Luxury by Rail
Some of the world's most memorable journeys begin the moment you step on board.
There is a particular pleasure to train travel that no other mode of transport quite replicates. The landscape unfolds at a pace you can actually absorb. Your luggage stays where you put it. Dinner is served at a proper table with proper cutlery, and the countryside drifts past the window like a painting that keeps changing. You arrive not just at a destination, but having actually traveled there.
Luxury rail takes that experience and raises it considerably — to white-gloved service, chef-prepared meals, cabins that feel more like a boutique hotel room than a berth, and itineraries that treat the journey itself as the destination.
These are not commuter trains. These are experiences.
Belmond
Belmond operates some of the world's most iconic luxury trains — rolling landmarks that have been carrying discerning travelers for decades. Three are particularly worth knowing:
The British Pullman — a vintage rake of Art Deco Pullman carriages that evokes a golden age of British rail travel. Day excursions from London through the English countryside, paired with champagne, silver service, and the kind of unhurried elegance that is increasingly hard to find. Each carriage has its own name and history.
The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express — perhaps the most famous train in the world. The original blue-and-gold carriages, restored to their 1920s glamour, running between London and Venice via Paris and the Alps. Two nights aboard, each meal an event, each landscape more dramatic than the last. This is not a train ride. It is an occasion.
The Royal Scotsman — Scotland at its most cinematic, seen from the windows of one of the world's most intimate luxury trains. Carrying just 36 guests through the Scottish Highlands, the Royal Scotsman makes its unhurried way through a landscape of lochs, glens, and ancient castles — with Highland whisky tastings, shore excursions, and a dining car that would hold its own in any city. For travelers who want Scotland without the crowds, this is the answer.
Orient Express La Dolce Vita
One of the most talked-about train launches in years — and one that was worth the wait. La Dolce Vita Orient Express has been running since April 2025, offering a collection of Italian journeys that are as much about the train itself as the destinations it connects. Designed by Milan-based Dimorestudio with interiors inspired by the glamour of 1960s Italy, the train carries just 62 passengers in suites and deluxe cabins through some of the country's most cinematic landscapes.
Routes include Rome to Venice, Rome to Sicily, Rome to Portofino, and the Dolomites — each carefully timed, each treated as its own event. Cuisine is prepared by Michelin-starred chefs. The service is impeccably Italian. And for those who want to go further, a new Rome to Istanbul itinerary launches in October 2026 — five days, four nights, through Venice, Budapest, and the Carpathian Mountains to one of the world's great cities.
The train runs April through December. For Italy travelers who want something genuinely unforgettable, this is it.
Golden Eagle Luxury Trains
Golden Eagle has long been synonymous with epic long-distance rail journeys, and its European and Central Asian itineraries remain among the most distinctive in luxury travel. Current itineraries include journeys through Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and Cappadocia, and the legendary Silk Road across Central Asia — routes that take travelers through landscapes most people never see, at a pace that lets them actually sink in.
For the traveler who wants to go somewhere genuinely different — and arrive having actually experienced the distance — Golden Eagle is in a category of its own.
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