No one can resist the swoon-inducing clacking of old school split-flap boards announcing the arrivals and departures in a train station. And then there’s the dependability of the waiting and the whistles and the steam and the shouting from the conductor, which to this day bring so much reliable comfort to train travel. Even missing a train can be sort of romantic. We aren’t ready to ditch out on trains for being slow because we need them to be.
In a world that is constantly moving faster, or at least trying to, there’s something to be said for meditating on the actual travel—rather than the destination. And that’s what trains demand of us. We love long train expeditions and short commuter ones, luxurious ones and scrappy ones because they all give us a second — or maybe a couple of weeks— to think about the motion itself. Here, a guide to the train trips around the world that have us ready to pause at a moment’s notice.
The Ghan
Adelaide to Darwin, Australia
The Train: This nearly 1800 mile-long train route slices straight through the center of the Australian continent, connecting the city of Adelaide in South Australia and Darwin, an important port town, in the Northern Territory. All told, this route took 126 years to construct and was only finished in 2004. Originally called “The Afghan Express,” the name of this line pays tribute to the hundreds of camel drivers from the Middle East and India, who explored the Australian Outback and helped establish the trail that the Ghan now follows in the late 1800s-beginnging of the 1900s. While early iterations of this railroad line were very basic, the Ghan of today is not. Standard rooms have two berths that convert to a lounge during the day and the higher end rooms have full-size bathrooms and windows on both sides of the train. There are three separate dining carriages in the lineup. There’s plenty to see from onboard the train, but the Ghan also gives opportunity for travelers to disembark in Alice Springs and Katherine in order to go on off-train expeditions, including hiking to a grove of sacred and ancient Ghost Gum trees in Simpsons Gap (called Rungutjirpa by the Arrernte Indigenous Australians), riding on camelback through the Outback and taking a cruise through the Nitmiluk Gorge, while hearing stories of the Jawoyn Aboriginal people who own this dramatic land.
The View: Over the course of three days and two nights, the Ghan transports riders from the largest city in Australia’s south through the red desert Outback core of the country, where the night sky offers unending views of the Milky Way, and finally into the tropical rainforests in the north.
Itinerary: 3 days, 2 nights for the basic trip, which runs February-November, with stops in Marla, Alice Springs and Katherine for off-train excursions. A recent addition: the Ghan Expedition, which adds a day to the trip for extra experiential stops.
The Details: From $2165 per person, currently booking for 2023. Book here.
TGV
Paris to Milan
The Train: That you can wake up in Paris and be to Milan in time for a negroni sbagliato at Bar Basso makes this classic TGV route incredibly functional and fun. This is one of the great lines in Europe. Opt for first class if you want, but as long as you nab a window seat, it won’t much matter if the businessman next to you is taking up more than his fair share of space; the trains are comfortable and there’s plenty to take in outside. While flights from Paris to Milan are easy-enough, this is a much more lovely commute that takes, door-to-door, a comparable amount of time. It’s well worth avoiding Charles de Gaulle and certainly Malpensa.
The View: Departing from Paris’s Gare de Lyon, this route runs down through the vineyards in northern part of Burgundy and heads east from Macon through the Savoie and into the Alps, into Italy’s Valle d’Aosta, across the northern part of Piemonte and on into Milan’s Garibaldi terminal, which means that depending on the season, you’ll see fields of yellow flowers, grapes ready to be picked, or snow covered mountains. Traveling this course in the winter is particularly magical.
