9 Scenic Train Rides That Roll Past Views You Can’t Drive To

Here is my hot take on travel: the best seat in the country is a train window with someone else at the controls. No white-knuckle mountain driving, no missed exits, no fighting over the aux cord. Just the glass, the scenery, and a coffee that stays put.

Some rail lines lean all the way into that idea. These are the ones built purely to show off, hauling vintage cars past glaciers and gorges that no highway comes close to.

Below, nine scenic train rides worth crossing the country for. Each one has a real depot you can pull up to and a landscape that earns the ticket.

They range from a coal-fired mountain climber in Colorado to a white-linen dinner train through wine country. Different moods, same simple pleasure: sit back and let the scenery come to you.

1. Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, Colorado

Coal smoke, a steam whistle, and the Animas River running silver beside the tracks. This narrow-gauge line has run the same route since 1882, back when it hauled gold and silver ore out of the San Juan Mountains.

The trip climbs about 45 miles to Silverton, an old Victorian mining town sitting above 9,000 feet. Along the way the train edges along the Highline, a shelf blasted into a cliff face hundreds of feet above the river, where no road has ever reached.

It is a National Historic Landmark and still burns coal, so you get the full hiss and clatter of the real thing. Book an open-air gondola car for the best views, and give yourself the layover in Silverton to poke around the old saloons.

Riders rate it among the great train trips in the world, and the fall run through the golden aspens of the San Juans books up months in advance. Buy early if you want a seat in leaf season.

Where: 479 Main Ave, Durango, CO 81301.

2. Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, North Carolina

The Smokies earn their name from a soft blue haze that hangs in the valleys, and this railroad slips right into it. Trains roll out of a 1920s depot in downtown Bryson City and follow the water into the mountains.

The Nantahala Gorge run is the showstopper. It hugs a rushing river past whitewater rafters, then crosses a trestle high above Fontana Lake. Movie fans, this is where the spectacular train wreck in the 1993 film “The Fugitive” was staged, and the wreckage sat by the tracks for years.

In autumn the whole route turns gold and crimson, and those tickets sell out well ahead. A gentler Tuckasegee River excursion runs year round if the gorge trip is full.

Riders often say the open-air cars are the way to go, close enough to the river to feel the mist come up off the rapids.

Where: 226 Everett Street, Bryson City, NC 28713.

3. Mount Washington Cog Railway, New Hampshire

This one does something no ordinary train can. It climbs a toothed center rail that grips the mountain and hauls the car straight up the side of the tallest peak in the Northeast.

Opened in 1869, it was the world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway. It still grinds up grades so steep that on the aptly named Jacob’s Ladder trestle, passengers at the front of the car sit far lower than those at the back.

The payoff is the 6,288-foot summit, a place famous for wild, fast-changing weather, where the view can span four states and into Canada on a clear day. Pack a jacket, because it is often forty degrees colder up top.

Some trains still run on coal-fired steam, while newer biodiesel locomotives handle the daily climb. Either way you are riding a genuine piece of engineering history that has been hauling people up this mountain for more than 150 years.

Where: 3168 Base Station Rd, Mount Washington, NH 03589.

4. Texas State Railroad, Texas

People forget the Piney Woods when they picture Texas, all tall pines and dappled green light, and this is the finest way to see them. The official railroad of the state runs 25 miles of heritage track between Rusk and Palestine.

The history here is something else. Prison inmates from the Rusk penitentiary first laid these rails in 1881 to feed an iron smelter, and the line now crosses more than two dozen bridges over the creeks that thread the forest.

You can ride behind a vintage diesel or a genuine steam locomotive, in anything from an open-air car to a domed observation coach. The round trip runs about four hours with a layover, so it makes a full, unhurried day out.

Where: 789 Park Road 70, Palestine, TX 75801.

5. Napa Valley Wine Train, California

Not every scenic ride ends at a mountain. This one rolls through the most famous vineyard country in America, and the view comes with a multi-course meal on white linen.

The restored early-1900s Pullman cars are all brass and polished mahogany, some with glass-topped Vista Dome roofs for the full sweep of sky. The route follows track first laid in 1864 on a 36-mile round trip toward St. Helena.

Rows of grapevines slide past the windows, celebrated wineries appear and vanish, and the pace is exactly as slow as a long lunch should be. Come hungry, and let someone else worry about the drive home.

Several trips pair the ride with tastings at estates along the line, so you can step off, swirl a glass, and climb back aboard. It is the rare scenic railroad where the food competes with the scenery.

Where: 1275 McKinstry Street, Napa, CA 94559.

6. Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, New Mexico

This is the big one for steam lovers: the longest and highest narrow-gauge steam railroad in the country. The line runs 64 miles between Chama, New Mexico, and Antonito, Colorado, hopping back and forth over the state line eleven times.

It tops out at Cumbres Pass, more than 10,000 feet up, and creeps along the rim of the Toltec Gorge, where the river runs far below through sheer rock walls. Aspens, wildflowers, and high desert roll past, and the locomotive works audibly for every foot it climbs.

Built in 1880 and now a National Historic Landmark, the railroad stops midway at a remote depot in Osier for a hot lunch you cannot reach by car. Fall, when the aspens go gold, is the ride to plan for.

Film buffs may recognize it, too. The opening chase of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” was shot along these tracks, with a young Indy scrambling over a circus train. The scenery does not need Hollywood to sell it, but it does not hurt.

Where: 500 S Terrace Ave, Chama, NM 87520.

7. Grand Canyon Railway, Arizona

Here is a smarter way into one of the seven natural wonders: let the train do the driving and leave the parking scramble at the rim to everyone else. Since 1901, this line has carried travelers 64 miles from the Route 66 town of Williams up to the South Rim.

The ride crosses ponderosa pine forest and high-desert prairie with the San Francisco Peaks on the horizon, about two and a quarter hours each way. Onboard musicians, conductors in period dress, and an occasional horseback “train robber” keep the coaches lively.

You step off practically at the canyon’s edge, spend the afternoon on the rim, and ride back without ever touching a steering wheel. For families it is the low-stress version of a very big day.

There is real history in the wheels too. The railway first opened in 1901 to carry tourists to a canyon that was still a genuine frontier, and the depot at Williams is one of the last log train stations left standing.

Come early and you can catch a lighthearted Wild West shootout in the depot yard before departure. It sets the tone for a day that feels a little like stepping back a hundred years, minus the dusty stagecoach ride.

Where: 233 N Grand Canyon Blvd, Williams, AZ 86046.

8. Cass Scenic Railroad, West Virginia

The engines here are the stars: geared Shay steam locomotives built to haul timber up impossibly steep grades a century ago. Today they push passengers up the same mountain, chuffing and swaying and doubling back on switchbacks carved into the slope.

The long run climbs to Bald Knob, at nearly 4,842 feet one of the highest points in West Virginia, where the forest suddenly opens into a sweep of the Allegheny Highlands. Grades on the route reach a startling eleven percent, which is close to a wall by railroad standards.

The whole thing starts in a restored old logging town, its company houses and general store preserved as a state park. On a crisp autumn morning it is hard to believe it stays this uncrowded.

The line ran as a working lumber railroad until 1960, then reopened a few years later so visitors could ride the same Shays up the mountain. Book the longer Bald Knob run for the big view, or the shorter Whittaker trip if you are short on time.

Where: 12363 Cass Road, Cass, WV 24927.

9. Mount Hood Railroad, Oregon

Some rides save the best view for a single peak, and this one frames it perfectly. The train winds through the orchards and vineyards of the Hood River Valley with snow-capped Mount Hood standing over the whole scene.

Running since 1906, it rolls past apple and pear trees that erupt into blossom in spring and hang heavy with fruit by fall. The line even includes a rare switchback, a clever zigzag that lets the train gain elevation where the grade gets too steep for a straight climb.

It is a gentle few hours through some of the prettiest farm country in the Pacific Northwest, with the Columbia River Gorge waiting just down the road. Adventurous types can even pedal part of the line on a railbike.

Time it for late April and you ride through a valley of pink and white blossom. Time it for October and the same orchards are heavy with apples and the vine leaves have turned. Either way the mountain steals the show.

Where: 110 Railroad Street, Hood River, OR 97031.

All Aboard: Plan Your Ride

The beautiful thing about a scenic railroad is how little it asks of you. Book a seat, show up at the depot, and hand the hard part to an engineer who has run the route a thousand times.

Pick the one nearest a trip you already have on the calendar, or build a whole road trip around a couple of them.

Then claim a window seat, let the coffee stay warm, and watch the country roll by the way it was always meant to be seen, at the unhurried pace of a train.

Featured image: Jennifer Howell via Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad