🇷🇴 Country
Train routes in Romania
18 routes · classic 10 · night train 3 · scenic 2 · heritage 3
18 routes cross Romania in the World Train Map atlas. The longest is the EN Ister at 874 km; the fastest is the EN Ister, running up to 160 km/h; the oldest line dates to 1863. Every route links to its facts, photo and story, and to the interactive world map.
Open the world railway map →Part of the Europe train map: every route on the continent, one map.
Classic (10)
- Prahova Valley Railway
Climbs the Prahova gorge past Peleș Castle at Sinaia to Predeal, Romania’s highest station at 1,032 m, under the Bucegi’s 2,500 m walls.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗ - InterRegio Cluj
The long haul from Bucharest over the Carpathians via Brașov and medieval Sighișoara to Cluj-Napoca, heart of Transylvania.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗ - InterRegio Timișoara
Follows the Danube past the Iron Gates gorge, then climbs to Timișoara, the Banat city where Romania’s 1989 revolution ignited.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗ - InterRegio Sibiu–Brașov
Runs under the Făgăraș Mountains, Romania’s highest, along the Olt valley between the Saxon citadels of Sibiu and Brașov.
- Chișinău–Iași Cross-Border
A symbolic cross-Prut service reopened in 2021, switching from Moldova’s broad gauge to Romania’s standard gauge at the Ungheni frontier.
- Bucharest–Constanța InterCity
Romania’s fastest domestic run crosses the Danube on Anghel Saligny’s 1895 bridge before new EMUs race on to the Black Sea.
Wikipedia ↗ - InterRegio
Wallachia to the old Moldavian capital: Romania’s busiest eastern corridor, hours of steppe and vineyards ending in university-city Iași.
Wikipedia ↗ - InterRegio
The Moldavia main line north through Bacău and Roman to Suceava, jumping-off point for Bukovina’s painted monasteries.
Wikipedia ↗ - Craiova–Calafat railway
A secondary single line down to the Danube, largely unelectrified, that found new purpose when the Calafat–Vidin bridge opened the way into Bulgaria.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗ - Bucharest–Sofia
Two capitals in a day: south from Bucharest to the Danube, over the 1954 Friendship Bridge at Giurgiu into Ruse, then across the Bulgarian plain by Gorna Oryahovitsa and Pleven to Sofia.
Night train (3)
- EN Ister
Retraces the original 1883 Orient Express alignment through Transylvania’s castles and the Carpathian passes.
Wikipedia (HU) ↗ - Prietenia
Overnight Friendship sleeper whose coaches are jacked up for a bogie swap at Ungheni. Soviet 1,520 mm broad gauge to European standard.
- IRN Corona
Romania’s classic night loop: asleep through Székely Land and the Maramureș foothills, waking at the far northwestern corner of the country.
Scenic (2)
- Oravița–Anina Railway
The “Banat Semmering” of 1863. Romania’s first mountain railway spirals through 14 tunnels and over 10 viaducts up the Aninei gorges, a masterwork of Habsburg engineering.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗ - Brașov–Zărnești railway
A Transylvanian branch across the Burzenland from Brașov to Zărnești, under the limestone wall of the Piatra Craiului.
Wikipedia (RO) ↗
Heritage (3)
- 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) ↗
Photos via Wikimedia Commons — each route page credits the author & licence
Cross-border lines continue into
- 🇧🇬 Train routes in Bulgaria 9 routes
- 🇭🇺 Train routes in Hungary 28 routes
- 🇲🇩 Train routes in Moldova 2 routes