Heritage railways
Heritage & museum railways of the world
138 lines · 43 countries · ≈ 4,500 km of preserved track
See them all on the world railway map →These are the railways where the ride itself is the point: preserved steam lines run by volunteers and foundations, narrow-gauge forest railways deep in the Carpathians, American heritage railroads behind coal-fired narrow-gauge steam, and seasonal excursions on lines the timetable left behind. Every heritage and museum railway in the TrainRouter atlas is listed here by country — from the Ffestiniog to the Durango & Silverton — each with its distance, stock, operator and the story that earned it a place. On the interactive map they start switched off so the network view stays readable; the Heritage toggle lights them all up.
🇦🇷 Argentina
- La Trochita
Theroux’s Old Patagonian Express: 750 mm gauge, 1922 steam locomotives and wood-stove-heated wooden coaches across the steppe.
- Tren del Fin del Mundo
The southernmost railway on Earth: a 500 mm steam line laid by Ushuaia’s prison labourers in 1909, now puffing into Tierra del Fuego National Park.
🇦🇺 Australia
- Puffing Billy Railway
Legs out the window over Monbulk Creek trestle: century-old narrow-gauge steam through Dandenongs fern gullies, Australia’s best-loved heritage line.
- West Coast Wilderness Railway
The 1896 copper railway hauls itself up 1-in-16 grades on Abt rack cogs, steaming once more from Queenstown’s bare hills into the King River rainforest.
- Pichi Richi Railway
The original Ghan route through Pichi Richi Pass: 1879 stonework, volunteer-run steam and the 1928 “Barwell Bull” railcar to quaint Quorn.
- Mary Valley Rattler
A 1920s C17 barks out of Gympie across Deep Creek bridge: the 1915 fruit branch through the Mary Valley, saved twice and steaming on weekends.
- Savannahlander
Sixty-year-old railmotors take two unhurried days to cover 424 km from coastal rainforest to the 1910 gold-rush railhead at Forsayth.
- Cockle Train
Rides Australia’s oldest steel-railed public route, opened in 1854 with horse haulage to link Murray riverboats to the sea.
- Zig Zag Railway
A 19th-century engineering marvel in the Blue Mountains: trains reverse down a rock-cut Z of sandstone viaducts that once carried the main western line off the plateau.
🇦🇹 Austria
- Achenseebahn
Europe’s oldest still-working steam cog railway: its four 1889 locomotives haul open carriages up to the turquoise Achensee.
- Schafbergbahn
Austria’s steepest steam rack railway climbs 1,190 m in 40 minutes to a summit overlooking eleven Salzkammergut lakes.
- Schneebergbahn
Austria’s highest railway: the red Salamander cog train grinds 1,200 vertical metres from Puchberg to the Hochschneeberg terminus at 1,795 m, the Alps’ balcony over the Vienna basin.
- Erzbergbahn
The “Semmering of the ore”: a heritage line over the 1,204 m Präbichl pass under the terraced Erzberg, the ochre iron mountain worked for over 1,300 years.
- Waldviertelbahn
NÖVOG’s 760 mm Südast winds from Gmünd through the granite-and-pine Waldviertel to Groß Gerungs, summer steam grinding round horseshoe bends and over stone viaducts.
- Reblaus-Express
Named after the phylloxera louse: a heritage diesel with a wine-tavern car trundles from Retz’s vine terraces to the Thaya loop at Drosendorf, weekends May to October.
- Steyrtal-Museumsbahn
Austria’s oldest 760 mm line (1889): ÖGEG steam ambles down the green Steyr valley from Steyr Lokalbahnhof to Grünburg on summer weekends — Bosnian gauge as it began.
🇧🇾 Belarus
- Zaslonov Children’s Railway
A working 750 mm railway through Chelyuskintsy Park operated entirely by schoolchildren training as drivers, conductors and dispatchers.
🇧🇪 Belgium
- Chemin de Fer du Bocq
Three tunnels and five stone viaducts pack into the Bocq valley on one of Belgium’s most dramatically engineered branch lines.
- Chemin de Fer à Vapeur des Trois Vallées
Belgium’s premier steam railway: CFV3V engines bark up the wooded Viroin valley on an 1854 Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse line to the great museum shed at Treignes.
🇧🇷 Brazil
- Maria Fumaça de Tiradentes
Baldwin steam locomotives have worked this 76 cm-gauge line ever since Emperor Pedro II opened it in 1881.
- Trem do Vinho
A 1941 steam engine ambles 23 km through the Serra Gaúcha wine country to a soundtrack of tarantellas and popping corks.
- Campos do Jordão Railway
Brazil’s highest railway climbs the Serra da Mantiqueira to the mountain resort of Campos do Jordão at 1,743 m, a metre-gauge line electrified since the 1920s.
- Maria Fumaça (VFCJ)
Brazil’s flagship steam railway: ABPF volunteers fire century-old locomotives up the 1875 Mogiana trunk from Campinas to Jaguariúna every weekend.
- Expresso Turístico
A 1952 ALCO diesel and 1960s Budd cars leave Luz station on weekends for Paranapiacaba, the fog-wrapped English railway village at the rim of the Serra do Mar.
🇨🇳 China
- Jiayang Steam Train
One of the world’s last everyday steam railways: C2 engines built for 1950s coal pits still haul villagers past rapeseed terraces for pocket change.
🇨🇴 Colombia
- Tren de la Sabana
Weekend steam across the Bogotá savanna: brass-era locomotives and papayera bands rolling to Zipaquirá’s underground Salt Cathedral.
🇨🇿 Czechia
- Zubačka Rack Railway
Czechia’s only cog railway, climbing the Jizera Mountains on an Abt rack at a gradient of 58‰, a national record.
- Jindřichův Hradec–Nová Bystřice Narrow Gauge
South Bohemia’s narrow-gauge survivor, rescued by a new operator in 2026 after the original company’s 2022 bankruptcy nearly ended the line.
- Osoblažka
Czechia’s last public narrow gauge: 760 mm and 102 curves in 20 km — including the network’s sharpest at 75 m radius — dawdling across Silesia at 40 km/h.
🇩🇰 Denmark
- Mariager–Handest Veteranjernbane
Denmark’s leading veteran railway: 1909 Henschel steam from the fjord port of Mariager over rolling moraine hills to Handest, run in 1950s private-railway style.
🇪🇷 Eritrea
- Eritrean Railway
Pre-war Italian Mallet steam locos still claw up 3.5% grades and switchbacks 2,300 m between the Red Sea and Asmara: one of the great colonial mountain railways.
🇫🇮 Finland
- Jokioinen Museum Railway
The last stretch of Finland’s once-extensive 750 mm network, run by volunteers with steam engines from Finnish, German, Soviet and Belgian builders, veterans of the country’s vanished narrow-gauge lines.
- Porvoo Museum Railway
Summer museum trains out of Helsinki: a 1950s Dm7 “flat-hat” railbus leaves the main line at Kerava for the 1874 branch to Porvoo’s wooden old town.
🇫🇷 France
- Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme
Belle-Époque steam trains skirt the Somme estuary’s tidal salt marshes, with locomotives running round their own train at each terminus.
- Chemin de fer de La Mure
Reopened in 2021, this cliffside metre-gauge line hangs on ledges and viaducts high above the turquoise Monteynard reservoir in the Isère.
- Petit Train de la Rhune
A 1924 wooden cog train grinds up to the 905 m Basque summit of La Rhune, past pottok ponies and griffon vultures, with the Bay of Biscay spread out below.
- Le Mastrou (Vivarais)
A metre-gauge steam survivor climbing the granite gorge of the Doux from the Rhône at Tournon to the chestnut country of Lamastre, hauled by 1903 Mallet engines.
- Petit train d’Artouste
Built for the dam works of the 1920s: 500 mm open cars creep along a cliff ledge at 1,940 m from the La Sagette gondola to Lac d’Artouste.
- Train à Vapeur des Cévennes
Steam between Anduze and Saint-Jean-du-Gard: across the Gardon on four viaducts, past the giant bamboo of Prafrance — 40 open-window minutes in the Cévennes.
- Velay Express
France’s highest steam railway: a 1906 Mallet hauls metre-gauge trains across the 1,000 m Velay plateau between Raucoules and Saint-Agrève.
- Chemin de fer de la Vendée
Belle-Époque dining on the move: restored CIWL Orient Express diners behind an 030 T steam engine, three viaducts between Mortagne and Les Herbiers.
- Train des Mouettes
Steam at 30 km/h beside the Seudre oyster beds: an 1891 Schneider — France’s oldest working steam engine — still hauls the gulls’ train to La Tremblade.
- Train Thur Doller Alsace
Sunday steam in the Doller valley: a century-old 030 T ambles from Cernay to Sentheim past storks, orchards and the first folds of the Vosges.
🇩🇪 Germany
- Brockenbahn
Metre-gauge steam still storms year-round to the 1,141 m Brocken. Goethe’s witches’ mountain, sealed off as a Soviet listening post until 1989.
- Rübelandbahn
Heritage steam storms a fierce Harz grade once worked by rack rail; the 1926 tank engine 95 027, the Bergkönigin, still climbs to the caves at Rübeland.
- Molli
A rare 900 mm-gauge steam line running since 1886, Molli puffs right down the middle of Bad Doberan’s tree-lined avenue on its way to the Baltic shore.
- Rasender Roland
Nicknamed the Racing Roland, this 750 mm-gauge steam railway has linked Rügen’s white-sand Baltic resorts of Binz, Sellin and Göhren since 1895.
- Zittauer Schmalspurbahn
750 mm-gauge steam climbs from Zittau to the sandstone crags of the Zittau Mountains, serving the pilgrimage village of Oybin since 1890.
- Sauschwänzlebahn (Wutach Valley Railway)
Germany’s only spiral railway tunnel: a 1,700 m loop at Stockhalde lets the line climb the Black Forest by circling back over itself.
- Selketalbahn (Harz Narrow Gauge)
Metre-gauge Mallet steam locomotives still double-head trains out of Alexisbad on this Harz valley line, opened for timber and ore in 1887.
- Chiemsee-Bahn
The world’s oldest steam tram still in service, an 1887 green Krauss engine that shuttles down to the Chiemsee jetty for the boat to Ludwig II’s island palace.
- Fichtelbergbahn
Saxon narrow-gauge steam, every day of the year: 750 mm VII K locomotives hauling green coaches 238 m uphill to Oberwiesenthal, Germany’s highest town.
- Weißeritztalbahn
Germany’s oldest working public narrow gauge (1882): 750 mm steam daily through the Rabenauer Grund gorge and past Malter dam, 350 m up into the Ore Mountains to Kipsdorf.
- Lößnitzgrundbahn
Daily steam on Dresden’s doorstep since 1884: out of Radebeul’s villa streets into the wooded Lößnitzgrund, past Moritzburg’s moated hunting palace to little Radeburg.
- Harzquerbahn
HSB’s metre-gauge trunk across the Harz: 2-10-2 tank engines storm out of Nordhausen up the Zorge valley to Drei Annen Hohne, the junction where the Brocken steam begins.
- Brohltalbahn
The Vulkan-Expreß ambles at Tempo 20 from the Rhine at Brohl 400 m up into the volcanic Eifel, on metre gauge laid in 1901 to carry the region’s tuff and phonolite.
- Preßnitztalbahn
Torn up in 1986, relaid 1992–2000 by volunteers: Saxon IV K tanks once more steam the upper Preßnitz valley from Steinbach to Jöhstadt on weekends through the year.
🇬🇷 Greece
- Pelion Railway
Evaristo de Chirico’s 600 mm mountain railway on Mt Pelion curls over his iron-and-stone bridge near Milies through olive and apple groves.
🇭🇺 Hungary
- Children’s Railway (Gyermekvasút)
A 760 mm line through the Buda Hills staffed almost entirely by children aged 10–14: a Young Pioneer legacy still running today.
- Lillafüred Forest Railway
Narrow-gauge line through the Bükk mountains via two tunnels and two viaducts, opened for timber and now Hungary’s best-loved forest train.
- Szilvásvárad Forest Railway (Szalajka Valley)
Hungary’s busiest narrow-gauge railway: a steep timber line up the Szalajka valley to a waterfall, now carrying 300,000-plus riders a year.
🇮🇪 Ireland
- Waterford & Suir Valley Railway
Narrow-gauge trains follow the tidal River Suir on the trackbed of an 1878 mainline, running alongside the Waterford Greenway cycle path.
🇮🇲 Isle of Man
- Isle of Man Steam Railway
Victorian Beyer Peacock tanks of 1874 still haul their original carriages down 25 km of 3 ft gauge to the island’s southern tip.
🇮🇹 Italy
- Transiberiana d’Italia
Italy’s “Trans-Siberian”: a heritage train over snowbound Apennine plateaus to Rivisondoli-Pescocostanzo, at 1,268 m among the country’s highest stations.
- Treno Natura
Steam excursions across the UNESCO Val d’Orcia: 51 km of cypress avenues, clay badlands and Brunello vineyards on an 1865 branch kept alive purely for the Treno Natura.
- Trenino Verde
The Trenino Verde’s second living branch: 46 km of 950 mm track twisting off Macomer’s basalt plateau down to the palm-lined seafront at Bosa Marina.
- Irpinia Express
Closed in 2010, revived for excursions: the 1895 Ofanto-valley line threads 119 km of viaducts, vineyards and hill villages from Avellino to lonely Rocchetta junction.
🇯🇵 Japan
- SL Gunma
Restored D51 498 “Degoichi” and C61 20 haul retro coaches up the Joetsu Line on weekends: steam echoing off the Tone gorge under Tanigawa’s wall.
- Oigawa SL Kawane-ji
Vintage C11 steam locomotives haul old coaches up the Oi River valley: the same railway that runs Japan’s Thomas the Tank Engine trains.
- Tsugaru Stove Train
Aboard Japan’s northernmost private railway, attendants grill squid on pot-belly coal stoves while blizzards bury the Tsugaru plain outside.
- SL Yamaguchi
A pacific steam locomotive has hauled this special up the Yamaguchi line to the little castle town of Tsuwano, the “Kyoto of San-in”, since 1979.
- SL Banetsu Monogatari
C57 180 — “the Lady” — hauls seven retro coaches up the Agano river gorge from Niitsu to castle-town Aizu-Wakamatsu, one of Japan’s last full-size mainline steam runs.
- SL Paleo Express
The closest steam to Tokyo: wartime C58 363 huffs four retro coaches from Kumagaya into the Chichibu hills past Nagatoro’s rock terraces — running since 1988.
🇯🇴 Jordan
- Hejaz Railway (heritage)
Lawrence of Arabia’s Ottoman pilgrimage railway; heritage trains still run north from Amman via Zarqa, and a Hejaz steam loco fired up again in 2025 after 40 years.
🇰🇪 Kenya
- Nanyuki Safari Train
Crosses the equator on its final approach to Nanyuki, where Mount Kenya’s 5,199 m massif fills the carriage windows.
🇱🇻 Latvia
- Gulbene–Alūksne Narrow Gauge Railway (Bānītis)
The only regularly operating narrow-gauge passenger railway left in the Baltic states, rattling twice daily through Vidzeme’s forests.
🇱🇹 Lithuania
- Aukštaitija Narrow Gauge Railway (Siaurukas)
Weekend survivor of a 750 mm network that once ran 68 km to Panevėžys, now trundling summer tourists out to Rubikiai lake.
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
- Train 1900 (Fond-de-Gras Heritage Railway)
Vintage steam trains rattle through Luxembourg’s old iron-mining Minett region on track first laid in 1874 to move ore and miners.
🇲🇾 Malaysia
- North Borneo Railway
A 1954 Vulcan Foundry engine burning jungle firewood retraces the 1896 British North Borneo line: the only passenger railway corridor on Borneo.
🇳🇱 Netherlands
- Miljoenenlijn
Nicknamed the Million Line for its ruinously costly cuttings and viaducts, this steam railway climbs the only real hills in the Netherlands, in South Limburg.
- Museumstoomtram Hoorn–Medemblik
A steam tram dating from 1887 still crosses North Holland’s polders and tulip fields between Hoorn and the old Zuiderzee port of Medemblik.
- Veluwsche Stoomtrein
The Netherlands’ biggest steam operation: wartime German Kriegsloks and a forty-strong fleet work the 1887 Veluwe country line between Apeldoorn and Dieren.
🇳🇿 New Zealand
- Taieri Gorge Railway
Out of Dunedin’s bluestone palace of a station and into the Taieri’s schist canyon, where wrought-iron viaducts from 1889 still carry every train.
- Kingston Flyer
A vintage steam service on the old Southland line by Lake Wakatipu, its 1920s Ab Pacific and wooden cars a survivor of New Zealand’s golden age of rail.
🇳🇴 Norway
- Krøderbanen
Norway’s longest museum railway: 26 km of the 1872 Krøder line preserved whole — stations, water cranes and NSB steam between Vikersund and the lake at Krøderen.
- Gamle Vossebanen
The 1883 Voss line’s surviving loop outside Bergen: NSB 18c steam between Garnes and Midttun, bypassed by new tunnels in 1964 and kept alive by volunteers.
- Thamshavnbanen
Built in 1908 for Orkla’s copper ore: the oldest alternating-current railway still in service, running its original 6.6 kV motor coaches along the green Orkla valley.
- Setesdalsbanen
Norway’s oldest museum railway, volunteer-run since 1964: 1890s narrow-gauge steam puffing up the Otra river from Grovane to the little terminus at Røyknes.
🇵🇱 Poland
- Bieszczady Forest Railway
Poland’s highest narrow-gauge line, a former logging railway that now carries over 150,000 riders a year into the Bieszczady wilderness.
- Wolsztyn Steam
Europe’s last everyday steam: commuters behind a 1948 Pt47 out of the working Wolsztyn roundhouse — an ordinary ticket, an extraordinary train.
- Żnin District Railway
A 600 mm minirailway from 1894 chuffing 12 km through Pałuki to the Iron Age lake fort of Biskupin — archaeologists commute by narrow gauge.
- Nadmorska Kolej Wąskotorowa
Opened 1896 and still packing 150,000 riders a summer: metre-gauge cars amble from Gryfice to the Baltic cliffs, Poland’s last coastal narrow gauge.
- Upper Silesian Narrow Gauge
Running since 1853 — the world’s oldest continuously operating narrow gauge: 785 mm industrial track turned heritage line across the Silesian coalfield.
🇷🇴 Romania
- 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.
- 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.
🇷🇺 Russia
- Ruskeala Express
Russia’s only daily steam service: blue retro cars behind a vintage locomotive from Sortavala to Ruskeala’s flooded marble canyon, staged down to conductors in 1900s dress.
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🇷🇸 Serbia
- Šargan Eight
A 760 mm loop climbing 300 m through 22 tunnels and 5 bridges in a literal figure-eight to gain height.
🇸🇰 Slovakia
- Čierny Hron Forest Railway
One of Europe’s last steam-worked forestry railways: its branch to Dobroč runs straight through the middle of a village football pitch.
- Orava Forest Railway
Built by POWs in 1915–18 to haul timber: the surviving 3.5 km climbs from Tanečník to Sedlo Beskyd on a five-switchback staircase unique in Europe.
🇪🇸 Spain
- Tren de Sóller
Varnished mahogany carriages from 1912 thread thirteen tunnels through the Tramuntana into Sóller’s orange-grove valley. Mallorca’s rolling time machine.
- Tren de la Fresa
Hostesses in 1920s dress hand out strawberries aboard replica carriages on Spain’s second-ever railway, opened in 1851.
- Ferrocarril de Riotinto
Restored mining stock creeps along the blood-red Río Tinto through a Mars-like landscape mined for 5,000 years — Victorian steam hauls it on winter Sundays.
- Tren de Felipe II
An ALCO diesel and 1940s coaches staffed by costumed actors climb from Príncipe Pío into the Guadarrama foothills to Philip II’s colossal monastery-palace.
🇸🇪 Sweden
- Lennakatten
Steam from the edge of a university city: the 891 mm Lennakatten rolls 33 km through Uppland forests and lakeside summer halts to the engine sheds at Faringe.
🇨🇭 Switzerland
- Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway
Volunteer-run steam locomotives claw over the 2,160 m Furka Pass past the Rhône Glacier on track abandoned when the base tunnel opened in 1982.
- Brienz Rothorn Bahn
A 25% steam rack line, Europe’s highest unelectrified railway, climbs from Lake Brienz to a 2,244 m summit in an hour.
- Blonay–Chamby Museum Railway
Switzerland’s first museum railway (running since 1968): Belle Époque steam and electrics cross the Baye de Clarens viaduct high above Lake Geneva on 3 km of 1902 branch line.
🇹🇳 Tunisia
- Lézard Rouge
The Bey of Tunis’s 1910 saloon cars, freshly restored: creeping into the Selja gorge’s ochre cliffs, photo stops included, in phosphate country.
🇺🇦 Ukraine
- Carpathian Tram (Vyhoda Forest Railway)
Ukraine’s last working forest railway, built in 1890 to haul Carpathian timber, now carries tourists up the Mizunka valley past waterfalls.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland
The world’s oldest narrow-gauge railway company (1836): double-ended Fairlie steam from Caernarfon castle through Snowdonia to the slate town of Blaenau.
- The Jacobite
Steam over the 21 arches of Glenfinnan on the 1901 Mallaig extension: the working train that became the Hogwarts Express, white sands of Morar below.
- Snowdon Mountain Railway
Britain’s only public rack-and-pinion railway, Swiss-engineered in 1896: 950 vertical metres from Llanberis to the roof of Wales.
- North Yorkshire Moors Railway
One of the world’s busiest steam heritage lines, climbing Stephenson’s 1836 route over the moors to Goathland, Hogsmeade in the Harry Potter films.
- Severn Valley Railway
Sixteen miles of preserved Great Western branch line tracing the River Severn, crossing the water on the graceful iron span of Victoria Bridge.
- Bluebell Railway
The world’s first preserved standard-gauge passenger railway, running vintage steam through the Sussex Weald without a break since 1960.
- West Somerset Railway
Britain’s longest standard-gauge independent heritage railway: 22¾ miles of steam from the Quantock Hills down to the Bristol Channel shore at Minehead.
- Vale of Rheidol Railway
Narrow-gauge steam grinding 200 m uphill from the sea at Aberystwyth to the wooded gorge of Devil’s Bridge: the last steam line British Rail ever ran.
- Talyllyn Railway
The world’s first railway saved by volunteers, in 1951: its Victorian steam engines still cross Dolgoch Viaduct into the Fathew valley.
- Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway
Marketed as the world’s smallest public railway, its steam expresses still get local schoolchildren to class along Romney Marsh.
- Great Central Railway
Britain’s only double-track heritage main line, where two steam expresses can pass at speed just as they did on the last main line built towards the Continent.
- Keighley & Worth Valley Railway
The branch that starred in the 1970 film “The Railway Children”, steaming up the Brontë moors past Haworth to the mill village of Oxenhope.
🇺🇸 United States
- Durango & Silverton
1882 gold-rush narrow gauge: steam-hauled ever since, on the Highline ledge blasted 120 m above the Animas River gorge.
- Grand Canyon Railway
Since 1901 the painless way to the South Rim: vintage Pullmans roll across pine forest and high prairie to a log depot steps from the abyss.
- Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad
America’s highest steam railroad, 1880 Rio Grande narrow gauge. K-36 Mikados storm 3,054 m Cumbres Pass and teeter along the Toltec Gorge rim.
- Mount Washington Cog Railway
The world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway (1869): still shoving trains up a 37% grade to New England’s stormiest, windiest summit.
- White Pass & Yukon Route
Blasted through gold-rush cliffs in 26 months (1898–1900): 900 m of climbing out of Skagway on cantilever bridges, then along Lake Bennett to the Yukon.
- Cass Scenic Railroad
Home to the world’s largest fleet of geared Shay steam locomotives, grinding up 11% grades to Bald Knob, 4,842 ft. West Virginia’s third-highest point.
- Verde Canyon Railroad
Two 1953 FP7 diesels, once Alaska Railroad engines, thread a 680-ft curved tunnel and a red-rock canyon that shelters nesting bald eagles.
- Great Smoky Mountains Railroad
The spectacular train-wreck scene in The Fugitive (1993) was staged on this line; the wrecked locomotive still sits trackside near Dillsboro.
- Georgetown Loop Railroad
To gain 640 ft between two towns just 2 miles apart, the narrow gauge spirals over itself on the Devil’s Gate High Bridge, an 1884 marvel rebuilt in 1984.
- Skunk Train
Nicknamed the “Skunk” in 1925 for its reeking gas railcars, you smelled it before you saw it, still winding out of Fort Bragg through the coast redwoods.
- Mount Hood Railroad
Climbs the orchard-filled Hood River valley toward 11,240-ft Mount Hood, reversing up one of just five railroad switchbacks still in regular US use.
- Strasburg Rail Road
Chartered in 1832, America’s oldest continuously operating railroad still steams through Lancaster County’s Amish farmland.
- Mountaineer
Follows the 1875 Maine Central grade up Crawford Notch, creeping across the curved Frankenstein Trestle high above the Saco.
- Royal Gorge Route
Rides the canyon won in the 1879 “Royal Gorge War”, the Arkansas River alongside and a suspension bridge 291 m overhead.
- Nevada Northern Railway
America’s best-preserved steam-era short line: the “Ghost Train of Old Ely” still runs its 1910 locomotives out of a National Historic Landmark copper yard.
🇻🇳 Vietnam
- Da Lat Railway
The last working stub of the French cog railway to Da Lat: 7 km of heritage track from a 1938 Art Deco station to Trại Mát.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons — each route page credits the author & licence