Japan's mountain scenery on the country's iconic bullet train (Image: Getty Images)
JAPAN - 512 miles/4 hours
The shinkansen is Japan's iconic bullet train, long a source of pride for a nation built on engineering. The Hokkaido Shinkansen is the newest - and to date, longest - line.
It takes you from Tokyo to Hakodate, the southern port of Hokkaido, Japan's northern-most and least developed island.
Along the way it runs past picturesque scenes of rural Japan, through mountains and under the sea.
The route is only part of it, though; riding the shinkansen - with its food trolleys and staff who bow upon entering and exiting the train car - is a classic Japanese experience.
jreast.co.jp
USA - 1,377 miles/34 hours
America's "left coast" between Seattle and Los Angeles curves alongside crashing Pacific waves, cuts through America's lushest agricultural land and passes below snowcapped mountains and towering redwoods. Of all the Amtrak routes, this one offers the most scenic variety in the fewest hours.
Another reason this train is so special is it is the only Amtrak service with a parlour car, just for passengers who book sleepers.
The parlour conjures old-time rail romance, with wood panelling and soft lighting.
amtrak.com
The Pacific line in the USA (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Switzerland's slow train the Glacier Express winds its way through the Alps (Image: Getty Images)
SWITZERLAND - 180 miles/8 hours
No wonder the Swiss are a nation of rail fanatics - with such bang-on-time, ludicrously scenic trains. But if they could pick one definitive ride, the honour would surely go to the Glacier Express.
This epic journey from ritzy St Moritz to Matterhorn-topped Zermatt, unzips the Alpine terrain in the country's south, corkscrewing up to wind-battered mountain passes, teetering across 291 bridges and rumbling through 91 tunnels.
The slowest express train on the planet, it intentionally moves at a snail's pace so as to big up those out-of-this-world views of meadows, forests, falls and mountains - all glimpsed through panoramic windows, natürlich.
glacierexpress.ch
WALES - 39 miles/4 hours
Proof that bigger doesn't always mean better, the Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways are the spiritual home of narrow gauge - lines on which tiny steam locomotives putter through tiny stations and wind among the mighty mountains of North Wales.
A trip combining the world's oldest operating railway company, Ffestiniog, and the UK's longest heritage line,Welsh Highland, can be completed in a day. Passing slate quarries and abandoned mines, passengers can witness how the industrial revolution altered the Welsh landscape for ever, while at the same time seeing British nature at its most majestic, thanks to the dark forests, river valleys and windswept summits of Snowdonia.
festrail.co.uk
The Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways stretch
