Luxury trains
Luxury train routes of the world
34 trains · 22 countries · ≈ 52,500 km of routes
Open the world railway map →These are the trains you ride for the train itself: restored Pullman and Belle Époque saloons, palace trains looping Rajasthan and the Konkan coast, multi-day rail cruises across the Australian outback and the Karoo. Every luxury train in the World Train Map atlas is listed here by country — from the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express to Japan's Seven Stars in Kyushu — each with its distance, duration, operator and the story that earned it a place.
🇦🇺 Australia
- The Ghan
Named for the Afghan cameleers: 2,979 km straight through the Red Centre, completed to Darwin only in 2004.
Wikipedia ↗ - Indian Pacific
Ocean to ocean across Australia, including the world’s longest railway straight: 478 dead-level kilometres on the Nullarbor.
Wikipedia ↗ - Great Southern
The Ghan’s summer sibling. Adelaide to Brisbane the long way round, with Grampians sunsets, Canberra and a Coffs Harbour beach stop en route.
Wikipedia ↗
🇨🇦 Canada
- Rocky Mountaineer
All-daylight luxury through the Canadian Rockies: glass-domed coaches, an overnight hotel stop and the Kicking Horse Pass.
Wikipedia ↗
🇫🇷 France
- Venice Simplon-Orient-Express
Belmond’s restored Art Deco sleepers of the 1920s–30s: black tie encouraged as the Alps slide past the champagne bar.
Wikipedia ↗ - Le Grand Tour
Puy du Fou’s rolling theatre: a Belle Époque sleeper loops 4,000 km around France in six days, actors staging a mystery from Reims to Chenonceau.
🇮🇳 India
- Maharajas’ Express
IRCTC’s rolling palace: a week-long royal loop from Delhi through Ranthambore’s tigers, champagne breakfast beside the Taj, and evening prayers on the Ganges.
Wikipedia ↗ - Palace on Wheels
India’s original luxury train (1982): a week-long Rajasthan circuit in carriages styled on the private saloons of the maharajas.
Wikipedia ↗ - Deccan Odyssey
Maharashtra’s answer to the Palace on Wheels: a blue-liveried luxury rake looping the Konkan coast to the Ajanta and Ellora caves.
Wikipedia ↗
🇯🇵 Japan
- Seven Stars in Kyushu
Japan’s first luxury cruise train: ten suites and a piano bar on a slow lap of Kyushu’s volcano country; berths routinely go to a lottery.
Wikipedia ↗ - Twilight Express Mizukaze
Heir to the beloved Twilight Express: emerald art-deco suites and open observation decks drifting along the San’in coast’s empty beaches.
Wikipedia ↗ - Train Suite Shiki-shima
JR East’s champagne-gold cruise train: four days from Ueno through Tōhoku and under the Seikan Tunnel to Hokkaido, in suites with cypress baths — Japan’s hardest train ticket.
Wikipedia ↗ - TOHOKU EMOTION
A restaurant on rails — open kitchen car, chef’s courses at every seat — rolling the Sanriku surf from Hachinohe to Kuji along the Tanesashi coast.
Wikipedia (JA) ↗ - Setsugekka
Crimson-and-silver resort train with Japan’s largest train windows, serving regional courses on a slow sweep from Mt Myoko’s snow country to the Sea of Japan at Itoigawa.
Wikipedia ↗ - Iyonada Monogatari
A retro maroon-and-gold diner idling along the Iyonada shore — brunch above the waves and a pause at Shimonada, Japan’s most photographed seaside platform.
Wikipedia ↗ - Blue Symphony
Navy-and-gold Blue Symphony glides from Osaka Abenobashi to holy Yoshino — UNESCO cherry mountain — with a lounge bar, cake sets and armchairs in a reborn commuter train.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tosa Toki no Yoake no Monogatari
Ryoma-themed “dawn of a new era” train pairs Tosa seafood with Pacific panoramas above Susaki and Tosa-Kure bays, locals waving it through tea fields to Kubokawa.
Wikipedia ↗ - Hanayome Noren
A rolling Kaga bridal curtain: vermilion-and-black cars finished in Wajima-lacquer motifs and gold leaf, serving Ishikawa sweets en route to Wakura Onsen’s seaside baths.
Wikipedia (JA) ↗ - Rokumon
Rokumon wears the Sanada clan’s six-coin crest in deep crimson, serving kaiseki under Mt Asama on the old Shinetsu main line from Karuizawa down to Zenko-ji’s Nagano.
Wikipedia (JA) ↗
🇳🇦 Namibia
- Desert Express
A slow luxury run from the highland capital down the escarpment to the Atlantic, with dune walks as the Namib shifts from gold to coastal fog.
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🇵🇪 Peru
- Andean Explorer
South America’s first luxury sleeper: over a 4,319 m pass and along Lake Titicaca under Andean stars.
Wikipedia ↗ - Belmond Hiram Bingham
Belmond’s navy-and-gold Pullman to Machu Picchu, with brunch, a pisco bar and citadel entry folded into the fare since 2003.
Wikipedia ↗
🇵🇹 Portugal
- Presidential Train
Royal-blue saloon carriages built from 1890, which once carried heads of state, now a fine-dining train up the terraced Douro wine valley.
Wikipedia ↗
🇷🇺 Russia
- Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express
The Trans-Siberian done as a private hotel on wheels: fourteen days Moscow to Vladivostok with en-suite cabins, a bar car and stops the scheduled Rossiya cannot make.
Wikipedia ↗ - Zhemchuzhina Kavkaza
A hotel on rails looping from Moscow around the North Caucasus — Maykop, Kislovodsk, Vladikavkaz, Grozny, seaside Derbent and Nalchik — seven days, one ticket, since 2021.
🇸🇬 Singapore
- Eastern & Oriental Express
Cream-and-green carriages gliding past rubber plantations: colonial-era glamour from the Lion City to Siam.
Wikipedia ↗
🇿🇦 South Africa
- The Blue Train
A five-star hotel on rails: butlers, marble bathrooms and the Karoo semi-desert rolling past for 1,600 km.
Wikipedia ↗ - Rovos Rail
“The Pride of Africa”: teak-panelled suites through the bushveld to the smoke that thunders.
Wikipedia ↗
🇰🇷 South Korea
- Rail Cruise Haerang
Korea’s only sleeper cruise: three days around the entire peninsula from Seoul — Suncheon Bay, Busan, Gyeongju, the Jeongdongjin sunrise — with the train as the hotel.
🇪🇸 Spain
- El Transcantábrico
Spain’s first hotel-train (1983): an eight-day, metre-gauge cruise along the green Cantabrian coast from the Basque Country to Galicia.
Wikipedia ↗ - El Expreso de La Robla
Retraces the historic La Robla coal railway, Spain’s longest narrow-gauge line, on a three-day luxury run between Bilbao and León.
Wikipedia ↗ - Al Ándalus
A rolling Belle Époque palace whose 1929 sleeping cars once carried the British court from Calais to the Riviera: now easing from Seville to Madrid in seven days.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- Belmond Royal Scotsman
Just 40 guests aboard mahogany-panelled Pullmans that cross the Forth Bridge outbound and stable each night in Highland sidings.
Wikipedia ↗
🇺🇸 United States
- Napa Valley Wine Train
Guests wine and dine in restored early-1900s Pullman lounge cars behind vintage 1950s Alco diesels, rolling past Napa vineyards at a tasting pace.
Wikipedia ↗
Photos via Wikimedia Commons — each route page credits the author & licence