Four hours and 30 minutes take a ride or four days. Whether it's the Bernina Express in Switzerland or the Baikal-Amur highway in Siberia - on such legendary rail routes, no passenger counts the minutes that the train may deviate from the timetable.

Here are rather the great views of the extreme landscapes; the experience of being on the road with special trains and possibly experiencing a foreign everyday life. Or as the British rail blogger Mark Smith says in the preface to the book Legendary Train Travel: "They are an adventure, an experience, a deep look into the heart of a country."

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From Myanmar to Peru: the most beautiful train journeys

The overview book published by Lonely Planet Verlag describes 60 routes from Canada to Patagonia, from Australia to Siberia. About 200 of the authors worldwide were asked to describe the train experience personally. They also give tips that are especially important for remote routes in Africa or South America: to get there, ticket purchase and prices, to the necessary equipment and rewarding stops.

If you travel to Sri Lanka, Argentina or Scotland, you can easily integrate a train journey into the route - after all, it is a change from a car or bus ride. Away from the streets, the wagons rattle or whiz through forests, jungles, plateaus and gorges. Or the holiday is planned just around the railway line: This is what the Trans-Siberian Railway or Sunset Limited in the United States offer.

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Lonely Planet:
Legendary train travel

60 adventurous journeys you will never forget

Lonely Planet; 304 pages; 26,90 Euro (bound)

Order at Amazon. Order from Thalia.

The favorite tracks of the train expert Mark Smith, who has been fascinated by rail travel since his youth and has worked for a while at British Rail, are:

  • California Zephyr to San Francisco: "the best of all Amtrak lines across the US"
  • Bernina Express from Chur to Tirano: "No matter what season, this train journey bombards you with the beauty of nature"
  • Belgrade to Bar ("spectacular railway through the mountains of Montenegro") and
  • Mandalay to Lashio : "probably two of the most scenic train journeys one has never heard of"
  • West Highland Line to Mallaig: "my favorite track in the UK"

If you want to experience more adventures on rails, read on here:

"Lémurie Express" in Madagascar: On the train of lemurs
"Eastern Express" in Turkey: the party train
Ukraine: 106.6 kilometers of creaking and rattling
Transsib: A train, the whole of Russia
Burma: Nine hours of deceleration
"Tazara" Express in Zambia: Mr. Ngwananogu drives to happiness