The World’s Greatest Train Journeys, and the Ones We Can No Longer Sell
A great rail journey is booked differently from a flight: the season matters more than the date, reservations are compulsory where you least expect it, and two of the routes most often listed are no longer workable in 2026.
Here are the trains verified at their operators’ own sites in September 2026, with what has changed.
Switzerland, and the season people forget
The Glacier Express links Zermatt, at the foot of the Matterhorn, to St. Moritz in eight hours, across two hundred and ninety-one bridges and ninety-one tunnels, crossing the Oberalp Pass at 2,033 metres. It averages thirty-six kilometres an hour, which makes it, as they like to say there, the slowest express train in the world.
What almost no article mentions: it does not run at all from mid-October to early December. The summer timetable runs from May to mid-October, the winter timetable resumes in early December, and the line closes in between. Booking a Glacier Express in November is impossible, not merely difficult.
Reservation is compulsory for every passenger, opens about three months before departure, and its supplement is considerably higher than commonly reported. Sit on the left going Zermatt to St. Moritz. And if you are short on time, the first half, Zermatt to Andermatt, is the most spectacular: four hours is enough.
The Bernina Express runs from Chur to Tirano, in Italy, in four and a half hours. It crosses the Bernina Pass at 2,253 metres, skirts the Morteratsch glacier, then drops eighteen hundred metres to the Lombard plain via the Brusio spiral viaduct, a complete loop where you can see the front and back of the train at once. It runs year-round, several times a day, and reservation is compulsory here too.
The Rhaetian Albula and Bernina line is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Contrary to what you read, it is not one of only two: the Semmering railway, the Mountain Railways of India and the Trans-Iranian are listed as well.
Japan
The Shinkansen runs at 280 to 320 kilometres an hour on the Tōkaidō line between Tokyo and Osaka, with punctuality measured in tens of seconds.
The detail worth the seat: between Shin-Fuji and Mishima stations, Mount Fuji appears on the right going Tokyo to Kyoto, for about twelve seconds. Choose a D or E seat and be ready.
Two corrections about the Japan Rail Pass. Its price rose on 1 October 2026, which changes the break-even calculation considerably. And contrary to a persistent belief, it has been sold inside Japan, at JR counters, since 2017. The reason to buy ahead is price and availability, not impossibility.
The Canadian Rockies, and the train that may disappear
Rocky Mountaineer runs in daylight only, with hotel nights included, from April to mid-October. Its five routes have precise names worth using when booking.
First Passage to the West links Vancouver to Banff or Lake Louise in two days, with a night in Kamloops. Journey through the Clouds runs Vancouver to Jasper on the same format. Rainforest to Gold Rush takes three days and two nights, via Whistler and Quesnel, and the operator itself has signalled that 2026 may be that route’s final season. Passage to the Peaks links Banff to Jasper, and Rockies to the Red Rocks runs in the United States between Denver and Moab.
The train crosses the Fraser Valley, the Fraser Canyon at Hell’s Gate and the Thompson Valley. It does not go through the Okanagan, contrary to several descriptions. In GoldLeaf, the glass dome occupies two levels with the dining room below; in SilverLeaf, everything happens on one level.
The train we can no longer sell
The Trans-Siberian remains the longest rail journey in the world, 9,289 kilometres between Moscow and Vladivostok. But the Government of Canada advises avoiding all travel to Russia, its highest advisory level.
In practical terms for a Quebec traveller: no travel insurance will cover the trip, consular assistance is severely limited, there is no nonstop flight, and payments run into banking sanctions. We do not sell this product and we do not recommend anyone organize it alone. VIA Rail’s Canadian, described below, offers the same long-distance immersion with none of those obstacles.
Sri Lanka, a line still under repair
The Kandy to Ella run, through the tea plantations with the doors open, appears in every ranking. It is partly interrupted.
Cyclone Ditwah in November 2025 severed the upcountry line. The Nanu Oya to Badulla section reopened on 20 June 2026, after seven months. The Kandy to Nanu Oya section had not been restored at the time of our check, with trains starting higher up the line for a far shorter run. The departure times circulating everywhere are no longer valid.
If this journey is the heart of your trip, have its status checked on the day you book. Tickets are sold thirty days ahead on the official Sri Lanka Railways site.
Norway and Spain
The Flåm Railway descends from Myrdal, at 867 metres, to the village of Flåm at the head of the Sognefjord: twenty kilometres on a 5.5 per cent gradient, in one hour, with a five-minute stop at the Kjosfossen waterfall, ninety-three metres high. It runs every day, all year, and passengers do not need a reservation.
El Transcantábrico Gran Lujo follows the Cantabrian coast from San Sebastián to Santiago de Compostela over eight days and seven nights, stopping at Bilbao, Santander, Oviedo and the fishing villages of Asturias. It is a rolling hotel rather than a train, and it is by far the most expensive on this list, by an order of magnitude.
European night trains, what is left
The night train section of most articles is out of date. The Paris-Vienna and Paris-Berlin Nightjets were withdrawn on 14 December 2025, unable to break even despite good occupancy. There has never been a Paris-Amsterdam Nightjet.
What still runs: Nightjet from Vienna to Brussels and Amsterdam, and from Munich to Rome; the European Sleeper between Brussels and Berlin, reachable from Paris by Eurostar; and SNCF’s Intercités de Nuit from Paris to Nice, Briançon, Toulouse, Latour-de-Carol and Hendaye. Outside Europe, the Ghan crosses Australia from Adelaide to Darwin in three days and two nights. It is single level, and it is not the Trans-Australian, which is the Sydney-Perth line.
Canada, systematically forgotten
VIA Rail’s Canadian links Toronto to Vancouver over four nights and five days, twice a week, year-round. Three classes: Economy, Sleeper Plus and Prestige. It is the great North American immersion journey, and Toronto is reached from Montreal on the Corridor, so with no flight at all.
The Ocean links Montreal to Halifax with sleeper cars: it is the only night train still operating out of Montreal, and it is the direct answer to the European section above. For a single day, the Charlevoix train follows the St. Lawrence from Quebec City, and the Agawa Canyon Tour Train departs from Sault Ste. Marie.
Booking: the real lead times
| Train | Reservation | When to book | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glacier Express | Compulsory for all | As soon as booking opens, about three months out | No service at all from mid-October to early December |
| Bernina Express | Compulsory, per segment | One to three months | The supplement is per person and per segment, and costs more in summer |
| Rocky Mountaineer | Full package with hotels | Nine to twelve months | April to mid-October only. Rainforest to Gold Rush may not return |
| The Canadian, VIA Rail | Compulsory in sleeper class | Six to twelve months for Prestige | Only two departures a week |
| Shinkansen | Not required, except reserved seats | Same day is fine | The Japan Rail Pass rose on 1 October 2026: redo the math |
| Flåm Railway | Not required for passengers | A few days | Bicycles do need a reservation |
| Kandy to Ella | Thirty days ahead | As soon as booking opens | The line has been partly severed since the November 2025 cyclone |
| El Transcantábrico | Eight-day package | Twelve months | Fourteen cabins only |
From Montreal
The rail gateways reachable nonstop from Montréal-Trudeau are Zurich and Geneva for Switzerland, Paris for France, Madrid and Barcelona for Spain, Rome, Milan and Venice for Italy, Lisbon and Porto for Portugal, and Tokyo for Japan.
Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Bergen, Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Colombo and Bangkok all require a connection. For Norway you route through Copenhagen or Oslo, which adds half a day to an already long journey.
And for the Rockies, Vancouver and Calgary are reached nonstop from Montreal: it is the only great rail journey on this list that requires no ocean crossing.
Why the train, in the end
The climate argument is real: an equivalent journey by electric train emits a fraction of what a flight emits, by a factor counted in tens. But that is not what brings people back.
What brings them back is that the journey stops being wasted time. You look out the window, you eat sitting down, you talk to someone, and you arrive downtown. Our article on slow travel from Quebec starts from exactly that idea, Portugal by train gives a complete example, and Japan off the beaten path shows what the rail network reaches there.
Talk to an advisor
Compulsory reservations, closed seasons and routes that change name from one year to the next make these journeys files rather than online purchases. Call 1-866-628-6241 or write to us.
