The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
50 FANTASTIC RAIL BREAKS
From the beautiful West Highland Line of Scotland to India’s epic Vivek Express, our experts deliver their top tips
concentration is the steam-worked rack railway from Brienz which climbs the greatest vertical distance of any of Switzerland’s railways, up the Rothorn. Moriarty Express (0041 79 724 0535; swiss-railway-services.ch) runs on selected dates AprilOctober; from £24 one way.
KURANDA SCENIC RAILWAY, AUSTRALIA
It may only span some 23 miles, but the Kuranda Scenic Railway, which links Cairns, Queensland’s gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, and Kuranda, “the village in the rainforest”, certainly lives up to its name. The journey takes about two hours, and the line rises dramatically from sea level to nearly 1,100ft, snaking its way through the Barron Gorge National Park, and offering spectacular views back towards Cairns and the Coral Sea. One-way from AUS$50 (£28): ksr.com.
CANAL LINE PANAMA
Everyone knows you can cross an isthmus on the water, whether as part of a cruise or on one of the locally bookable full and partial transits. But how about going overland by means of the characterful retro-style Panama Canal Railway? Railway, note – not railroad. As many a proud Panamanian will tell you: “This ain’t America, señor.” It was built in
1851-55 for gold-seekers who were bound for California.
One-way tickets from Colón to Corozal cost $25 (£20); panarail.com.
HELLO KITTY TRAIN JAPAN
This train mixes two of Japan’s deeply -rooted passions – high-speed bullet trains and Hello Kitty. The train whizzes between Osaka and Fukuoka in southern Japan’s Kyushu prefecture. The first carriage of the train – whose exterior is festooned in pink ribbon motifs – is a temple to all things Hello Kitty, with a space decorated with the famous cat and her friends, merchandise and a photo booth for taking the ultimate Hello Kitty selfie.
Use JR Rail Passes to travel: ( jr-hellokitty shinkansen.jp/en/). Japan has a Hello Kitty train, left; tango on the streets of Buenos Aires, below
7 BUENOS AIRES-TIGRE ARGENTINA
Once the largest network in Latin America, the Argentine railways are much shrunken and shoddily maintained. The best-kept, most reliable suburban line runs from the handsome Retiro Mitre terminal in Buenos Aires – designed by British architects Eustace L Conder, Roger Conder and Sydney G Follett and engineer Reginald Reynolds, and recently given a thorough polish and clean-up – to Tigre, a town and river delta that has long been the weekend breakaway for tired city folk. The train departs/returns every 11–12 minutes from dawn until 9.30/10pm.
One-way tickets: AR$26.50 (55p).
THE BRIDGE COPENHAGEN-MALMO
The dramatic 16-km-long bridge connecting Copenhagen to Malmo has made it possible to include visits to both cities in the course of a weekend break and to enjoy a taste of the quite different cultures of the Danes and the Swedes. Services are frequent and there are good views of the Oresund Strait. For lovers of the Scandi noir crime series The Bridge, however, the compelling reason for making this journey is that, this is The Bridge.
One-way fares cost from
110 SEK (£10).
CHURNET VALLEY BRITAIN
The North Staffordshire Railway was laid during the 1840s to shuttle passengers around the Potteries. The line was so pretty that train tourism swiftly followed (the Churnet Valley was nicknamed “Staffordshire’s little Switzerland”) until Dr Richard Beeching wielded the axe in the Sixties. Thankfully 10 miles (16km) of tracks have been preserved between the Peak District and Alton Towers by volunteers of the Churnet Valley Railway. Nostalgic steam and diesel services also allow passengers to partake in driving courses, steam stoking and footplate rides through bucolic countryside.
Churnet Valley Railway (01538 750755; churnetvalleyrailway.co.uk) offers year-round rides. Adult tickets from £17; children £11.
TRENINO VERDE SARDINIA
DH Lawrence loved Sardinia’s 400km rural rail network: “we take the slow train, no matter where it goes.”
Now the four railway tracks offer the most idyllic – and sometimes only – passage through Sardinia’s rugged interior using Fifties railway stock. Some locations are so rural that drivers often disembark to shoo geese and sheep off the time-worn track.
Sadly steam engines are disused
(they kept setting fire to local terrain) but the prettiest coastal lines (to Bosa and Palau) call at secret beaches and vineyards.
From £3 per hour ride; for more details, see Trenino Verde (treninoverde.com).
BOHINJ RAILWAY SLOVENIA
The three-hour journey from Jesenice to Nova Gorica winds through the Julian Alps, burrowing through 36 tunnels and crossing the world’s longest stone arch railway bridge over the Isonzo Gorge. A steam locomotive pulls historic passenger carriages with staff in the uniforms of the AustroHungarian Empire which built the railway between 1900 and 1906.
Tickets from £40 with ABC tourism (00 386 59 070 512; abc-tourism.si)
COASTAL PACIFIC NEW ZEALAND
The 2016 earthquake at Kaikoura on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island severed the railway between Christchurch and the ferry terminal at Picton, but it has just reopened.
The journey – in panoramic carriages with a buffet car – is full of variety, taking passengers through thick forest, past densely stocked sheep farms and an extraordinary pink lagoon of salt production, but it is the long stretches beside the Pacific
Ocean that are the highlight of the 6¼ hours.
From £86, Rail New Zealand (0800 014 8106; railnewzealand.com).
DEVIL’S NOSE ECUADOR
Quito is at 9,350ft above sea-level. Ecuador’s second city, Guayaquil, is on the Pacific coast. Trains operate along the entire line (including the posh four-day Tren Crucero service), but a high point – and a popular day trip – is the 7.5-mile (12km) zigzagging section known as the Devil’s Nose for the mountain on which it was built in the 1900s. Connecting Alausi and
Sibambe, it drops, or climbs, 1,640ft in around 45 minutes. Tren Ecuador operates two trips a day, Tues-Sun, for US$33 (£26) return, including lunch or dinner (trenecuador.com/en/ day-trips/the-devils-nose).