Data story

International train routes of the world

129 cross-border trains, ranked by how many countries they pass through — the railways that stitch 62 countries together.

Which trains actually cross borders, and which countries do they connect? This ranks every route in the atlas that passes through two or more countries. 129 of 1516 routes are international; together they touch 62 countries. Most cross a single border, 23 pass through three or more, and a rare few go further still.

International routes

129

Countries linked

62

Cross 3+ countries

23

Most connected

Germany (35)

The most internationally connected countries

Number of international routes that pass through each country — top 15, most connected first. The full ranking of all 129 routes is below.

Cross-border trains by type

High-speed

16 routes

Classic

69 routes

Night train

26 routes

Scenic

14 routes

Heritage

1 route

Luxury

3 routes

How we measured it

Each route lists the sovereign countries its line passes through, in travel order, from the atlas's open data; a route counts as international when it touches two or more. The ranking covers scheduled and named passenger services in the World Train Map atlas. Every number comes from the open World Train Map Atlas (CC BY 4.0, archived at DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21322030) — free to check or reuse.

Every international route, ranked

Which country has the most international train routes?

Germany, on 35 cross-border routes — more than any other country, ahead of Austria with 27 and France with 24. Central Europe is where the cross-border network knots together, so one country ends up anchoring a large share of the journeys.

What is the most countries a single train crosses?

5, and only 1 service does it: the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. No train in this atlas goes further in one run — border formalities, gauge changes and franchising all make longer international workings rare.

How many international train routes are there?

129 cross-border passenger routes in this atlas, linking 62 countries, of which 23 touch three countries or more. The count covers named services you can ride end to end, not every railway that happens to cross a border.

Are most international trains night trains?

A strikingly high share of them: 26 of the 129 cross-border routes are sleepers, far above night trains' share of the atlas overall. An overnight hop between two capitals is the signature of the current night-train revival.