, and on humid mornings the lower slopes sit under cloud.

Construction began in the 1880s to connect Curitiba with the port of Paranaguá, and several of the small stations along the way date to that period. The original purpose was commercial — moving freight down to the Atlantic — and the track still follows the gradient 19th-century surveyors worked out across the escarpment.

The structures are part of the attraction rather than a backdrop to it. Viaducts curve along exposed rock faces, and stone bridges span gorges where the drop below is visible from the seats. Passengers heading downhill tend to favor the left-hand side of the carriage, where the valley views open up.

Morretes, the endpoint, is a small colonial-era town on the Nhundiaquara River known for barreado, a slow-cooked beef dish traditionally served with cassava flour and banana. Many visitors travel down by rail and return to Curitiba by road, which turns the outing into a day trip rather than an overnight commitment.

The route suits travelers without the time or budget for a multi-day rail journey: a full change of terrain, from highland plateau to coastal lowland, inside a single morning.

Illustration: Quartz

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, known almost everywhere as the toy train, covers 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) from New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling in seven to eight hours on track just two feet wide. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 1999.

The pace is a product of the terrain rather than the timetable. The line gains roughly 7,000 feet between the Bengal plains and Darjeeling, and that gradient was too steep to take head-on with 19th-century adhesion technology. The engineers who opened the route in 1881 built spirals and reversing zigzags into the hillside instead. The train doubles back on itself, circles above its own track, and in places runs within a few feet of shopfronts and parked scooters along the Hill Cart Road.

Tea estates dominate the lower half of the climb, thickening around Kurseong before giving way to conifer and cloud. Ghum, at about 7,400 feet, is the highest railway station in India, and just below it the Batasia Loop curls through a garden with an open view toward Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, when the weather allows.

Diesel locomotives handle the full daily run between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling. Steam is reserved for shorter heritage services, including the heavily booked Darjeeling-to-Ghum joyride, so travelers hoping for a coal-fired engine should check which service they are buying rather than assume the long journey includes one.

Landslides and monsoon damage have closed sections of the line repeatedly over the decades, and schedules shift accordingly. That fragility is part of the record: a working narrow-gauge mountain railway kept running on close to its original alignment for more than 140 years. The full ascent shows the engineering at work across an entire day, while the short joyride offers a compressed sample of the same track.

Illustration: Quartz

Japan's Hokkaido Shinkansen runs daily between Tokyo and Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto, covering 512 miles (824 kilometers) in about four hours. The defining stretch is not a mountain pass but the Seikan Tunnel, which carries the line beneath the Tsugaru Strait from Honshu to Hokkaido.

The train clears Tokyo's built-up sprawl within about half an hour, and the window then fills with the Tohoku region — rice fields in stepped rectangles, small manufacturing towns and forested ridgelines. Mount Iwate is visible near Morioka on clear days. Snow comes early this far north, and from December through March much of the northern Honshu leg runs past white fields and weighted conifers.

Daylight disappears at the tunnel mouth. The Seikan Tunnel runs about 33 miles, including a long undersea section beneath the strait, and it was the world's longest rail tunnel until the Gotthard Base Tunnel opened in Switzerland in 2016. Work began in 1971 and the tunnel opened in 1988. The strait's weather drove the project: ferry crossings were hazardous, and a 1954 typhoon sank the ferry Toya Maru with heavy loss of life. Because the tunnel also carries freight traffic, trains pass through at lower speeds than on the open-air sections of the line.

Hokkaido reads differently from mainland Japan once the train surfaces — wider farmland, fewer towns, more open sky. Hakodate sits at the island's southern tip, spread across slopes above a narrow neck of land, and its mix of Japanese and Western architecture traces back to its role as one of the first Japanese ports opened to foreign trade in the 1850s.

Travelers $TRV bound for central Hakodate transfer at Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto to a connecting local service. The shinkansen line is being extended toward Sapporo, which will eventually remove that change for passengers heading deeper into Hokkaido. Until then, the four-hour run from Tokyo stands as the fastest overland link between Japan's two largest islands.

Illustration: Quartz

The Kandy-to-Ella stretch sits in the middle of Sri Lanka's daily Colombo-to-Badulla line, a 181-mile (292-kilometer) route scheduled at nine to 10 hours end to end. Most travelers ride only the hill-country section, which climbs from Kandy into the island's tea belt and takes several hours depending on stops.

The track gains elevation steadily after Kandy, threading past Hatton and Nanu Oya, the station serving Nuwara Eliya, before reaching Pattipola, the highest point on the Sri Lankan rail network at roughly 6,200 feet. Tea estates cover the slopes on both sides for much of this climb, planted in terraced rows that follow the contour of the hills. Cloud often sits below the track in the early morning, so the view alternates between open valley and thick mist within minutes.

Between Ella and Demodara, the line crosses the Nine Arch Bridge, a stone and brick viaduct from the British colonial era that spans a forested ravine on a curve. The structure has become the most reproduced image of Sri Lankan rail travel, and visitors gather on the surrounding hillsides to watch trains pass over it. Walking the track to reach the viewpoints is common, though the bridge remains in regular timetabled use.

Punctuality is not a strength of this corridor. Much of the line is single track with older signaling, and delays of an hour or more are routine — worth factoring into any onward connection or booked accommodation.

Seating splits the experience in two. Reserved observation cars offer guaranteed seats and large windows. Unreserved third class is cheap and frequently standing room only, with open doorways that passengers lean out of for an unobstructed view of the tea terraces. Reserved tickets on the Kandy-to-Ella leg sell out well ahead during peak travel months, so booking early matters more here than on most other Sri Lankan services.

Illustration: Quartz

The Glacier Express runs daily in season between St. Moritz and Zermatt, covering 180 miles (290 kilometers) in about eight hours. The route counts 291 bridges and 91 tunnels, and the train averages roughly 22 miles an hour — slow enough that it is routinely called the slowest express train in the world.

That pace is a design decision rather than a mechanical shortcoming. The line is narrow gauge, built for Alpine gradients, and rack-and-pinion sections handle the steepest climbs, where wheel grip alone cannot hold a train on the grade. The high point is the Oberalp Pass at about 6,670 feet, a bare saddle between the cantons of Graubünden and Uri, with track left open to the weather for much of the ascent.

Leaving St. Moritz, the train follows the Albula line and crosses the Landwasser Viaduct, a curved stone span that ends in a tunnel bored straight into a cliff face. Past Chur, the route enters the Rhine Gorge, where pale cliffs rise several hundred feet above the Anterior Rhine and the track stays close to the water along the canyon floor. After the Oberalp Pass and the Furka Base Tunnel, the line drops into the Rhône valley at Oberwald, then climbs the Matter valley to Zermatt, a car-free village below the Matterhorn.

Panoramic cars with windows curving into the roofline are standard, and seat reservations are mandatory rather than optional, since the service fills through summer and the winter holiday weeks. Multilingual audio commentary identifies landmarks as they appear. A sit-down meal can be served at the seat, which matters on a route where walking to a dining car could cost a pass crossing.

Two things are worth planning around. The schedule is seasonal, with a maintenance break in spring. And the full run fills a day, so travelers short on time often ride only the Chur-to-Andermatt portion, which covers the gorge and the climb toward the pass.

Illustration: Quartz

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express runs between one and six times a month, covering 1,300 miles (2,090 kilometers) from Paris to Venice across France, Switzerland and Italy in about two days. It is a privately operated luxury service built around restored carriages from the 1920s and 1930s, and it is not a continuation of the original Orient Express routes of the 20th century, which no longer run. The current service began operating in 1982, assembled from vintage sleeping and dining cars acquired at auction and rebuilt.

The train climbs through the French and Swiss Alps before descending into northern Italy, and the Simplon corridor between the two countries supplies the middle part of its name. Mountain scenery fills the daylight hours, and the final stretch carries passengers into Venice across the lagoon causeway rather than into an airport on the mainland.

The carriages matter as much as the terrain outside them. Individual cars have been refurbished with inlaid wood paneling, brass fittings and period lighting in keeping with their interwar origins. Dining is formal and served in multiple courses in restaurant cars. Accommodation ranges from compartments that convert from daytime seating into berths at night to larger suites with private facilities. An evening dress code applies, which separates the experience from the working sleeper services elsewhere on this list.

Pricing sits far above every other journey covered here, often by a wide margin, and infrequent departures mean an itinerary has to be built around the train rather than the other way around. That puts it closer to a cruise than to transport. Anyone choosing it instead of a Paris-to-Venice flight is not saving time or money.

What it offers instead is a direct link to a specific period of European rail travel, when long-distance trains were the premium way to cross a continent. That link survives in rolling stock still running to a published schedule rather than parked in a museum.

Illustration: Quartz

The Bohinj Railway runs daily between Nova Gorica and Jesenice, covering 55 miles (89 kilometers) in about two hours through the Julian Alps. It is one of the shortest routes here and the least known outside Slovenia relative to what it shows. The line opened in stages between 1900 and 1906 under Austro-Hungarian rule, built as a strategic link from the Alps toward the Adriatic port of Trieste.

Leaving Nova Gorica, the track follows the Soča River upstream. The water runs turquoise, a product of its glacial source and the limestone it cuts through. The valley narrows between steep walls, and the route threads stone bridges and tunnels driven through terrain road builders largely avoided. Solkan Bridge, just outside Nova Gorica, carries the longest stone arch ever built for a railway, spanning 279 feet (85 meters).

Past Most na Soči, the line turns inland and climbs to the Bohinj Tunnel, nearly four miles (6.3 kilometers) of bore beneath the mountains. It emerges in upland country near Lake Bohinj, the largest permanent lake in Slovenia, then passes Bled Jezero station, a short walk from Lake Bled, before descending to Jesenice near the Austrian border.

Traffic is light compared with Europe's main corridors, and the service uses ordinary regional rolling stock, with modest stations and little tourist infrastructure built around it. There is no panoramic carriage, no surcharge and no seat reservation to arrange — passengers buy a standard regional ticket and board. That counts for something in a corner of Europe where the better-known alpine panoramic services sell out in high season.

Two hours makes this an easy addition to a wider Slovenian itinerary rather than a trip built around the train. For travelers already heading to Triglav National Park or the rafting and hiking bases of the Soča Valley, it reaches ground the roads approach less directly.

Illustration: Quartz

The Ghan runs twice a week between Adelaide and Darwin, covering 1,851 miles (2,979 kilometers) in about 54 hours and cutting vertically through the arid interior Australians call the Red Centre. It is the only passenger rail service that crosses the continent from the south coast to the north coast.

The name is shorthand for the Afghan cameleers who worked inland supply routes across central Australia in the 19th century, moving goods through country that wheeled transport could not reliably handle. Rail reached Darwin only in 2004, when the northern extension from Alice Springs opened, more than a century after the first southern sections of track were laid.

Alice Springs sits roughly at the midpoint, and most fares build in time there for ground excursions into the MacDonnell Ranges and the surrounding desert. North and south of that stop, the window view settles into long runs of iron-red soil, spinifex and saltbush, with almost no settlement visible for hours. By the final approach to Darwin, the palette has changed entirely: tropical savanna, wetter air, denser green.

Sleeper cabins are the standard booking class given the distance, and meals are generally included in the fare rather than bought separately on board. The twice-weekly timetable reflects both the length of the run and the scale of the territory it crosses, where passenger demand bears no resemblance to that of coastal commuter corridors.

That gradual shift from desert to tropics is the route's defining feature, and it is exactly what a direct Adelaide-to-Darwin flight erases. Travelers $TRV who want to see Australia's interior rather than only its capital cities have no equivalent overland rail option. The Ghan covers that terrain slowly and in sequence, which is the whole argument for choosing 54 hours on a train over an afternoon in the air.