Why our enduring love for uber-luxury rail travel is at an all-time high – and the most spectacular luxury train journeys to take in 2025 and beyond.

BY STEVEN KING

Nostalgia, as a clinical condition, was identified, if not quite invented, in Bern, Switzerland, in 1688, by a trainee doctor named Johannes Hofer. He came up with the term by running together two Greek words, nostos, meaning a return or homecoming, and algos, meaning pain. As far as Hofer was concerned, nostalgia was a deadly-serious business, a potentially fatal “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause”. Before long the search was underway to locate the “nostalgia bone”, removal of which could presumably cure the condition.

Perceptions of the condition changed over time. Attitudes softened. Nostalgia became an increasingly warm, fuzzy affair. These days its associations are almost entirely positive. Recent scientific studies have shown that thinking nostalgically can be positively and measurably good for us, not only improving our mood but also our health and our behaviour towards others.

This is especially good news for travellers. If travelling nostalgically can improve your mood, health and behaviour, then surely you are only doing yourself, your loved ones and the rest of humanity a favour by checking into Claridge’s, taking a compartment on the Orient Express or boarding a teak-decked ocean liner bound for the South Seas.

Interest in high-end train travel, which is inherently nostalgic, has grown spectacularly in recent years – to the extent that it makes more sense to speak of it as a phenomenon rather than a trend. In addition to the charm of travelling in that kind of glossy, plush, linen-tableclothed, so-old-fashioned-it’s-new-fashioned style, this resurgence also intersects with two concurrently emerging phenomena: widespread awareness of and concern about the environmental impact of travel; and our growing appetite for slow, mindful and experiential travel.

Posh trains tick all those boxes at once. (They may be unique in that respect.) A gilded, glossy, velvet-upholstered train de luxe such as the Orient Express looks the part, emits about 80 times less carbon dioxide than a plane, takes its sweet time getting from A to B, and in all likelihood will leave you with the memory of an experience so pleasurable it will haunt your dreams to the point where, when you wake up, you will, like Caliban in The Tempest, cry to dream again.

Other train journeys may have the same effect. Here are a dozen or so of the best.

The Best Train Journeys in the World

PERU
The Belmond Andean Explorer and Belmond Hiram Bingham

A disproportionate number of the world’s greatest luxury trains are owned and operated by Belmond, famous also for its portfolio of heritage hotels. Among its collection is glamorous Peruvian power couple, the Andean Explorer and the Hiram Bingham (both pictured above). The former ascends to 4,200 metres above sea level on its way from Arequipa to Cusco via Lake Titicaca; the latter runs on from Cusco through the Sacred Valley to Machu Picchu. Along with the most cheerfully embroidered cushions on any trains, anywhere, you can expect top-notch pisco sours and oxygen “for additional comfort at high altitudes”.


EUROPE
The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express

The mothership, the big kahuna, the incomparable, the ne plus ultra. Though actually it has never really been one thing. It has existed in several versions since 1883 (with another one soon to come), going to lots of different places in Europe (and, famously, to Istanbul). The most familiar version of the train these days is the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, or VSOE for short. The VSOE is owned and operated by Belmond, which is in turn part of the French luxury-goods and hospitality group LVMH. A new and entirely bona fide Orient Express – this one belonging to Accor, another French conglomerate – is due to launch in 2025 (see below for details). For the time being, however, the train most of us will think of when we hear the words “Orient Express” is the VSOE. It continues to do its magnificent thing on an ever-growing number of routes. In December 2023 they introduced an overnighter from Paris to Bourg-Saint-Maurice in the French Alps; and in June 2024 one from Paris to Portofino – a nice complement to the existing (and extremely popular) Paris to Venice route. From March 2025 you’ll also be able to book a private carriage known as L’Observatoire, designed by the French photographer and street artist JR, which includes a “secret” tearoom behind a bookshelf, hand-painted frescoes, loads of JR photographs, a disco mirror-ball and a skylight above the bed that opens and closes in the manner of a camera lens.



THE STANS & THE CAUCASUS
Golden Eagle

Go large or go home. Or rather, go large and then, eventually, go home. Nobody does large quite like Golden Eagle Luxury Trains. Their Trans-Siberian Express set off from Moscow for Vladivostok in 2007; the trip took just under a month. Today the company offers an array of barely less astonishing itineraries across Europe, the near east, central Asia and India. The 16-night Caspian Odyssey loops languidly through the Caucasus and the so-called Stans, including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The great travel writer Colin Thubron called this region “the lost heart of Asia”, and it truly is a realm of wonders, the land of Samarkand and Tashkent, of Alexander, Tamerlane and the great Khans, of the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, and of exquisite Akhal-Teke horses that appear to be made of living gold.

SCOTLAND
The Royal Scotsman

Another Belmond train, another jewel box (this one tartan-lined). There are more than a dozen Royal Scotsman itineraries across Scotland, varying in route, duration and focus (food and drink, history, gardens). Most involve excursions off the train to visit castles, whisky distilleries, seal colonies and so forth. There is something special about the Royal Scotsman – the Scottishness is dialled up to bagpipe pitch, and irresistibly so; it creates a fabulously convivial atmosphere, at once fancy and fancy-free. The presence of an onboard Dior Spa – not, you might think, a typically Caledonian indulgence – should perhaps be understood in this case as a reaffirmation of the Auld Alliance. Christian Dior himself adored Scotland and it’s not difficult to imagine him adoring the present-day Royal Scotsman too.

CANADA
The Rocky Mountaineer

Rebooted in its current form in 1990, the Rocky Mountaineer has expanded from one to four routes, three on them in Canada, one in the United States. The original (and, for many fans, still the best) is known as “First Passage to the West”: mountains, forests, lakes and waterfalls, eagles, ospreys, elk and bears all the way from Banff to Vancouver (or vice versa). History buffs and train nerds will enjoy it as much as Sierra Club types – it follows part of the old Canadian Pacific Railway, the transcontinental line built to satisfy a demand from British Columbia for an east-west rail link as a condition of joining the new Canadian Confederation in 1871.

AUSTRALIA
The Ghan and the Indian Pacific

For the most part The Ghan and the Indian Pacific glide along at a little over sea level as they traverse almost entirely dead-flat terrain in almost entirely dead-straight lines across the continent of Australia. The Ghan runs north-south, the Indian Pacific east-west. Though the Indian Pacific (4,352 kilometres from one ocean to the other) is not the longest train journey in the world (that would be the Trans-Siberian from Moscow to Vladivostok, a monumentally bum-numbing 9,289 kilometres), it may be the most hypnotic. Much of the journey is spent in desert so featureless and luminous it resembles a James Turrell installation, an artistic experiment in sensory deprivation. Nowhere is this more affecting than when you’re crossing the Nullarbor Plain. The name, from nullus arbor, is perfect – corrupted, direct and poetic, like Australia itself.

INDIA
The Maharajas’ Express and the Golden Chariot

The Vedic gods and maharajas themselves would surely be pleased to travel in such fine style. (Though they might wonder about the geopolitical accuracy of referring to the Maharajas’ Express as “the Orient Express of the Orient”, catchy and evocative as that label might be.) One of the many joys of these trains is the opportunity they afford to get out and stretch your legs en route (several of the itineraries offered are a week long). Who would wish to rattle past the Taj Mahal or the Amber Fort without pausing to take a snapshot and a bit of a look around, or Ranthambore National Park without disembarking for a few hours of tiger-spotting?

SINGAPORE AND MALAYSIA
The Eastern & Oriental Express

Rather like the Orient Express, only with jungle and (just maybe) tigers. Despite its appearance – approximately Victorian with Art Deco elements, dark green and cream with polished brass lettering on the outside, gleaming cherrywood panelling and silky, jewel-toned fabrics on the inside – the E&O is not an old train. It only got under way in 1993, running between Singapore, Penang and Bangkok. The service was suspended in 2020 and resumed in 2024, having been sold to our old friends Belmond, who transformed the rolling stock and brought it to a state of gleaming, resplendent Belmond-y magnificence. However, the service now stops south of the Thai border – for the time being at least. Two new seasonal, three-night itineraries, starting and ending in Singapore and looping through Malaysia, have been introduced, and a new “Culinary Curator” has been appointed, the Taiwanese superchef André Chiang, who came to global prominence at the three-Michelin-starred Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier.


SOUTH AFRICA
The Blue Train and Rovos Rail

A much-loved classic, the Blue Train has operated in South Africa since 1923; Rovos Rail only since 1989, though it has expanded impressively and now offers a dozen itineraries not only in South Africa but also seven neighbouring countries as well. Its 15-night Cape Town to Dar es Salaam route, for example, sets off from South Africa’s picturesque legislative capital to the diamond-mining town of Kimberley, through Pretoria and the Madikwe Game Reserve, on to Botswana and Zimbabwe and the mighty Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders (more prosaically known to Anglophone travellers as Victoria Falls), across the Zambezi and into Zambia, then up into the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania, traversing the vast Nyerere National Park (Africa’s largest), before descending at last to Dar es Salaam on the Swahili coast.


JAPAN
The Seven Stars in Kyushu and Twilight Express Mizukaze

Oddly enough, it was the success of the Bullet Train that killed off the sleeper train in Japan, which became unnecessary when you could suddenly get across the country so quickly. However, the Japanese, too, have lately recovered their enthusiasm for slow travel by rail. The Seven Stars in Kyushu, the country’s first luxury sleeper train, was launched in 2013; the Twilight Express Mizukaze followed four years later. Both have been booked solid ever since – so much so that tickets are now awarded on a lottery basis. The handcrafted, Art Deco-inflected interiors are exquisite, the food likewise – along with the VSOE, these may be the only other trains on which it is possible to dine on UNESCO-listed Intangible Cultural Heritage.

New Luxury Train Journeys in 2025

ITALY
La Dolce Vita Orient Express

As mentioned above, yet another Orient Express is due to ease out of Rome’s Ostiense station in April 2025, initially plying half a dozen routes within Italy, with others to follow in due course. The train’s interiors, its owner-operators Accor insist, “pay tribute to the artistic and cultural fervour of Italy in the 1960s”. They are also delightfully reminiscent of the Electric Psychedelic Pussycat Swingers’ sequence in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery – lots of orange, terracotta and purple, and altogether a very far cry from the chintz and swag of Belmond’s near-namesake VSOE. A second Accor Orient Express train, with more traditionally styled interiors, and running between Paris and Istanbul, will follow in 2026.

ENGLAND AND WALES
The Britannic Explorer

Belmond rolls on. In addition to the British Pullman and Royal Scotsman, its two existing UK trains, from July 2025 we have the Britannic Explorer to look forward to as well. Expect four- or five-day itineraries through Cornwall, the Lake District and Snowdonia; a “botanical-themed” observation car; interiors by Albion Nord and world-class grub by Simon Rogan (three Michelin stars for L’Enclume, one for Aulis), with menus changing according not only to the seasons but also the train’s precise location. The locomotive goes locavore.

THE SILK ROAD
The Golden Eagle Silk Road Express

In 2026 the Golden Eagle will once again hit the Silk Road after a seven-year hiatus, with a new train and a new itinerary, all the way from Beijing to Kashkent via the Gobi Desert, over 22 days.