There’s something magical about a journey by train.

Sometimes the magic is inside – on a train you have room to move and meet people, dine in a restaurant car with white tablecloths, and sleep in a private compartment between crisp, clean sheets with the sound of steel wheels swishing on the rails beneath you. Sometimes the magic is outside, in the landscape the train traverses – an adventure, an experience, an insight into the heart of a nation.

Below are some of the most beautiful train rides in Europe – some well known, some less so, some luxurious and expensive, others true bargains. From countryside views and mountain villages to alpine passes and landmark bridges (with a little wildlife spotting thrown in for good measure), the continent offers up some of the most scenic train rides in the world.

1. Settle to Carlisle, England

England’s Settle-to-Carlisle line has long been synonymous with the fight to preserve beautiful and historic stretches of railway. But this is no heritage line. Proudly part of the British rail network and served by regular mainline trains, the railway enjoys a double life as a frequent host of steam specials and, even rarer, steam-hauled mainline services.

Whether you have the whiff of steam in your nostrils or the hard-working growl of diesel-hauled regular trains in your ears, the views from the carriages are pretty much unmatched on the English railway network.

2. Bergensbanen, Norway

Route: Oslo to Bergen

Best bit? Gazing over the soul-stirring landscape of Hardangervidda between Geilo and Finse.
Distance: 496km (308 miles)
Duration: 6 hours 30 minutes

This astonishing train is one of the wonders of 19th-century railway building, and yet outside Norway hardly anyone knows about it. In just over six hours and some 490km (300 miles), it covers the spectrum of Norway’s natural splendor: climbing canyons, crossing rivers, burrowing through mountainsides, swooping past fjords and traversing barren icescapes. All aboard for the Oslo to Bergen train line, Bergensbanen: a mainline into Norwegian nature.

3. The Cento Valli Express, Switzerland and Italy

Route: Domodossola to Locarno
Best bit? Taking in the Isorno viaduct, the site of Switzerland’s first bungee jump.
Distance: 52km (32 miles)
Duration: 2 hours

Often eclipsed by Switzerland’s more famous rail rides, this two-hour trundle from Locarno on the palm-rimmed shores of Lace Maggiore to Domodossola over the Italian border in Piedmont is something of an unsung beauty.

Brush up your Italiano to swoon in sync with fellow passengers as the dinky train clatters across 83 bridges and burrows its way through 34 tunnels. The views make for spirit-lifting stuff: waterfalls shooting past cliffside views, hillside vineyards, gracefully arched viaducts, slate-roofed hamlets, glacier-carved ravines and mile after mile of chestnut and beech forests, all set against the puckered backdrop of mountains that are snow-capped in winter.

4. The Kyle of Lochalsh Line, Scotland

Route: Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh
Best bit? Passing under the gentle grassy slopes of Fionn Bheinn – a munro rising high over Achnasheen.
Distance: 135km (84 miles)
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes

Scotland has an abundance of windswept railways – the West Highland Line and the Far North Line to Thurso among them. Though comparatively unsung, perhaps the loneliest of all is the Kyle of Lochalsh Line – with trains rumbling doggedly from Inverness through desolate glens and past snowy munros, connecting the cold shores of the North Sea to the furious whitewater of the Atlantic.

It is a railway line full of poetry and beloved by aficionados – but it’s also a useful way for independent travelers to access remote nooks of the Highlands and make a journey to the Isle of Skye.

5. The Heart of Wales Line, Wales and England

Route: Swansea to Shrewsbury
Best bit? Disembarking at lonely Sugar Loaf Station for a walk or picnic around the iconic nearby knoll of the same name.
Distance: 194km (121 miles)
Duration: 4 hours

This Swansea to Shrewsbury the slow and, frankly, surreal way. This one-carriage train traverses track through Wales and England that might easily have been consigned to a museum or an out-of-print book, but that has somehow defied time and logic to survive as a passenger route.

Expect a spectrum of scenery, alternating from the sand-edged estuaries of South Wales, via bucolic farming towns and tracts of forest and hill country you probably never knew existed, through to one of England’s prettiest medieval cities. This four-hour, 34-station zigzag passes almost no major sights or countryside villages, but a very high concentration of spectacularly zany ones.