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The most epic overnight train journeys in the world

Sep 20, 2021 • 5 min read

Night trains not only save a night in a hotel, but they are better for the environment than flying © Flystock / Shutterstock

There’s something enduringly romantic about train travel. The slower pace, the gentle rhythm, the ability to surrender responsibility and just gaze out of the window. It’s true of all – well, most – rail journeys. But it’s especially true of the sleeper train, the hotel-on-wheels aboard which you can bed down in one country and wake up in another. 

Romance aside, train travel is also far less damaging to the planet: it releases the least amount of greenhouse gasses of all forms of transportation. You’re better able to understand the connections that exist between places on a rail trip, watching the scenery change as cities become suburbs, which become farmland, which become foothills or deserts or plains.

There’s a variety of experiences to choose from when booking overnight train travel, from the budget to the luxe. Here are some of the most epic overnight train journeys to take for those looking for a dream of a ride.

Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Nicknamed the Reunification Express when it resumed service after the Vietnam War, this 1072-mile (1726km) ride between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City  runs the length of the country , providing a perfect Vietnamese diorama: historic towns, bustling suburbs, rice paddies, emerald hills and the glittering South China Sea.

How:  Choose from hard seat (cheapest) or soft, hard berth (six-bed compartment), soft berth (four-bed) or VIP cabin (two beds; book in advance). Tickets can be booked online . 

Duration: About 35 hours.

Chicago to San Francisco, USA

On its epic 2400-mile (3900km) journey, the California Zephyr tackles sheer gorges, hot desert, snowy mountains and a tonne of tunnels and switchbacks. In 1869, these tracks were the first to cross the Continental Divide, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific.

How:  The Zephyr leaves Chicago at 2pm daily. Book early for the lowest fares and best availability; tickets can be booked up almost a year ahead.

Duration: The entire journey to San Francisco takes 52 hours non-stop.

Kapiri Mposhi to Dar es Salaam, Zambia and Tanzania

A sleeper train? Or a rolling two-day safari? The Tazara Railway crosses rivers, gorges and some impressive feats of railway engineering while trundling through the enormous, wildlife-filled expanse of Selous Game Reserve , Tanzania . You might spot elephants, rhinos, lions and more from your window.

How:  Tickets can’t be bought online ; buy them at stations in Dar es Salaam or Kapiri Mposhi or via a local travel agency.

Duration: About 44 hours.

Brisbane to Longreach, Australia

Most of Australia 's overnight trains are multi-day journeys across the continent, such as the Ghan that runs through Australia's "Red Centre" between Darwin and Adelaide , and the Indian Pacific that links Perth and Sydney . The Spirit of the Outback , however, is just over a day-long jaunt from Brisbane to Longreach. After flirting with the coast the train turns inland to reveal a changing landscape as it heads into the outback.

How:  The tickets can be booked online . The train departs Tuesdays at 6:10pm and Saturday at 1:55pm.

Duration: The 1325km journey takes 26 hours.

Rome to Syracuse, Italy

To get from the Italian capital  to the historic Sicilian city of Syracuse , this overnight loco has to board a boat. Having traced the Calabrian coast, it’s lifted on to a ferry to cross the Straits of Messina, before being lifted back off to continue on its way.

How: Two sleeper trains leave Rome nightly at around 9.05pm and 11pm. Tickets can be ordered  online .

Duration:  About 12 hours, including 30 minutes at sea.

Caledonian Sleeper, London to Scotland

There are actually two overnight sleeper trains that run under the umbrella of Caledonian Sleeper. One that runs the “Highland route” making stops between London and Aberdeen , the other runs the “Lowland route” from London Euston to Glasgow or Edinburgh . Rooms include either double beds or bunk beds with all the amenities of a hotel, including wifi, room service and ensuite bathrooms. There’s also a Club Car for those interested in meals outside of their rooms. 

How : Trains run six times a week, with boarding times and schedules varying depending on the particular route, however both timetables and tickets are always available online . 

Duration : 8 hours

Red Arrow, St. Petersburg to Moscow

The Red Arrow or Krasnaya Strela, is possibly Russia’s most famous train. It first launched in 1931 when it was used to transport Russian elites. The glamorous retro interior of the train harkens back to this era with plush red seats and elaborate matching curtains on the windows. There’s a dining car on board and meals are included for passengers riding in either first class or the VIP car. 

How : The train runs every day, leaving from both Moscow or St. Petersburg at 11:55pm and arriving at the opposite end in the morning at 7:55am. Tickets can be purchased online .

Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Paris to Venice

Perhaps the most luxurious, and most famous, of the overnight sleeper trains, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is nothing short of a legend. There are several different routes guests can take on this historic train, but the most iconic is the one from London to Venice . The train itself is a throwback to the 1920s, with a restored art deco interior and luxury dining options included. 

How: Venice Simplon-Orient-Express runs several times per month. Check the website for specific dates and times as well as to book. 

Duration: 31 hours

You might also like Climb aboard for the USA's 6 most amazing train journeys Europe's best night trains 10 of the world's most amazing train journeys

This article was first published Dec 3, 2019 and updated Sep 20, 2021.

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What Was It Like to Ride the Transcontinental Railroad?

By: Erin Blakemore

Updated: October 3, 2023 | Original: October 16, 2020

Velvet cushions and gilt-framed mirrors. Feasts of antelope, trout, berries and Champagne. In 1869, a New York Times reporter experienced the ultimate in luxury—and he did so not in the parlor of a Gilded Age magnate, but on a train headed from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco, California.

Just a few years before, the author would have had to rely on a bumpy stagecoach or a covered wagon to tackle a journey that took months. Now, he was gliding along the rails, passing by the varied scenery of the American West while dining, sleeping and relaxing.

The ride was “not only tolerable but comfortable, and not only comfortable but a perpetual delight,” he wrote . “At the end of our journey [we] found ourselves not only wholly free from fatigue, but completely rehabilitated in body and spirits. Were we very far from wrong if we voted the Pacific Railroad a success?”

The author was just one of the thousands of people who flocked to the Transcontinental Railroad beginning in 1869. The railroad, which stretched nearly 2,000 miles between Iowa, Nebraska and California, reduced travel time across the West from about six months by wagon or 25 days by stagecoach to just four days. And for the travelers who tried out the new transportation route, the Transcontinental Railroad represented both the height of modern technology and the tempting possibility of unrestricted travel.

Railroads Passed Through ‘Untouched’ Indigenous Land

The first passenger train on the line took 102 hours to travel from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco, and a first-class ticket cost $134.50—the equivalent of about $2,700 today. It traveled what was known as the Overland Route, threading its way through prairies, mountains and deserts that had been nearly impassable just years before.

Passengers were impressed by the landscape’s beauty and seeming desolation. “For hundreds of miles we saw no other persons except now and then a station with a few hovels about it,” wrote Celia Cooley Graves, a Massachusetts woman who took the Overland Route to San Francisco in 1875.

At the time, the areas through which the train had been built were not yet home to large numbers of white settlers. In fact, millions of acres of the land the new railroad traversed had belonged to Indigenous people—but the U.S. Congress had granted the land to railroad companies.

For many Native nations, the railroads represented an unwelcome intrusion as they soon introduced a wave of white settlement. The trains provided supplies for those relocating from the East and allowed people with means to use the railroad instead of covered wagons.

First-Class Passenger Cars Offered Luxury

The journey west on railroads wasn’t only faster and easier than covered wagons, it could also be luxurious. First-class passengers reveled in what they saw as the comfort and modernity of the trains themselves. The train cars were “a constant delight,” wrote Henry T. Williams in an 1876 guide to railroad travel in the West. “One lives at home in the Palace Car with as much true enjoyment as in the home drawing-room.”

Williams was referring to Pullman palace cars, ornate train cars used for first-class passengers on the Union Pacific railroad. The cars, which included sleepers, dining cars and parlor cars, were lavishly decorated and full of sumptuous details like painstakingly carved wood and velvet hangings. Unlike the parlors of the Gilded Age’s rich and famous, palace cars were open to anyone who could pay the fee.

According to historian Lucius Morris Beebe, this had a lasting effect on American culture. “Before [Pullman’s] first palace cars few enough Americans had any least conception of what constituted true luxury,” he wrote ; “three decades of first-hand contact with the manifestations of opulence available aboard the cars created a universal demand for rich living which had a profound effect on the American economy and national way of life which has not yet disappeared.”

The elaborate cars were specially influential for women travelers. At the time, traveling in public or doing so alone was considered highly unusual, and undesirable, for middle- and upper-class white women. But the Pullman cars helped calm the fears of those who did not like to see women stepping outside their “separate sphere” of home and family. According to historian Amy G. Richter, the train cars’ home-like setting, and the presence of women in the living-room-like cars, legitimized train travel for women and soothed those who feared that public life would endanger women and the moral order.

Second- And Third-Class Passengers Faced a Rougher Journey

But rich travelers were not the only people who rode the new trains. The railroad system borrowed from the ocean liners that were bringing unprecedented numbers of immigrants to United States shores and offered different fares for different classes of travelers. The poorest travelers could ride the rails for less money, but their accommodations were less glitzy than those of the richer passengers.

Second-class passengers had upholstered seats; third-class, or “emigrant” passengers, paid half of what the first-class passengers did but had to sit on benches instead of seats and bring their own food. "The overland journey is no fairy tale to those who read it from a way car!” wrote a journalist in 1878, noting crowded conditions and discomfort in the ordinary passenger cars.

Racism rode the rails, too. When British author Robert Louis Stevenson rode the train in 1879, he noted that there was an entire car just for Chinese passengers. Though up to 20,000 Chinese immigrants had built the railroad , they were treated with contempt at the time, reflecting racist attitudes and socially sanctioned discrimination.

Though Black people did ride as passengers, they were more often spotted working as laborers or porters. From the 1860s, all of the porters in Pullman cars were Black men. Though the job could be demeaning, and perpetuated stereotypes of black men as servile, anonymous workers at the beck and call of white passengers, it also helped build a middle class among black men.

Dangers of the Journey on the Transcontinental Railroad

The trains shortened the journey across the country, but they weren’t without risk. In 1872, for example, Walter Scott Fitz’s journey toward San Francisco was literally derailed by a massive, weeks-long snowstorm. The men on the train, including passengers, had to dig it out of huge snow drifts in Wyoming. The passengers were so dismayed by the constant stops that they held what Fitz called an “indignation meeting” to express their outrage at the travel conditions. The hellish trip involved derailing, begging people who lived near their frequent stops to make the passengers food, and waiting days to move.

“There was, of course, much suffering amongst second class passengers, and others who could not afford to buy supplies & who were cooped up in ordinary cars,” Fitz wrote. “How they managed to eat, live, & sleep with two people in each seat will always be a marvel to me….Such a mess of filth, foul air and dirty people I never want to see again. The railroad people were so lazy that they refused to clean the cars, and, on the few occasions of cleaning, the passengers did it themselves.” The four-day trip ended up taking three weeks.

Eventually, the entire United States ended up being crisscrossed by train tracks that predated modern highways. The railroad changed life forever, enabling white settlement in areas of the West once considered desolate and forbidding and making it possible for people to strike out on the frontier without the dangers of months of travel in the open air.

And for those who made the once unthinkable trip, the Transcontinental Railroad inspired awe and wondered at the vastness and beauty of the American West. “We gazed long and enchanted on that scene of sublimity and beauty,” wrote Thomas A. Weed of an 1871 view of the Sierra Nevada. “With what interest did we look out upon this land of the extreme west.”

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Trans siberian railway map & routes.

There are several destinations and options of transportation while traveling along the Trans-Siberian train route, varying from private luxury trains to regular Russian trains. The choice depends solely on your preferences and budget, however, each Trans-Siberian railway journey provides with scenic views and an unforgettable traveling experience without a doubt. Crossing the regions of Siberia and Ural Mountains, the Russia Trans-Siberian railway route takes you to the scenic Russian Far East or Mongolia, depending on the chosen destination. The original Trans-Siberian route, which is actually the longest railway in the world, extends for 9289 km (5771.9 mi) from Moscow to Vladivostok, crossing the cities of Ekaterinburg and Ulan Ude along the way, while the Trans-Mongolian railway map is drawn from Moscow to the wondrous capital of Mongolia, Ulan Bator . In addition to that, you can even reach wondrous Beijing onboard the train!

Moscow - Vladivostok

The classic route is indeed the one along the Trans-Siberian railway, stretching from one end of Russia to another. If you're wondering where does the Tans-Siberian railway start and end, the answer is in Moscow and Vladivostok The Trans-Siberian railroad length is a total of 9258 kilometers (5753 miles). It crosses 7 time zones and passes over 30 cities in regions including Siberia and the Russian Far East. A journey on the Trans-Siberian railway Moscow to Vladivostok is among the most popular Russian routes. See all train journeys on this route .

Moscow - Ulan Bator

Another route fancied by travelers is the one combining Russia travel with time in neighboring Mongolia. As a rule, such a rail trip begins (or ends) in Moscow. The train makes its way to Siberia's Irkutsk and the mighty Lake Baikal. Travelers then switch to the Trans-Mongolian Railway and continue traveling towards the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Bator. Join them and witness al of the Russian and Mongolian gems on this route: Moscow to Ulan Bator .

Moscow - Beijing

The third route is the Trans-Siberian Moscow to Beijing. Such a journey covers three countries, Russia, Mongolia, and China, and provides a chance for the in-depth exploration of three great nations. Such rail trip usually take more than 3 weeks, around 20-23 days. There are several trains from Russia to China which you could take but the long experience is really worth your time it. Browse the train journeys along this route .

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10 main stops on the Trans-Siberian Railway

The Trans-Siberian Railway is more than 9,200 km long. Running from Moscow to Vladivostok, it connects the large cities of the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. By taking this train, you can see almost all of Russia. There is an added bonus in that a ticket for the Trans-Siberian allows you to get off at any station and then continue the journey on any other train on the route, provided it has free seats. Here are the cities we recommend exploring on the way.

1. Yaroslavl 

The Assumption Cathedral at the arrow of the Volga and Kotorosl rivers in Yaroslavl

The train departs from Moscow’s Yaroslavsky railway station, and one of the first stops is the wonderful city of Yaroslavl. This ancient city was founded by Prince Yaroslav the Wise in 1010.

Yaroslavl is the unofficial capital of the famous tourist route, the Golden Ring, and boasts hundreds of churches and monasteries. Be sure to visit the Yaroslavl Museum hidden behind the massive walls of the former Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Savior. Explore its main cathedral and visit Masha the bear, the living embodiment of the Yaroslavl coat of arms.

Click here to find out more about the history of Yaroslavl, places to visit and things to do there.

2. Perm 

The Perm Regional Museum

Perm is both a large industrial city and a cultural center of the Urals. It has a renowned opera and ballet company and a large drama theater with the unexpected name, Theater. It also has its own (a rarity in Russia) museum of contemporary art, PERMM, which opened in 2009 in a former river terminal building.

A must for any visitor to the city is to take a boat trip on the Kama River and to take a picture on the embankment with the city's calling card - a large land-art object by Boris Matrosov called “Happiness is not far off” - in the background.

Click here to find out more about things to do in Perm and its environs.

3. Yekaterinburg 

The Chekist Town in Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg is an industrial city with a million-plus population, the capital of the Urals and the birthplace of the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin.

Make sure to visit the architectural monument known as the Chekist Town, a neighbourhood of constructivist residential buildings and dormitories built in the 1920s and 1930s. It was intended for the leadership of the NKVD secret police (hence its unofficial name).

Find out more about things to do in the city in summer and in winter .

4. Tyumen 

The Tyumen embankment

Tyumen is considered the center of the Russian oil industry. At the same time, it has more than once come at the top of the list of the country's most liveable cities. Things to check out here include: a walk along the embankment of the Tura River, amusement rides in the Park of Culture and Leisure, as well as a visit to the Holy Trinity Monastery and the Znamensky Cathedral, built in the unusual Siberian Baroque style. By the way, Tyumen has a very progressive university, with many foreigners among both students and the teaching staff.

In two hours' drive from Tyumen (unfortunately, not on the Trans-Siberian route), is the old town of Tobolsk, which in the 17th-18th centuries served as a stronghold in Russia's exploration of Siberia. There is even a stone Kremlin here!

5. Omsk 

The Dormition Cathedral and Omsk city view

Omsk is known all over the world as the place where Fyodor Dostoevsky spent four years in exile. The city's literary museum, which studies the heritage of Siberian writers, is named after him. Omsk is also home to a unique metro, the shortest in the world as it has only one station. Click here to find out more about how it is used.

Make sure to visit a Continental Hockey League game: the local Avangard team is one of the strongest clubs in the country.

6. Novosibirsk 

The Nobosibirsk metro bridge over the Ob River

Novosibirsk is considered the capital of... guess what! That's right - Siberia. The city was founded in the 19th century as a stop on the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was being built at the time. And even before the city appeared, a bridge across the Ob River was erected here. It is now part of the Novosibirsk coat of arms.

These days, Novosibirsk is a city with a million-plus population and a variety of leisure activities, from museums and theaters to a large zoo and a circus. You should definitely visit the red-brick Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky, the city’s first stone building.

Check out our guide for things to do in Novosibirsk in winter.

7. Krasnoyarsk 

The Krasnoyarsk Pillars

With its long avenues, vast spaces and the great Yenisei River, Krasnoyarsk is a place where you can feel the full might of Siberia. Some of the city's most famous sights are featured on the 10-ruble bill.

Places to visit here include the local history museum as well as the Ploshchad Mira museum center, in which contemporary art is juxtaposed with Soviet art. The two museum buildings are separated by a walk along the Yenisei Embankment, which offers nice views of the bridges across the river.

Not far from the city is a unique natural reserve called Krasnoyarsk Pillars. Click here to read the story of a guide working at the nature reserve and other stories of people overheard onboard the Trans-Siberian.

8. Irkutsk 

Lake Baikal

Here we are, half-way through the journey, and we reach the city where the famous Decembrists, who staged an uprising against the Tsar in 1825 on Senate Square St. Petersburg, spent their time in exile. The city has a museum dedicated to their legacy.

Of course, the city's main attraction is Lake Baikal, whose nearest coastal point is an hour's drive from Irkutsk. Click here to read a first-hand account of how to go to the world’s largest lake in winter and fall in love.

9. Ulan-Ude 

The Ivolginsky Datsan

If you don't have time to stop in Lake Baikal, don't worry: you’ll see it from the train window since between Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude, the railway runs along the lake shore, with two-minute stops on the way.

Getting off the train in the capital of Buryatia may be your most unusual adventure in Russia. This area on the border with Mongolia is known for its ancient Buddhist traditions. Not far from the city is an important Buddhist center, Ivolginsky Datsan. Even the main Russian Orthodox church in Ulan-Ude, the Odigitrievsky Cathedral, looks more like a Buddhist stupa.

Lenin's head in Ulan-Ude

There is also an unusual monument to Vladimir Lenin in the form of the man's giant head.

Click here to read about an Englishman's adventures in Ulan-Ude.

10. Khabarovsk 

A bridge over the Amur River in Khabarovsk

Some 14 more hours and you’ll be in Vladivostok! In the meantime, welcome to the capital of Khabarovsk Territory and to the Russian Far East. The city is located on the Amur River near the border with China. There is a 3-km bridge across the river, which is popularly known as the “Amur miracle”.

Interestingly, 75 km from Khabarovsk, in a village of the local indigenous Nanai people, a stone carving dating to 12,000 BC was found. Click here to read more about this ancient artefact. 

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