Heritage railways
Heritage & museum railways of the world
152 lines · 45 countries · ≈ 4,700 km of preserved track
See them all on the world railway map →These are the railways where the ride itself is the point: preserved steam lines run by volunteers and foundations, narrow-gauge forest railways deep in the Carpathians, American heritage railroads behind coal-fired narrow-gauge steam, and seasonal excursions on lines the timetable left behind. Every heritage and museum railway in the World Train Map atlas is listed here by country — from the Ffestiniog to the Durango & Silverton — each with its distance, stock, operator and the story that earned it a place. On the interactive map they start switched off so the network view stays readable; the Heritage toggle lights them all up.
How many heritage railways are there in the world?
This map lists 152 heritage railways across 45 countries so far. It is working towards every passenger service in the world and is not complete yet, so the true number is higher; every one listed here has its distance, operator and story checked.
Which is the longest of the heritage railways?
The Savannahlander, 424 km from Cairns to Forsayth, operated by Cairns Kuranda Steam.
What is the oldest of the heritage railways?
The Strasburg Rail Road opened in 1832 and still runs between Strasburg and Paradise.
Which country has the most heritage railways?
United Kingdom, with 28 of the 152 listed here.
🇦🇷 Argentina
- La Trochita
Theroux’s Old Patagonian Express: 750 mm gauge, 1922 steam locomotives and wood-stove-heated wooden coaches across the steppe.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tren del Fin del Mundo
The southernmost railway on Earth: a 500 mm steam line laid by Ushuaia’s prison labourers in 1909, now puffing into Tierra del Fuego National Park.
Wikipedia ↗
🇦🇺 Australia
- Puffing Billy Railway
Legs out the window over Monbulk Creek trestle: century-old narrow-gauge steam through Dandenongs fern gullies, Australia’s best-loved heritage line.
Wikipedia ↗ - Pichi Richi Railway
The original Ghan route through Pichi Richi Pass: 1879 stonework, volunteer-run steam and the 1928 “Barwell Bull” railcar to quaint Quorn.
Wikipedia ↗ - Mary Valley Rattler
A 1920s C17 barks out of Gympie across Deep Creek bridge: the 1915 fruit branch through the Mary Valley, saved twice and steaming on weekends.
Wikipedia ↗ - Byron Bay Solar Train
The world’s first fully solar-powered train: a 1949 “red rattler” gliding three kilometres of resurrected line to Byron Bay’s beaches.
Wikipedia ↗ - Savannahlander
Sixty-year-old railmotors take two unhurried days to cover 424 km from coastal rainforest to the 1910 gold-rush railhead at Forsayth.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cockle Train
Rides Australia’s oldest steel-railed public route, opened in 1854 with horse haulage to link Murray riverboats to the sea.
Wikipedia ↗ - Zig Zag Railway
A 19th-century engineering marvel in the Blue Mountains: trains reverse down a rock-cut Z of sandstone viaducts that once carried the main western line off the plateau.
Wikipedia ↗
🇦🇹 Austria
- Wachaubahn
Keeps to the north bank of the Danube through the UNESCO Wachau: apricot orchards and terraced vineyards past Dürnstein, where Richard the Lionheart was once held for ransom.
Wikipedia ↗ - Erzbergbahn
The “Semmering of the ore”: a heritage line over the 1,204 m Präbichl pass under the terraced Erzberg, the ochre iron mountain worked for over 1,300 years.
Wikipedia (DE) ↗ - Waldviertelbahn
NÖVOG’s 760 mm Südast winds from Gmünd through the granite-and-pine Waldviertel to Groß Gerungs, summer steam grinding round horseshoe bends and over stone viaducts.
Wikipedia (DE) ↗ - Reblaus-Express
Named after the phylloxera louse: a heritage diesel with a wine-tavern car trundles from Retz’s vine terraces to the Thaya loop at Drosendorf, weekends May to October.
Wikipedia (DE) ↗ - Steyrtal-Museumsbahn
Austria’s oldest 760 mm line (1889): ÖGEG steam ambles down the green Steyr valley from Steyr Lokalbahnhof to Grünburg on summer weekends — Bosnian gauge as it began.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bregenzerwaldbahn (Wälderbähnle)
All that is left of the 760 mm line to Bregenz: five kilometres of the Wälderbähnle between Bezau and Schwarzenberg, worked by steam and diesel through the Bregenzerwald on summer weekends.
🇧🇾 Belarus
- Zaslonov Children’s Railway
A working 750 mm railway through Chelyuskintsy Park operated entirely by schoolchildren training as drivers, conductors and dispatchers.
Wikipedia ↗
🇧🇪 Belgium
- Chemin de Fer du Bocq
Three tunnels and five stone viaducts pack into the Bocq valley on one of Belgium’s most dramatically engineered branch lines.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗ - Chemin de Fer à Vapeur des Trois Vallées
Steam on the 1854 Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse line: CFV3V engines bark up the wooded Viroin valley to the great museum shed at Treignes.
Wikipedia ↗
🇧🇷 Brazil
- Maria Fumaça de Tiradentes
Baldwin steam locomotives have worked this 76 cm-gauge line ever since Emperor Pedro II opened it in 1881.
Wikipedia ↗ - Trem do Vinho
A 1941 steam engine ambles 23 km through the Serra Gaúcha wine country to a soundtrack of tarantellas and popping corks.
Wikipedia (PT) ↗ - Campos do Jordão Railway
Brazil’s highest railway climbs the Serra da Mantiqueira to the mountain resort of Campos do Jordão at 1,743 m, a metre-gauge line electrified since the 1920s.
Wikipedia (PT) ↗ - Maria Fumaça (VFCJ)
Brazil’s flagship steam railway: ABPF volunteers fire century-old locomotives up the 1875 Mogiana trunk from Campinas to Jaguariúna every weekend.
Wikipedia (PT) ↗ - Expresso Turístico
A 1952 ALCO diesel and 1960s Budd cars leave Luz station on weekends for Paranapiacaba, the fog-wrapped English railway village at the rim of the Serra do Mar.
Wikipedia ↗
🇨🇳 China
- Jiayang Steam Train
One of the world’s last everyday steam railways: C2 engines built for 1950s coal pits still haul villagers past rapeseed terraces for pocket change.
Wikipedia ↗
🇨🇴 Colombia
- Tren de la Sabana
Weekend steam across the Bogotá savanna: brass-era locomotives and papayera bands rolling to Zipaquirá’s underground Salt Cathedral.
Wikipedia ↗
🇨🇿 Czechia
- Jindřichův Hradec–Nová Bystřice Narrow Gauge
South Bohemia’s narrow-gauge survivor, rescued by a new operator in 2026 after the original company’s 2022 bankruptcy nearly ended the line.
Wikipedia ↗ - Osoblažka
Czechia’s last public narrow gauge: 760 mm and 102 curves in 20 km — including the network’s sharpest at 75 m radius — dawdling across Silesia at 40 km/h.
Wikipedia ↗
🇩🇰 Denmark
- Mariager–Handest Veteranjernbane
Denmark’s leading veteran railway: 1909 Henschel steam from the fjord port of Mariager over rolling moraine hills to Handest, run in 1950s private-railway style.
Wikipedia (DA) ↗
🇪🇨 Ecuador
- Nariz del Diablo
To scale the sheer “Devil’s Nose” cliff the line zig-zags up a Z-shaped switchback, edging forward then reversing; reopened in August 2025 after five years shut.
Wikipedia (ES) ↗
🇪🇷 Eritrea
- Eritrean Railway
Pre-war Italian Mallet steam locos still claw up 3.5% grades and switchbacks 2,300 m between the Red Sea and Asmara: one of the great colonial mountain railways.
Wikipedia ↗
🇫🇮 Finland
- Jokioinen Museum Railway
The last stretch of Finland’s once-extensive 750 mm network, run by volunteers with steam engines from Finnish, German, Soviet and Belgian builders, veterans of the country’s vanished narrow-gauge lines.
Wikipedia ↗ - Porvoo Museum Railway
Summer museum trains out of Helsinki: a 1950s Dm7 “flat-hat” railbus leaves the main line at Kerava for the 1874 branch to Porvoo’s wooden old town.
Wikipedia (FI) ↗
🇫🇷 France
- Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme
Belle-Époque steam trains skirt the Somme estuary’s tidal salt marshes, with locomotives running round their own train at each terminus.
Wikipedia ↗ - Chemin de fer de La Mure
Reopened in 2021, this cliffside metre-gauge line hangs on ledges and viaducts high above the turquoise Monteynard reservoir in the Isère.
Wikipedia ↗ - Le Mastrou (Vivarais)
A metre-gauge steam survivor climbing the granite gorge of the Doux from the Rhône at Tournon to the chestnut country of Lamastre, hauled by 1903 Mallet engines.
Wikipedia ↗ - Petit train d’Artouste
Built for the dam works of the 1920s: 500 mm open cars creep along a cliff ledge at 1,940 m from the La Sagette gondola to Lac d’Artouste.
Wikipedia ↗ - Train à Vapeur des Cévennes
Steam between Anduze and Saint-Jean-du-Gard: across the Gardon on four viaducts, past the giant bamboo of Prafrance — 40 open-window minutes in the Cévennes.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗ - Velay Express
France’s highest steam railway: a 1906 Mallet hauls metre-gauge trains across the 1,000 m Velay plateau between Raucoules and Saint-Agrève.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗ - Chemin de fer de la Vendée
Belle-Époque dining on the move: restored CIWL Orient Express diners behind an 030 T steam engine, three viaducts between Mortagne and Les Herbiers.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗ - Train des Mouettes
Steam at 30 km/h beside the Seudre oyster beds: an 1891 Schneider — France’s oldest working steam engine — still hauls the gulls’ train to La Tremblade.
Wikipedia ↗ - Train Thur Doller Alsace
Sunday steam in the Doller valley: a century-old 030 T ambles from Cernay to Sentheim past storks, orchards and the first folds of the Vosges.
Wikipedia ↗
🇩🇪 Germany
- Rübelandbahn
Heritage steam storms a fierce Harz grade once worked by rack rail; the 1926 tank engine 95 027, the Bergkönigin, still climbs to the caves at Rübeland.
Wikipedia ↗ - Zittauer Schmalspurbahn
750 mm-gauge steam climbs from Zittau to the sandstone crags of the Zittau Mountains, serving the pilgrimage village of Oybin since 1890.
Wikipedia ↗ - Sauschwänzlebahn (Wutach Valley Railway)
Germany’s only spiral railway tunnel: a 1,700 m loop at Stockhalde lets the line climb the Black Forest by circling back over itself.
Wikipedia ↗ - Chiemsee-Bahn
The world’s oldest steam tram still in service, an 1887 green Krauss engine that shuttles down to the Chiemsee jetty for the boat to Ludwig II’s island palace.
Wikipedia (DE) ↗ - Fichtelbergbahn
Saxon narrow-gauge steam, every day of the year: 750 mm VII K locomotives hauling green coaches 238 m uphill to Oberwiesenthal, Germany’s highest town.
Wikipedia ↗ - Weißeritztalbahn
Germany’s oldest working public narrow gauge (1882): 750 mm steam daily through the Rabenauer Grund gorge and past Malter dam, 350 m up into the Ore Mountains to Kipsdorf.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lößnitzgrundbahn
Daily steam on Dresden’s doorstep since 1884: out of Radebeul’s villa streets into the wooded Lößnitzgrund, past Moritzburg’s moated hunting palace to little Radeburg.
Wikipedia ↗ - Brohltalbahn
The Vulkan-Expreß ambles at Tempo 20 from the Rhine at Brohl 400 m up into the volcanic Eifel, on metre gauge laid in 1901 to carry the region’s tuff and phonolite.
Wikipedia (DE) ↗ - Preßnitztalbahn
Torn up in 1986, relaid 1992–2000 by volunteers: Saxon IV K tanks once more steam the upper Preßnitz valley from Steinbach to Jöhstadt on weekends through the year.
Wikipedia ↗ - Kandertalbahn
Sunday steam up the Kandertal from the Rhine plain at Haltingen to Kandern, the 1895 branch kept running by the society that saved it.
Wikipedia ↗
🇬🇷 Greece
- Pelion Railway
Evaristo de Chirico’s 600 mm mountain railway on Mt Pelion curls over his iron-and-stone bridge near Milies through olive and apple groves.
Wikipedia ↗
🇭🇺 Hungary
- Children’s Railway (Gyermekvasút)
A 760 mm line through the Buda Hills staffed almost entirely by children aged 10–14: a Young Pioneer legacy still running today.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lillafüred Forest Railway
Narrow-gauge line through the Bükk mountains via two tunnels and two viaducts, opened for timber and now Hungary’s best-loved forest train.
Wikipedia ↗ - Szilvásvárad Forest Railway (Szalajka Valley)
Hungary’s busiest narrow-gauge railway: a steep timber line up the Szalajka valley to a waterfall, now carrying 300,000-plus riders a year.
Wikipedia (HU) ↗ - Mátravasút (Mátra Forest Railway)
Seven-sixty gauge out of Gyöngyös into the Mátra hills: a 1920s timber railway carrying holidaymakers to Mátrafüred behind an Mk48 in open-sided coaches.
🇮🇳 India
- Fairy Queen Express
Hauled by the 1855 Fairy Queen, the world’s oldest working steam locomotive, on a heritage run from Delhi out to the tiger country around Alwar.
Wikipedia ↗
🇮🇪 Ireland
- Waterford & Suir Valley Railway
Narrow-gauge trains follow the tidal River Suir on the trackbed of an 1878 mainline, running alongside the Waterford Greenway cycle path.
Wikipedia ↗
🇮🇲 Isle of Man
- Isle of Man Steam Railway
Victorian Beyer Peacock tanks of 1874 still haul their original carriages down 25 km of 3 ft gauge to the island’s southern tip.
Wikipedia ↗ - Manx Electric Railway
The oldest electric tramway whose original cars are still in service: 1890s tramcars on the coast line from Douglas to Laxey and, since 1899, over the cliffs to Ramsey.
Wikipedia ↗
🇮🇹 Italy
- Transiberiana d’Italia
Italy’s “Trans-Siberian”: a heritage train over snowbound Apennine plateaus to Rivisondoli-Pescocostanzo, at 1,268 m among the country’s highest stations.
Wikipedia ↗ - Treno Natura
Steam excursions across the UNESCO Val d’Orcia: 51 km of cypress avenues, clay badlands and Brunello vineyards on an 1865 branch kept alive purely for the Treno Natura.
Wikipedia ↗ - Porrettana Express
The 1864 Porrettana was Italy’s first railway across the Apennines: E.626-hauled Centoporte coaches now relive its 26 ‰ climb from Pistoia to the spa town of Porretta.
Wikipedia (IT) ↗ - Trenino Verde
The Trenino Verde’s second living branch: 46 km of 950 mm track twisting off Macomer’s basalt plateau down to the palm-lined seafront at Bosa Marina.
Wikipedia ↗ - Irpinia Express
Closed in 2010, revived for excursions: the 1895 Ofanto-valley line threads 119 km of viaducts, vineyards and hill villages from Avellino to lonely Rocchetta junction.
Wikipedia (IT) ↗
🇯🇵 Japan
- Sagano Scenic Railway
A retired JR alignment above the Hozugawa rapids: twenty-five slow minutes of maples and gorge that the modern main line skips through tunnels.
Wikipedia ↗ - SL Gunma
Restored D51 498 “Degoichi” and C61 20 haul retro coaches up the Joetsu Line on weekends: steam echoing off the Tone gorge under Tanigawa’s wall.
Wikipedia (JA) ↗ - Oigawa SL Kawane-ji
Vintage C11 steam locomotives haul old coaches up the Oi River valley: the same railway that runs Japan’s Thomas the Tank Engine trains.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tsugaru Stove Train
Aboard Japan’s northernmost private railway, attendants grill squid on pot-belly coal stoves while blizzards bury the Tsugaru plain outside.
Wikipedia ↗ - SL Yamaguchi
A pacific steam locomotive has hauled this special up the Yamaguchi line to the little castle town of Tsuwano, the “Kyoto of San-in”, since 1979.
Wikipedia ↗ - SL Banetsu Monogatari
C57 180 — “the Lady” — hauls seven retro coaches up the Agano river gorge from Niitsu to castle-town Aizu-Wakamatsu, one of Japan’s last full-size mainline steam runs.
Wikipedia ↗ - SL Paleo Express
The closest steam to Tokyo: wartime C58 363 huffs four retro coaches from Kumagaya into the Chichibu hills past Nagatoro’s rock terraces — running since 1988.
Wikipedia (JA) ↗
🇯🇴 Jordan
- Hejaz Railway (heritage)
Lawrence of Arabia’s Ottoman pilgrimage railway; heritage trains still run north from Amman via Zarqa, and a Hejaz steam loco fired up again in 2025 after 40 years.
Wikipedia ↗
🇱🇻 Latvia
- Gulbene–Alūksne Narrow Gauge Railway (Bānītis)
The only regularly operating narrow-gauge passenger railway left in the Baltic states, rattling twice daily through Vidzeme’s forests.
Wikipedia ↗
🇱🇹 Lithuania
- Aukštaitija Narrow Gauge Railway (Siaurukas)
Weekend survivor of a 750 mm network that once ran 68 km to Panevėžys, now trundling summer tourists out to Rubikiai lake.
Wikipedia ↗
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- Train 1900 (Fond-de-Gras Heritage Railway)
Vintage steam trains rattle through Luxembourg’s old iron-mining Minett region on track first laid in 1874 to move ore and miners.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗
🇲🇾 Malaysia
- North Borneo Railway
A 1954 Vulcan Foundry engine burning jungle firewood retraces the 1896 British North Borneo line: the only passenger railway corridor on Borneo.
Wikipedia ↗
🇳🇱 Netherlands
- Miljoenenlijn
Nicknamed the Million Line for its ruinously costly cuttings and viaducts, this steam railway climbs the only real hills in the Netherlands, in South Limburg.
Wikipedia ↗ - Museumstoomtram Hoorn–Medemblik
A steam tram dating from 1887 still crosses North Holland’s polders and tulip fields between Hoorn and the old Zuiderzee port of Medemblik.
Wikipedia ↗ - Veluwsche Stoomtrein
The Netherlands’ biggest steam operation: wartime German Kriegsloks and a forty-strong fleet work the 1887 Veluwe country line between Apeldoorn and Dieren.
Wikipedia ↗
🇳🇿 New Zealand
- Taieri Gorge Railway
Out of Dunedin’s bluestone palace of a station and into the Taieri’s schist canyon, where wrought-iron viaducts from 1889 still carry every train.
Wikipedia ↗ - Kingston Flyer
A vintage steam service on the old Southland line by Lake Wakatipu, its 1920s Ab Pacific and wooden cars a survivor of New Zealand’s golden age of rail.
Wikipedia ↗ - Glenbrook Vintage Railway
Steam on the old Waiuku branch south of Auckland, run by volunteers since 1977: a 7.4 km line from Glenbrook to Victoria Avenue that carries up to 30,000 passengers a season.
Wikipedia ↗
🇳🇴 Norway
- Krøderbanen
Norway’s longest museum railway: 26 km of the 1872 Krøder line preserved whole — stations, water cranes and NSB steam between Vikersund and the lake at Krøderen.
Wikipedia ↗ - Gamle Vossebanen
The 1883 Voss line’s surviving loop outside Bergen: NSB 18c steam between Garnes and Midttun, bypassed by new tunnels in 1964 and kept alive by volunteers.
Wikipedia ↗ - Thamshavnbanen
Built in 1908 for Orkla’s copper ore: the oldest alternating-current railway still in service, running its original 6.6 kV motor coaches along the green Orkla valley.
Wikipedia ↗ - Setesdalsbanen
Norway’s oldest museum railway, volunteer-run since 1964: 1890s narrow-gauge steam puffing up the Otra river from Grovane to the little terminus at Røyknes.
Wikipedia ↗
🇵🇱 Poland
- Bieszczady Forest Railway
Poland’s highest narrow-gauge line, a former logging railway that now carries over 150,000 riders a year into the Bieszczady wilderness.
Wikipedia ↗ - Wolsztyn Steam
Europe’s last everyday steam: commuters behind a 1948 Pt47 out of the working Wolsztyn roundhouse — an ordinary ticket, an extraordinary train.
Wikipedia (PL) ↗ - Żnin District Railway
A 600 mm minirailway from 1894 chuffing 12 km through Pałuki to the Iron Age lake fort of Biskupin — archaeologists commute by narrow gauge.
Wikipedia (PL) ↗ - Nadmorska Kolej Wąskotorowa
Opened 1896 and still packing 150,000 riders a summer: metre-gauge cars amble from Gryfice to the Baltic cliffs, Poland’s last coastal narrow gauge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Upper Silesian Narrow Gauge
Running since 1853 — the world’s oldest continuously operating narrow gauge: 785 mm industrial track turned heritage line across the Silesian coalfield.
Wikipedia ↗
🇷🇴 Romania
- Mocănița Vaser Valley
The world’s last steam-hauled forestry railway still logging, chuffing up the wild Vaser gorge in Maramureș toward the Ukrainian border.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗ - Mocănița Huțulca
Bucovina’s oldest mocănița, laid in 1888 for a Munich sawmill: the Huțulca puffs 12 km up the Moldovița valley behind a Reșița-built 764 steam engine.
- Mocănița Sovata
From the spa resort of Sovata a 1949 Chrzanów steam engine hauls open cars to Câmpu Cetății — a rescued shard of the 82 km Târgu Mureș–Praid line of 1915.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗
🇷🇺 Russia
- Ruskeala Express
Russia’s only daily steam service: blue retro cars behind a vintage locomotive from Sortavala to Ruskeala’s flooded marble canyon, staged down to conductors in 1900s dress.
Wikipedia (RU) ↗
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🇷🇸 Serbia
- Šargan Eight
A 760 mm loop climbing 300 m through 22 tunnels and 5 bridges in a literal figure-eight to gain height.
Wikipedia ↗
🇸🇰 Slovakia
- Čierny Hron Forest Railway
One of Europe’s last steam-worked forestry railways: its branch to Dobroč runs straight through the middle of a village football pitch.
Wikipedia ↗ - Orava Forest Railway
Built by POWs in 1915–18 to haul timber: the surviving 3.5 km climbs from Tanečník to Sedlo Beskyd on a five-switchback staircase unique in Europe.
Wikipedia ↗
🇪🇸 Spain
- Tren de Sóller
Varnished mahogany carriages from 1912 thread thirteen tunnels through the Tramuntana into Sóller’s orange-grove valley. Mallorca’s rolling time machine.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tren de la Fresa
Hostesses in 1920s dress hand out strawberries aboard replica carriages on Spain’s second-ever railway, opened in 1851.
Wikipedia ↗ - Ferrocarril de Riotinto
Restored mining stock creeps along the blood-red Río Tinto through a Mars-like landscape mined for 5,000 years — Victorian steam hauls it on winter Sundays.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tren de Felipe II
An ALCO diesel and 1940s coaches staffed by costumed actors climb from Príncipe Pío into the Guadarrama foothills to Philip II’s colossal monastery-palace.
🇰🇳 St Kitts and Nevis
- St. Kitts Scenic Railway
The last railway of the West Indies loops the island on a 1912–26 sugar-cane line, ridden in double-deck open-top cars.
Wikipedia ↗
🇸🇪 Sweden
- Lennakatten
Steam from the edge of a university city: the 891 mm Lennakatten rolls 33 km through Uppland forests and lakeside summer halts to the engine sheds at Faringe.
Wikipedia ↗
🇨🇭 Switzerland
- Blonay–Chamby Museum Railway
Switzerland’s first museum railway (running since 1968): Belle Époque steam and electrics cross the Baye de Clarens viaduct high above Lake Geneva on 3 km of 1902 branch line.
Wikipedia ↗
🇹🇳 Tunisia
- Lézard Rouge
The Bey of Tunis’s 1910 saloon cars, freshly restored: creeping into the Selja gorge’s ochre cliffs, photo stops included, in phosphate country.
Wikipedia ↗
🇺🇦 Ukraine
- Carpathian Tram (Vyhoda Forest Railway)
Ukraine’s last working forest railway, built in 1890 to haul Carpathian timber, now carries tourists up the Mizunka valley past waterfalls.
Wikipedia (UK) ↗
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland
The world’s oldest narrow-gauge railway company (1836): double-ended Fairlie steam from Caernarfon castle through Snowdonia to the slate town of Blaenau.
Wikipedia ↗ - The Jacobite
Steam over the 21 arches of Glenfinnan on the 1901 Mallaig extension: the working train that became the Hogwarts Express, white sands of Morar below.
Wikipedia (DE) ↗ - North Yorkshire Moors Railway
One of the world’s busiest steam heritage lines, climbing Stephenson’s 1836 route over the moors to Goathland, Hogsmeade in the Harry Potter films.
Wikipedia ↗ - Severn Valley Railway
Sixteen miles of preserved Great Western branch line tracing the River Severn, crossing the water on the graceful iron span of Victoria Bridge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bluebell Railway
The world’s first preserved standard-gauge passenger railway, running vintage steam through the Sussex Weald without a break since 1960.
Wikipedia ↗ - West Somerset Railway
Britain’s longest standard-gauge independent heritage railway: 22¾ miles of steam from the Quantock Hills down to the Bristol Channel shore at Minehead.
Wikipedia ↗ - Vale of Rheidol Railway
Narrow-gauge steam grinding 200 m uphill from the sea at Aberystwyth to the wooded gorge of Devil’s Bridge: the last steam line British Rail ever ran.
Wikipedia ↗ - Talyllyn Railway
The world’s first railway saved by volunteers, in 1951: its Victorian steam engines still cross Dolgoch Viaduct into the Fathew valley.
Wikipedia ↗ - Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway
Marketed as the world’s smallest public railway, its steam expresses still get local schoolchildren to class along Romney Marsh.
Wikipedia ↗ - Great Central Railway
Britain’s only double-track heritage main line, where two steam expresses can pass at speed just as they did on the last main line built towards the Continent.
Wikipedia ↗ - Keighley & Worth Valley Railway
The branch that starred in the 1970 film “The Railway Children”, steaming up the Brontë moors past Haworth to the mill village of Oxenhope.
Wikipedia ↗ - Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway
Fifteen-inch gauge up Eskdale from the Cumbrian coast, laid for iron ore in 1875 and run since as a miniature main line that Cumbria calls La’al Ratty.
Wikipedia ↗ - Dartmouth Steam Railway
The Kingswear branch of 1864, sold by British Rail to the Dart Valley company in 1972: steam from Paignton over Goodrington Sands and along the Dart estuary to Kingswear, for the ferry to Dartmouth.
Wikipedia ↗ - North Norfolk Railway
The Poppy Line: the last stretch of the Midland & Great Northern in Norfolk, carrying passengers again since July 1975, from the seaside at Sheringham past Weybourne to Holt.
Wikipedia ↗ - Llangollen Railway
Ten miles of the Great Western’s Ruabon–Barmouth line, closed in 1965: volunteers reopened Llangollen station in 1975 and relaid the Dee valley mile by mile, reaching a new station at Corwen in 2023.
Wikipedia ↗ - Epping Ongar Railway
The Central line’s lost end: London Underground closed Epping to Ongar in 1994, and heritage steam and diesel have run it again since 2012, from Ongar through North Weald to the edge of Epping Forest.
Wikipedia ↗ - Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway
Four miles of the Midland’s Skipton–Ilkley line, closed in 1965 and reopened by volunteers in 1981, with trains back into Bolton Abbey station, for the priory estate, since 1997.
Wikipedia ↗ - Dean Forest Railway
The Severn & Wye’s line into the Forest of Dean, rebuilt by volunteers: passenger trains since 1991, down to Lydney Junction in 1995 and up through the woods to Parkend.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway
The Furness Railway’s 1869 branch to Windermere, reopened in 1973: three and a half miles of steam from Haverthwaite to Lakeside, where trains still connect with the lake steamers.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bure Valley Railway
Norfolk’s 15-inch-gauge railway, laid in 1990 on the old East Norfolk trackbed: nine miles from the Broads at Wroxham, over the River Bure and under the A140 by tunnel, to Aylsham.
Wikipedia ↗ - Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway
A surviving piece of the Great Western’s Watlington branch at the foot of the Chilterns, reopened to passengers in 1994 and reconnected to the main line at Princes Risborough in 2016.
Wikipedia ↗ - Caledonian Railway (Brechin)
Four miles of the Aberdeen Railway’s 1840s line between Brechin’s preserved terminus and Bridge of Dun, worked by volunteers every summer since 1993.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cholsey & Wallingford Railway
The Great Western’s 1866 Wallingford branch, kept alive into preservation by the town’s maltings traffic: two and a half miles from Wallingford to the main line at Cholsey.
Wikipedia ↗ - Gwili Railway
Wales’ first standard-gauge heritage railway, reopened in 1978 on the Carmarthen–Aberystwyth line, the last in Wales to lose Brunel’s broad gauge, and now four and a half miles up the Gwili valley.
Wikipedia ↗ - Kirklees Light Railway
A 15-inch-gauge railway opened in 1991 on the Lancashire & Yorkshire’s Clayton West branch: through Skelmanthorpe and the 511-yard Shelley Woodhouse tunnel, with Emley Moor mast in view.
Wikipedia ↗ - Leighton Buzzard Light Railway
Built in 1919 to carry sand from the Bedfordshire quarries and running passenger trains since 1968: two-foot-gauge industrial steam and diesel from Page’s Park to Stonehenge Works.
Wikipedia ↗ - Strathspey Railway
Steam since 1978 on a preserved stretch of the Highland Railway main line, one of only a handful of former main lines saved in Britain: from Aviemore through Boat of Garten to Broomhill.
Wikipedia ↗ - Volk’s Electric Railway
The world’s oldest operating electric railway: Magnus Volk opened it on Brighton seafront in August 1883, and its cars still run along the beach from Aquarium to Black Rock.
Wikipedia ↗
🇺🇸 United States
- Durango & Silverton
1882 gold-rush narrow gauge: steam-hauled ever since, on the Highline ledge blasted 120 m above the Animas River gorge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Grand Canyon Railway
Since 1901 the painless way to the South Rim: vintage Pullmans roll across pine forest and high prairie to a log depot steps from the abyss.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad
America’s highest steam railroad, 1880 Rio Grande narrow gauge. K-36 Mikados storm 3,054 m Cumbres Pass and teeter along the Toltec Gorge rim.
Wikipedia ↗ - White Pass & Yukon Route
Blasted through gold-rush cliffs in 26 months (1898–1900): 900 m of climbing out of Skagway on cantilever bridges, then along Lake Bennett to the Yukon.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cass Scenic Railroad
Home to the world’s largest fleet of geared Shay steam locomotives, grinding up 11% grades to Bald Knob, 4,842 ft. West Virginia’s third-highest point.
Wikipedia ↗ - Verde Canyon Railroad
Two 1953 FP7 diesels, once Alaska Railroad engines, thread a 680-ft curved tunnel and a red-rock canyon that shelters nesting bald eagles.
Wikipedia ↗ - Great Smoky Mountains Railroad
The spectacular train-wreck scene in The Fugitive (1993) was staged on this line; the wrecked locomotive still sits trackside near Dillsboro.
Wikipedia ↗ - Georgetown Loop Railroad
To gain 640 ft between two towns just 2 miles apart, the narrow gauge spirals over itself on the Devil’s Gate High Bridge, an 1884 marvel rebuilt in 1984.
Wikipedia ↗ - Skunk Train
Nicknamed the “Skunk” in 1925 for its reeking gas railcars, you smelled it before you saw it, still winding out of Fort Bragg through the coast redwoods.
Wikipedia ↗ - Mount Hood Railroad
Climbs the orchard-filled Hood River valley toward 11,240-ft Mount Hood, reversing up one of just five railroad switchbacks still in regular US use.
Wikipedia ↗ - Strasburg Rail Road
Chartered in 1832, America’s oldest continuously operating railroad still steams through Lancaster County’s Amish farmland.
Wikipedia ↗ - Mountaineer
Follows the 1875 Maine Central grade up Crawford Notch, creeping across the curved Frankenstein Trestle high above the Saco.
- Royal Gorge Route
Rides the canyon won in the 1879 “Royal Gorge War”, the Arkansas River alongside and a suspension bridge 291 m overhead.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nevada Northern Railway
America’s best-preserved steam-era short line: the “Ghost Train of Old Ely” still runs its 1910 locomotives out of a National Historic Landmark copper yard.
Wikipedia ↗
🇻🇳 Vietnam
- Da Lat Railway
The last working stub of the French cog railway to Da Lat: 7 km of heritage track from a 1938 Art Deco station to Trại Mát.
Wikipedia ↗ - Hue–Da Nang Heritage Train
Launched in 2024 on the 1906 colonial mainline, it eases over the Hai Van Pass with clouds above and fishing fleets directly below the rails.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons — each route page credits the author & licence