The 10 most scenic train rides in Europe

There’s something special about traveling by train.

Sometimes you find the magic inside – mingling with other travelers, dining in a restaurant car or sleeping in a private compartment as steel wheels swish on the rails beneath you. Sometimes the magic comes from outside and the landscape the train traverses – an adventure, an experience, an insight into the heart of a nation.

Europe is especially known for its train travel. From countryside views and mountain villages to alpine passes and landmark bridges, the continent offers up some of the most scenic train rides in the world.

Here are 10 of the most beautiful train rides in Europe. 

1. The Heart of Wales Line, Wales and England

Route: Swansea to Shrewsbury
Best bit: Disembarking at lonely Sugar Loaf Station for a walk or picnic around the iconic nearby knoll of the same name
Distance: 194km (121 miles)
Duration: 4 hours

Experience Swansea to Shrewsbury the slow and, frankly, surreal way. This one-carriage train traverses track through Wales and England that might easily have been consigned to a museum or an out-of-print book, but that has somehow defied time and logic to survive as a passenger route.

You can expect a spectrum of scenery, alternating from the sand-edged estuaries of South Wales, via bucolic farming towns and tracts of forest and hill country you probably never knew existed, through to one of England’s prettiest medieval cities. 

2. The Bernina Express, Switzerland

Route: Chur to Tirano
Best bit: Marveling at the astonishingly turquoise Lago Bianco from the route’s highest station, Ospizio Bernina (2253m/7392ft)
Distance: 156km (96 miles)
Duration: 4 hours 30 minutes

Rolling from Chur in Graubünden to Tirano in northern Italy in around four hours, this narrow-gauge train often tops polls of the world’s most beautiful rail journeys. It's certainly one of the most scenic train journeys in Switzerland.

We could wax lyrical about the glacier-capped mountains, waterfall-draped ravines, jewel-colored lakes and endless spruce forests glimpsed through panoramic windows on Switzerland’s Bernina Express – but, trust us, seeing is believing.

Beyond the phenomenal Alpine landscape, the railway itself is a masterpiece of early 20th-century engineering, taking 55 tunnels and 196 bridges in its stride. The line is on the UNESCO World Heritage List – and with good reason.

3. Nova Gorica to Jesenice, Slovenia

Route: Nova Gorica to Jesenice
Best bit: Catching a glimpse of picture-perfect Lake Bled’s church, castle and bright-blue water
Distance: 89km (55 miles)
Duration: 2 hours

Here is a near-perfect railway adventure that most people have never heard of. Then again, you could be forgiven for missing it. The Bohinj Railway, after all, connects two places whose significance can be lost to modern travelers. Europe’s shifting borders and politics may have rather marooned the Nova Gorica–Jesenice line, but that only adds to the appeal.

An unassuming regional train rattling out of a faded-grandeur halt on the Italy–Slovenia border doesn’t even hint at what’s to come. The journey is a spectacular tour of Slovenia’s upland highlights, climbing through mountain towns and villages along the Soča River, passing through superb Alpine scenery close to Lake Bohinj, and past world-famous Lake Bled, offering photo opportunities galore.

4. Le Petit Train Jaune, France

Route: Villefranche-de-Conflent to Latour-de-Carol
Best bit: Holding your breath as you cross the gravity-defying Pont Gisclard
Distance: 63km (39 miles)
Duration: 4 hours 30 minutes

Since 1910, the dinky, sunflower-yellow carriages of the Ligne de Cerdagne have been rattling and clattering their way through the rolling forests and saw-toothed mountains of the Pyrenees, and they have secured a special place in the hearts of many French travelers.

Affectionately known as the Canary, or Le Petit Train Jaune (Little Yellow Train), this mountain railway is frequently cited as the most scenic in France, but it’s definitely not a luxury service – it’s a rollercoaster ride on which you will feel the wind in your hair and the chill of the mountain breeze as you ratchet your way up to the highest train station in France. On y va! (Let's go!)

5. Settle to Carlisle, England

Route: Settle to Carlisle
Best bit: Marveling at the Ribblehead Viaduct, one of the great views of northern England, preferably as a steam train thunders over
Distance: 73 miles
Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes  

England’s Settle-to-Carlisle line has long been synonymous with the fight to preserve beautiful and historic stretches of railway. But this is no heritage line. Proudly part of the British rail network and served by regular mainline trains, the railway enjoys a double life as a frequent host of steam specials and, even rarer, steam-hauled mainline services.

Whether you have the whiff of steam in your nostrils or the hard-working growl of diesel-hauled regular trains in your ears, the views from the carriages are pretty much unmatched on the English railway network.

Passengers can feast their eyes on mile after mile of magnificent Yorkshire Dales and North Pennines scenery, interrupted only by stations so pretty you would expect to find them pictured on a box of biscuits.

6. Belgrade-to-Bar Railway, Serbia and Montenegro

Route: Belgrade to Bar
Best bit: Levitating atop the 499m-long (1637ft), 198m-tall (650ft) Mala Rijeka Viaduct, one of the planet’s highest railway bridges, before the train glides over the Balkans’ largest lake, Skadar
Distance: 476km (296 miles)
Duration: 12 hours

Dramatic is the operative word for this route, which rumbles over an unsullied, mountainous landscape from Serbia's capital, Belgrade, to Montenegro’s Adriatic Coast. Like the region it serves, the railway, which chugs across the heart of the Western Balkans, eludes most tourists’ maps. The reward for treasure-hunting travelers, who are informed (or lucky) enough to know where to dig: an embarrassment of authentic culture and pristine geographic riches at every bend.

During the 12-hour journey, the train disappears into the Dinaric Alps, charges through canyons, teeters on stilted bridges spanning river gorges and skims atop an ancient, tectonic lake.

7. Munich to Venice on the Brenner Railway, Germany, Austria and Italy

Route: Munich to Venice
Best bit: Stretching your legs at the 1371m (4498ft) Brenner Pass, the highest point on the trip
Distance: 563km (350 miles)
Duration: 6 hours 30 minutes

The Brenner Railway is attractive for two key reasons: mountains and wine. There may be more technically astonishing high-altitude trains, but this was the first to cross the Alps in the 1860s.

On a surprisingly speedy day trip, you pass through three countries – Germany, Austria and Italy – and descend from the snow line to sea level. You’re rarely far from highways, but the vineyard views are still stunning. Bonus: you'll find great European cities with historic architecture – Munich and Venice – at either end.

8. Bergensbanen, Norway

Route: Oslo to Bergen
Best bit: Gazing over the soul-stirring landscape of Hardangervidda between Geilo and Finse.
Distance: 496km (308 miles)
Duration: 6 hours 30 minutes

All aboard for the Oslo to Bergen train line, Bergensbanen: a mainline into Norwegian nature.

This astonishing train is one of the wonders of 19th-century railway building, and yet outside Norway hardly anyone knows about it. In just over six hours and some 490km (300 miles), it covers the spectrum of Norway’s natural splendor: climbing canyons, crossing rivers, burrowing through mountainsides, swooping past fjords and traversing barren icescapes. 

9. The Kyle of Lochalsh Line, Scotland

Route: Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh
Best bit: Passing under the gentle grassy slopes of Fionn Bheinn – a munro rising high over Achnasheen
Distance: 135km (84 miles)
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes

Scotland has an abundance of windswept railways – the West Highland Line and the Far North Line to Thurso among them. Though comparatively unsung, perhaps the loneliest of all is the Kyle of Lochalsh Line – with trains rumbling doggedly from Inverness through desolate glens and past snowy munros, connecting the cold shores of the North Sea to the furious whitewater of the Atlantic.

It is a railway line full of poetry and beloved by aficionados – but it’s also a useful way for independent travelers to access remote nooks of the Highlands and make a journey to the Isle of Skye.

10. The Centovalli Express, Switzerland and Italy

Route: Locarno to Domodossola
Best bit: Taking in the Isorno viaduct, the site of Switzerland’s first bungee jump
Distance: 52km (32 miles)
Duration: 2 hours

Often eclipsed by Switzerland’s more famous rail rides, this two-hour route from Locarno on the palm-rimmed shores of Lake Maggiore to Domodossola over the Italian border in Piedmont is something of an unsung beauty.

Brush up your Italian to swoon in sync with fellow passengers as the dinky train clatters across 83 bridges and burrows its way through 34 tunnels. The views make for spirit-lifting stuff: waterfalls shooting past cliffside views, hillside vineyards, gracefully arched viaducts, slate-roofed hamlets, glacier-carved ravines and mile after mile of chestnut and beech forests, all set against the puckered backdrop of mountains that are snow-capped in winter.