Some train lines exist to move people efficiently. These ten exist, as far as anyone can tell, to be looked out of. All of them are ordinary scheduled services — no tourist surcharge, no special carriage, just a seat and a window.
The ten
- Bergen to Oslo, Norway — seven hours across the Hardangervidda plateau, above the tree line for most of it.
- Flåm Railway, Norway — twenty kilometres and nine hundred metres of descent, in an hour.
- Glacier Express, Zermatt to St Moritz — eight hours, two hundred and ninety-one bridges, and a viaduct you have seen on a postcard.
- Bernina Express, Chur to Tirano — the highest rail crossing in the Alps without a rack, and it drops you in Italy.
- Porto to Pocinho, Portugal — the Douro line, hugging the river through terraced vineyards.
- Settle to Carlisle, England — twenty-four hours of Victorian engineering condensed into seventy-two miles of Pennine moorland.
- Kyle of Lochalsh line, Scotland — Inverness to the west coast, ending in sight of Skye.
- Belgrade to Bar, Serbia and Montenegro — four hundred and seventy-six bridges through the Dinaric Alps to the Adriatic.
- Cinque Terre line, Italy — short hops between five cliff villages, mostly in tunnels with sudden bursts of sea.
- Circumetnea, Sicily — a narrow-gauge loop around the base of Etna, through lava fields and citrus groves.
The best window seat in Europe costs about the same as an airport sandwich.
How to book them well
Most of these are regional services where reservations are unnecessary and you simply turn up. The exceptions — the Glacier Express, the Bernina Express in its panoramic carriages, and Norwegian long-distance trains — require booked seats and sell out in summer.
An Interrail or Eurail pass makes sense if you are doing four or more of these in a fortnight, and does not if you are doing two. Point-to-point fares in Portugal, Serbia, Italy and Scotland are low enough that the pass rarely pays for itself.
Which side to sit on
Douro line from Porto: right. Bergen to Oslo: either, it alternates. Bernina southbound: left for the Brusio spiral viaduct. Kyle line westbound: right, for the lochs. Belgrade to Bar southbound: right, for the Mala Rijeka viaduct, which is two hundred metres above the valley floor.
Bring less than you think, buy the coffee at the station rather than on board, and put the phone away for the first hour. These are among the last forms of transport that improve when you pay attention to them.