The Best Train Journeys Where the Train Is the Destination

Most trains are a way to get somewhere. On these eight, the getting is the point.

Switzerland has three. The Glacier Express takes eight hours to go from Zermatt to St. Moritz, over 291 bridges, and has been called the slowest express train in the world. The Bernina Express crosses the Bernina Pass at 2,253 metres, the highest railway crossing in Europe, before dropping more than 1,800 metres to Tirano in Italy; its line is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the Wengernalp Railway, the longest continuous rack railway in the world, is the only way into car-free Wengen, under the Eiger.

Norway's Flåm Railway drops 866 metres in 20 km, through twenty tunnels, from the mountains to the Sognefjord. In Scotland, the Jacobite steam train runs from Fort William to Mallaig from May to October, over the Glenfinnan Viaduct that the Harry Potter films made famous.

The Doğu Ekspresi is an overnight train across Turkey from Ankara to Kars, which became so popular as a journey that the state railway added a tourist version in 2019. In Kyoto, the Sagano Scenic Railway runs along the Hozu gorge on track the main line left behind. And San Francisco's cable cars are the last manually operated cable car system in the world, still gripping a cable under the street as they have since 1873.