The high-speed continent
Eleven networks at 300 km/h and up, and alongside them some of the slowest and best train journeys on earth. The country sections below are unchanged.
Services whose identity spans more than one country
This is a cruise that happens to run on rails, priced accordingly — think four figures a night, not a train fare. Cabins are teak-panelled and genuinely small; the observation car at the back is where the trip actually happens. Worth it if the journey is the holiday, absurd if you just want to reach Bangkok — the sleeper on the ordinary Thai network covers similar ground for a rounding error of the price.
The ETS is the quiet success story of South-East Asian rail — electric, punctual, air-conditioned, and cheap enough that the parallel flight rarely makes sense once you count airport time. Book ahead: the Kuala Lumpur–Penang runs sell out days in advance around holidays. The five-minute Shuttle Tebrau into Singapore is the single best border crossing in the region and sells out a month out, which catches almost everyone.
The benchmark every other railway is measured against, and it earns it: departures to the second, seats that recline without invading the row behind, and a cleaning crew that turns a train around in seven minutes. Reserve a seat if you have luggage — oversized bags now need a booked slot on Tokaido services, and unreserved cars fill first. Sit on the right leaving Tokyo for Fuji. A Japan Rail Pass holder may use Nozomi only after buying the separate Nozomi/Mizuho supplemental ticket.
The 2023 price rise changed the arithmetic and a lot of advice online has not caught up. A national pass now needs roughly a Tokyo–Kyoto–Hiroshima–Tokyo run before it beats buying tickets outright; a Tokyo–Kyoto return alone does not. Regional passes are where the value moved. Do the sum on your actual itinerary before buying — for most one-week trips built around two cities, individual tickets now win.
The only regular overnight train left in Japan, and it books out the moment the window opens a month ahead — private cabins go in seconds. The Nobinobi Zaseki carpeted berth is included with a rail pass and is the cheapest bed in the country, though it is a flat mat, not a bunk. Ride it for the fact of it: watching the two halves separate at Okayama at dawn is the point, not the speed.
The private lines are where Japanese rail gets characterful — front-window observation seats on the Romancecar, the Shimakaze's lounge car, Nankai's Rapi:t looking like a submarine. They are also the reason a JR pass sometimes strands you: none of these are JR, so none are covered, and Hakone or Nikko will cost extra whatever pass you hold. Reservations are cheap and worth taking for the seat, not the speed.
The largest high-speed network on earth and, on the trunk routes, the easiest way to move around China — second class is perfectly comfortable and first buys width rather than service. The trains are the simple part; the stations are not. Treat them like airports: security, ID checks and a twenty-minute walk to the platform, so arrive well before departure. Your passport is your ticket, and it is checked more than once.
A purpose-built airport maglev and an eight-minute novelty, currently running at up to 300 km/h. It drops you at Longyang Road, which is not the city centre, so most people still need a metro leg afterwards. Ride it once for the technology; take the metro if you are simply trying to reach your hotel with luggage.
Genuinely extraordinary and genuinely demanding: the carriages are pressurised and pipe oxygen to every berth because the line crosses ground where the air is roughly half sea-level. Soft sleeper is the only class worth booking for a night at that altitude. The hard part is not the train — foreign visitors need a Tibet Travel Permit arranged through a tour operator before a ticket can be issued at all, so this is never a spontaneous trip.
Seoul to Busan in about two and a quarter hours makes the domestic flight pointless, and the network is refreshingly simple to use — English-language booking works properly, and the app is one of the better ones in Asia. Nothing about it is showy; seats are narrower than the Shinkansen and the catering is a vending machine. It is transport that works, which on this route is all anyone needs.
Same tracks and same speeds as KTX, slightly cheaper, and it leaves from Suseo rather than Seoul Station — which is the whole decision. If you are staying in Gangnam it saves a cross-city trek; if you are anywhere north of the river it adds one. Korail passes are not valid on it, and its seats do not appear in Korail's app, so travellers routinely miss a departure that would have suited them better.
Japanese trains with Taiwanese manners — quiet, punctual, and the length of the island in under two hours. The catch is geography: several "city" stations sit well outside the city they name, and Taichung and Tainan both need a connecting local train, which surprises people who budgeted door to door. Foreign-passport discount passes are good value if you are making more than one long hop.
A narrow-gauge logging line that climbs from sugarcane flats into cloud forest by switchback and spiral, and it only came back into through service in 2024 after a long closure. Slow — that is the product. The pre-dawn Zhushan sunrise train is the famous one and is a scrum; the ordinary daytime climb from Chiayi is the better ride and almost nobody books it.
West Kowloon does mainland immigration inside the Hong Kong terminus, so the border is cleared before boarding and the train runs straight through — a genuinely clever piece of design that turns Shenzhen into a fourteen-minute hop. Budget the time you save into the terminus itself: check-in closes well before departure and the queues are real. Take your passport even for the short runs.
The newer Chinese-built sleeper carriages on the Chiang Mai run are a different world from the old stock — clean berths, curtains, working air-conditioning — and second-class air-con sleeper is the sweet spot; first buys a door, not a better night. Lower berths cost more and are worth it for the window. Long-distance services run late often enough that you should never book a same-morning connection off one.
Nobody should ride the full 33 hours unless they want to — the country's rail highlight is the three-hour Hue–Da Nang stretch over the Hai Van Pass, which is one of the great coastal rides anywhere and costs a few dollars in a soft seat. Sit on the sea side heading south. Four-berth soft sleeper is the sensible overnight class; the privately branded carriages attached to the Sapa trains are a real step up for a modest premium.
It turned a punishing ten-hour mountain road into a two-hour train, and that single fact has reshaped travel in Laos. Tickets are genuinely hard to get — they release a few days out and vanish, and foreigners generally do better through an agent or hotel than through the counter. Stations sit some way outside the towns they serve, so add a tuk-tuk at both ends before deciding it beats the bus.
Book early and book the right class and Indian Railways is superb value; do neither and it is a lesson. 2AC is the reliable choice for an overnight — curtained two-tier berths, bedding included — while 3AC is cheaper and markedly busier. Reservations open 60 days out and the popular Rajdhanis are gone the same morning. Foreign visitors should register on IRCTC before the trip, not at the station; the tourist quota exists but is not a substitute for planning.
The "toy train" is a two-foot-gauge line that loops and zigzags up to 2,200 m, often within touching distance of the road and the shopfronts beside it. The full run from the plains is a long, slow, frequently delayed day; most people are better served by the steam-hauled Ghum Joy Ride, which keeps the loops and the Batasia views and gives back five hours. Landslides close sections in monsoon — check before travelling.
Deservedly famous, and now busy enough that the experience depends entirely on getting a reserved seat — book the observation or first-class carriage days ahead in season, or accept standing in a doorway for several hours, which is what the photographs actually show. The best scenery is Nanu Oya to Ella, so the shorter leg keeps the good part. Sit on the right leaving Kandy.
A Spanish-built 300 km/h line that replaced a punishing desert road drive between the two holy cities, and the airport stop makes it genuinely useful for arrivals into Jeddah. Modern, quiet, and heavily booked around Hajj and Ramadan, when capacity is the constraint rather than speed. Non-Muslim travellers cannot enter Mecca or Medina, which limits the line to the Jeddah legs.
The Istanbul–Ankara YHT is comfortable and cheap, though it leaves from Söğütlüçeşme or Pendik on the Asian side rather than the historic centre — factor in the cross-city leg. The famous train here is not the fast one: the Doğu Ekspresi to Kars is a 24-hour winter ride across the Anatolian plateau that sells out months ahead, and the tourist-branded version costs several times the ordinary fare for the same view.
Spanish Talgo sets that make the Silk Road cities a comfortable day apart, and the single best way to travel Uzbekistan. Tickets go on sale a limited window ahead and the Tashkent–Samarkand runs sell out fast in spring and autumn, so book the moment the window opens. Stations have airport-style security and want your passport; leave more time than the short journey suggests.