15 Best Scenic Train Rides in USA

Zephyr | Empire Builder | Coast Starlight | Southwest Chief | Durango and Silverton | Cumbres and Toltec | Grand Canyon Railway | Mount Washington | Cass Scenic | Pacific Surfliner | Rocky Mountaineer | Napa Valley Wine Train | Alaska Coastal Classic | White Pass and Yukon | Common Questions | Planning Notes

My phone showed almost no signal by the time we crossed into Colorado, and Walt took that as a good sign rather than a bad one. Walt grew up somewhere between Nebraska cornfields and a Colorado ski town, and he had appointed himself the unofficial narrator of this whole trip before our first train had even pulled out of Chicago Union Station.

Scenic train routes, most of a month, and two duffel bags that got heavier with every gift shop we wandered through between boarding calls. Walt booked most of his own legs on a travel rewards credit card specifically to bank the points toward a future flight, while I bought a separate trip cancellation policy for the whole month, since several of these routes are seasonal and weather dependent enough that a single cancelled steam run can otherwise mean a lost non refundable fare.

I booked the tickets myself over several nights at my desk in Kolkata, watching Amtrak fare calendars the way some people watch cricket scores, refreshing at odd hours because roomette prices on the popular corridors seemed to shift depending on how many weeks stood between the click and the departure date. Ei je aakash, I kept saying somewhere over Colorado, this sky, and Walt would laugh and remind me that every state in America claims to own the biggest sky and somehow every single one of them is a little bit right.

01California Zephyr

The canyon with no roads and no name for hurry

We boarded the Zephyr at Chicago Union Station on a Tuesday evening with sandwiches from a shop near the Great Hall stuffed into my backpack, because Walt insisted the dining car fills up fast on the first night and reservations run on a schedule of their own. By morning we were already deep into Iowa farmland, and Walt was telling me that the real spectacle would not begin until somewhere past Denver, so he made me nap through breakfast on purpose.

West of Kremmling the train drops into Gore Canyon, a vertical chasm cut into ancient gneiss and granite that has no roads, no trails, and no cell towers anywhere near it. Walt pressed his face to the glass and pointed at a golden shape on a rock ledge that turned out to be a bighorn sheep, utterly unbothered by our train sliding past a few hundred feet away.

Below us the Colorado River churned through whitewater that rafters call Class V, and Walt mentioned an old river tradition with a grin he tried to hide, telling me that through Ruby and Byers Canyons the rafting crowd has kept up a decades old ritual of mooning every passing train, warm afternoons especially, and that conductors have learned to make a gently worded announcement about local river wildlife just before the Sightseer Lounge fills with laughter. We ate lunch in the dining car somewhere near the Moffat Tunnel, and the attendant timed our soup service almost perfectly with the 6 mile stretch of total darkness underground.

Walt told me the workers who dug that tunnel in the 1920s called the mountain the hungry one, because rockfalls and sudden floods of underground water swallowed crews faster than the railroad company ever liked to admit in its annual reports. When we came out the other side into Byers Canyon, everyone in the lounge car surged toward the right side windows, and Walt had already claimed 2 seats there 20 minutes earlier because he refuses to trust an announcement to do that job for him.

Further along, Ruby Canyon slid past with almost no sign of human road building at all, a stretch of red rock and river visible to almost nobody except people willing to sit on a train for 2 days. We landed in Grand Junction 90 minutes behind the printed schedule, and Walt just shrugged, saying the freight trains on this Union Pacific corridor always get first right of way, so anyone booking a tight same day connection in Emeryville is asking for trouble.

Coach seats on this route can be booked for a few months out at reasonable fares, while roomettes for the popular late summer and early autumn weeks tend to sell out well before that, something I learned the hard way while refreshing the booking page at 2 a.m. Kolkata time.

02Empire Builder

A wheat sea under a wall of stone

Walt's grandfather used to call this the wheat sea run, and by the second afternoon through North Dakota I finally understood why, because the land genuinely turns into gold coloured water that ripples in the wind exactly like waves, broken only by grain elevators standing like lighthouses on a coast with no ocean. We had bought sandwiches and coffee from the cafe car before Fargo, and Walt made me eat slowly, saying the wheat sea deserves at least an hour of undivided attention rather than a rushed meal.

Somewhere near Essex, Montana, the tracks cross the Middle Fork Flathead River over the Goat Lick Trestle, built directly through an exposed wall of marine limestone, and every spring mountain goats climb down thousands of vertical feet from the peaks just to lick sodium and calcium deposits off that cliff face. Walt spotted 3 of them clinging to the rock almost level with our window, an eye to eye view into alpine goat habitat that Highway 2 drivers down below never get.

Later that day we crossed the Two Medicine Trestle, a steel bridge standing more than 200 feet above the valley floor, where the train slowed to a crawl against crosswinds strong enough to make the whole carriage feel like it was floating rather than rolling. Walt gripped the window ledge and told me this exact stretch, where the Great Plains slam into the Rocky Mountain front with no warning at all, is the one moment on the entire route when even lifelong Montanans stop talking.

We got off briefly at East Glacier Park, a request stop that many timetables barely mention, because Walt wanted to show me the old lodge built from local timber in the 1910s, part of a deliberate railway strategy to turn national parks into rail destinations long before anyone had heard the word tourism. He also made me set an alarm for just after Havre the next morning, insisting the north facing side of the train catches a sunrise over the Bear Paw Mountains that almost everyone else misses because they are busy angling their cameras toward the sunset side instead.

Booking this route works best about 4 to 5 months ahead if a roomette matters to you, since the Glacier corridor in July and August fills quickly, while coach travel remains flexible almost right up to departure.

03Coast Starlight

Kelp forests, rocket pads, and a fog that remembers names

Walt booked us into a sleeper car specifically for the Parlour Car access rather than for the bed itself, a distinction he explained patiently over breakfast as the train pulled south out of Oakland. That lounge is a restored art deco interior built from salvaged 1950s rail furniture, and it remains one of the last true examples still rolling on American rails today.

Between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara the tracks slice directly through the edge of Vandenberg Space Force Base along the remote cliffs near Point Conception, an active restricted military zone that almost no civilian ever enters by any other means, and Walt pointed out gantry shapes on the horizon that he swore were SpaceX launch infrastructure. Near Gaviota the cliffs press so close to the Pacific that storm season spray has reportedly reached the windows, and Walt told me an old railway story about a lantern seen bobbing along that same cliff on foggy nights long after the original construction crew had gone home for good, a tale conductors still enjoy retelling to first time riders.

Between Ventura and Surf the ballast bed sits just feet above the tide line, and from the upper level Sightseer Lounge, a vantage point no highway sedan can offer, we watched sunlight cut straight down through shallow turquoise water into dense kelp canopies where a sea otter was rolling lazily on its back. We ate a late lunch of clam chowder from the dining car right as the train slowed along that stretch, and Walt kept interrupting his own soup to point out harbor seals basking on rocks just visible from our table.

Coach fares on the Starlight stay fairly affordable most of the year, while Parlour Car access requires a business class or sleeper booking made at least 2 to 3 months ahead for summer weekends.

04Southwest Chief

A desert sunburst and a market that predates the ticket machine

Walt has family near Gallup, New Mexico, and he had been waiting the entire trip to show me the platform at Albuquerque, where by a legacy agreement dating back to the Santa Fe Railway and Fred Harvey hospitality era, Navajo, Pueblo, and Hopi artisans still get exclusive commercial access to sell silver and turquoise jewellery directly beside the train doors during the 45 minute fuel stop. We stepped off, bought a small turquoise pendant from a woman who had been setting up at that same spot for years, and made it back on board with barely 2 minutes to spare, Walt laughing the whole time about cutting it too close.

Walt reminded me to ask for a card of authenticity with the stone, a habit he picked up after reading about disputes buyers have run into elsewhere trying to prove a piece was genuinely hand made once they were back home, since that small paper is the only real protection a traveller has if a purchase is ever questioned later. Near Lamy the train threads through the tight sandstone cuts of Apache Canyon at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and during the westbound late afternoon the low desert sun aligns through natural gaps in the rock, throwing rapid strobe like shafts of orange and scarlet light straight through the glass ceiling of the lounge car.

Walt had warned me to keep my camera ready rather than tucked away, since that light show lasts only a few minutes before the canyon walls close again. He also talked me through a trick he uses often, disembarking at Flagstaff for a full day at the Grand Canyon by shuttle bus and reboarding a later Southwest Chief on the same through fare, a booking detail that almost never appears clearly on the ticketing page itself.

We used exactly that stopover, spending a full day at the South Rim before catching the next evening's train onward toward Los Angeles. Booking 3 to 4 months ahead secures better roomette pricing on this route, while the Flagstaff stopover trick works only if you request the multi city fare structure directly rather than booking 2 separate one way tickets.

05Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge

Steam smoke over a river that forgets to slow down

We queued at the Durango depot before sunrise, coal smoke already curling from a locomotive built in the 1890s, and Walt called it the closest thing America has to time travel you can actually purchase a ticket for. The gondola car had no glass at all, just open air and the smell of burning coal drifting back over our shoulders for hours.

Past Rockwood the train climbs onto a ledge called the Highline, blasted out of solid granite in the 1880s, hanging roughly 400 feet directly above the churning Animas River. Walt leaned toward the open window on the river side and told me to look down, and for a moment the ground simply vanished, nothing below us but white water and rock.

He also told me about backpackers who check 60 pound expedition packs into the baggage car in Durango, then have the conductor pull the emergency brake at Needleton or Elk Park deep inside the roadless Weminuche Wilderness, stepping off to summit 14,000 foot peaks before flagging the returning steam train down from the trackside dirt days later. Above the first steel trestle past Rockwood, abandoned mine entrances from the old silver rush are still visible cut into the cliff face, remnants of a 1911 flood that washed out sections of this same track and was rebuilt within months because Silverton's entire economy depended on it.

Seats for peak autumn weekends sell out months in advance, and Walt suggested booking the open gondola car specifically rather than the enclosed coach if weather allows, since the smoke and cold mountain air are half the experience.

06Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad

Eleven borders, one gorge, and smoke that touches granite

This line climbs over Cumbres Pass at more than 10,000 feet, and because the 1880 builders followed the land's contours rather than blasting tunnels, the 64 mile route crosses the Colorado and New Mexico state line 11 separate times. Walt made me sip water constantly through the climb, since altitude at that height can bring on a dull headache and mild breathlessness even for otherwise healthy riders who never expected a train seat to test their fitness.

He also mentioned that this exact line cancels runs at short notice more than any other route we rode, purely because of mountain weather, which is the one detail he wished someone had told him before he skipped travel insurance on his own first visit years ago. Walt found this absurd and delightful in equal measure, counting the crossings out loud until I told him to stop somewhere around the eighth.

At Tanglefoot Curve the track loops back on itself so tightly that from our open gondola we could lean out and photograph our own locomotive and caboose travelling in what looked like opposite directions at once. As the engine clawed around a blind granite corner it entered Toltec Gorge, and we emerged abruptly from dense pine forest onto a narrow shelf directly over an 800 foot drop to the Rio de los Pinos below.

For a few seconds the coal smoke reflected off the sheer granite wall so close to the car that the whole compartment darkened before daylight burst back through. We ate a packed lunch of trail mix and sandwiches at the halfway stop in Osier, where both the Chama bound and Antonito bound trains meet for a shared meal break, a detail Walt had planned our whole day around.

This railroad operates only from May through October, and the through trip with a bus return needs booking at least 6 to 8 weeks ahead once the autumn colour season begins drawing crowds from both states.

07Grand Canyon Railway

Ponderosa pines, cattle guards, and a robbery staged since 1900

The train out of Williams climbs 1,800 feet in just over 2 hours, moving from high desert scrub and sparse juniper into one of the largest contiguous stands of Ponderosa pine forest anywhere in North America before breaking out abruptly into pinyon juniper rim country. Walt kept sniffing the air through the open vestibule, insisting Ponderosa bark smells faintly of vanilla if you catch it at the right moment, and he was oddly right.

Our locomotive that day ran partly on recycled cooking oil collected from restaurants around Williams, an eccentric engineering choice crews long ago nicknamed the French Fry Express. The train rolled over spring loaded cattle guards entering Kaibab National Forest, and on the return leg a group of mounted actors calling themselves the Cataract Creek Gang staged a full train robbery with blanks firing, a direct continuation of a publicity stunt the old Santa Fe Railway invented in the early 1900s to entertain East Coast socialites.

My nephew back home would have loved this part more than the canyon itself, and Walt said most children on board usually do. Same day return tickets can be booked as little as a week ahead in the shoulder season, though summer weekends and the winter holiday season fill up roughly two months out.

08Mount Washington Cog Railway

A staircase into cloud with no mountain underneath

Walt had hiked this mountain years before ever riding the cog railway, and he warned me on the platform that nothing about walking it prepares you for how it feels to ride it. Climbing the trestle known as Jacob's Ladder, the grade hits 37.4 percent, and looking forward through the car creates an optical illusion where the tracks seem to rise straight into cloud with no mountain visible beneath them at all.

Because a standard boiler would run dry at that angle, the steam locomotives here were custom built with canted boilers tilted downward, so at the base station the engine looks almost broken and hunched over, only levelling out once it starts climbing. From our seats we looked down onto the tops of stunted sub alpine fir trees, called krummholz locally, twisted low and thick from surviving arctic grade summit winds year round.

The summit sits in a weather zone that has recorded some of the strongest surface winds ever measured anywhere on the planet, and the temperature dropped roughly 20 degrees between base and summit on our ride despite a warm September afternoon below. Walt bought us both cocoa at the summit shop while I stood outside for exactly 90 seconds before retreating, wind cutting straight through my jacket.

He talked about a cousin who once underestimated the summit and came down with mild hypothermia despite it being a warm day at the base, a reminder that a mountain able to generate its own weather deserves real layers and not just faith in the forecast from below. Fall foliage season peaks in the final week of September into the first week of October, and tickets for that narrow window should be booked at least a month ahead since the mountain's own weather can cancel runs with little notice regardless of the forecast down at the base.

09Cass Scenic Railroad

A logging town's engines climbing into Quebec's forest by mistake

Cass, West Virginia, was built entirely as a company town for a logging operation in the early 1900s, and when the mill closed in the 1960s the state preserved the whole narrow gauge logging railroad rather than letting it disappear. The geared Shay locomotives climbing toward Bald Knob today are the same design once used purely to haul spruce logs down impossibly steep grades, never built with a tourist in mind.

Walt pointed out that the multi ton boiler sits mounted several inches off centre to counterbalance a 3 cylinder steam motor and automotive style drive shafts, giving the whole engine a slightly lopsided look that took me a moment to even notice. Climbing Cheat Mountain we passed through familiar Appalachian hardwood, oak and maple and beech, until somewhere above 4,000 feet the landscape abruptly turned into a Canadian zone boreal forest of moss draped red spruce and mountain cranberry bog, an ecosystem identical to forests hundreds of miles north in Quebec.

We ate a simple lunch of fried chicken from the depot cafe before boarding, and Walt said this rougher, more industrial feel is exactly why heritage rail enthusiasts seek Cass out over prettier but less honest lines. The Bald Knob run operates mainly on seasonal weekends, and booking 2 to 3 weeks ahead is usually enough outside of the peak October foliage dates.

10Pacific Surfliner

Wetsuits on the platform and a beach that turns to mirror

Walt once lived briefly in San Clemente, and he told me locals there call the platform behind the pier the surfer's platform, since wetsuits on the boarding line are a more common sight than suitcases. At Del Mar during low tide, receding water leaves behind wide glass like sheets of wet sand right against the rail embankment, and as our train raced south toward San Diego at sunset the beach turned into a horizontal mirror, throwing back coastal bluffs and a formation of pelicans and an orange sky directly onto our windows.

Further north at San Clemente the rails sit only a few feet above sea level against a riprap rock revetment, and Walt mentioned that during severe winter king tides combined with Pacific swells, ocean spray physically strikes the carriage windows, making this one of the only intercity lines in the country that coordinates its dispatch schedule around lunar tides and coastal erosion sensors. We shared a paper tray of fish tacos bought at the San Juan Capistrano stop, eating them balanced on our knees as the coastline slid past outside.

Multiple daily departures run this corridor, so same week booking almost always works, though weekend afternoon trains in summer fill their coach cars fast enough that booking 2 to 3 days ahead is a safer habit.

11Rocky Mountaineer, Rockies to the Red Rocks

A canyon that swallows signal and gives back silence

Walt kept correcting me on the name of this train, since the United States operation now runs under a fresh brand called Canyon Spirit while the original Rocky Mountaineer name stays with the Canadian routes further north. This was easily the most expensive ticket of the whole trip, and Walt suggested checking whether an existing premium credit card already includes trip cancellation or interruption cover before paying separately for it, since several cards marketed toward frequent travellers bundle that protection in automatically once the fare is charged to the card.

This luxury daylight only service carries no sleeping berths at all, a structural choice Walt found strange until he understood the logic behind it. Rather than idling on a siding overnight the way Amtrak sometimes must, the train docks each evening at Glenwood Springs, passengers move into a boutique hotel for the night, and the crew uses those dark hours to service and inspect the glass dome cars before dawn.

Through Glenwood Canyon the following morning we sat almost at river level directly opposite the Shoshone Dam and its rapids, a vantage point drivers on the interstate below never get since they are stuck watching the road from double decker concrete highway bridges instead of the water. The dome ceiling curved overhead to capture limestone walls rising more than 1,300 feet, shifting from charcoal grey to salmon pink as the sun crept across the rim. My phone lost signal completely through this stretch, and rather than feeling cut off I found myself simply watching longer than I had watched anything in years.

Walt called it an accidental kind of therapy, the sort of forced stillness a person usually has to pay a wellness retreat for, arriving here instead for the price of a train ticket and a dead phone signal. Walt said this exact loss of signal is one of the trip's most loved features rather than a complaint, since it forces a kind of undistracted attention modern travel rarely allows anymore.

We ate a plated breakfast of eggs and trout served right at our dome seats, the only meal on this whole month long trip that felt more like a hotel than a train. This route operates seasonally from April through early autumn, and the 2 day itinerary with its overnight Glenwood Springs hotel should be booked 3 to 4 months ahead since dome car capacity is limited compared to a standard Amtrak consist.

12Napa Valley Wine Train

Tracks laid for a hot spring, borrowed later by the grapes

Walt admitted early on that he leans toward beer rather than wine, yet even he was won over by the staff aboard the tasting car, who seemed to know the valley's smaller family run vineyards, the kind without tasting room queues, better than most guidebooks bother to research. The rails here were laid in 1864 by Samuel Brannan, California's first gold rush millionaire, not to serve wine tourism at all but to ferry wealthy San Franciscans north to his private geothermal spa resort in Calistoga, decades before Napa earned any recognition as a wine region.

The historic nineteen fifteen Pullman dining cars we rode in still roll on tracks originally engineered for steam bath tourists rather than vineyard visitors. Along the Rutherford and Oakville benches, gravelly alluvial fans where the valley narrows, we had an uninterrupted line of sight across century old rootstocks that Highway 29 traffic never allows drivers to properly see.

We had timed our trip for February, when the vineyard floors erupt into electric yellow wild mustard blooms between the vine rows, a sight Walt kept photographing from every window we passed. This short route runs year round with multiple seatings daily, and booking 2 to 3 weeks ahead usually secures a table, though the mustard bloom season in late February draws enough demand that a month's notice is safer.

13Alaska Railroad, Coastal Classic

A wave that rolls backward and whales that follow it in

Hugging the base of the Chugach Mountains along Turnagain Arm, we sat inches above water that Walt kept watching with unusual focus, waiting for something he refused to explain until it happened. When the moon aligns with extreme tidal shifts here, a bore tide forms, a single standing wave up to 10 feet tall rolling backward up the inlet, and that afternoon we watched exactly that, trailed by a pod of white beluga whales feeding in the churned up mudflat water behind it.

Deeper into the Kenai Mountains along the Placer River Valley, the train exposed us to Spencer Glacier and Bartlett Glacier, features that cannot be seen from the Seward Highway or any public road at all. Walt explained that this railway still holds legal whistle stop status, one of the last systems in North America where backcountry kayakers and hunters can arrange with the conductor to be dropped at unmapped waypoints rather than an official station.

Anyone stepping off into that kind of roadless terrain, he added, should carry travel medical coverage that actually names remote wilderness evacuation, since a routine health insurance plan back home rarely extends to a floatplane rescue from an Alaskan mudflat. We ate reindeer sausage sandwiches bought from the dining car just before the bore tide appeared, and I have never finished a meal that fast in my life, distracted by the water outside.

This route runs seasonally from May through September, and booking 6 to 8 weeks ahead is wise for the July and August weeks when cruise connections crowd the timetable.

14White Pass and Yukon Route

Dynamite, dead horses, and a bridge that hangs on nothing

Just past the Skagway depot the track runs directly through the Klondike Gold Rush Cemetery, brushing by the grave of the outlaw Jefferson Soapy Smith, who died in a shootout the same year this railway was built, over swindling prospectors who had arrived on the very ships that supplied its work crews. Constructed in 1898 using 450 tons of dynamite, the line clings to granite walls on grades close to 4 percent, climbing out along a ledge above a chasm still nicknamed Dead Horse Gulch by historians, after the thousands of pack animals that died on the original trail before this railway ever existed.

From the open air viewing platform we gazed directly across at hanging alpine glaciers and a derelict rusted 1901 cantilever bridge suspended over empty air hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. Walt stood at the platform rail the entire climb, saying this was the one route on our whole trip where he felt genuinely small rather than simply impressed.

We shared a thermos of hot chocolate someone in our carriage had brought along, passing it down the open platform between strangers who had become fellow shiverers within the hour. This seasonal run operates May through September, and cruise ship arrival days in Skagway can sell out same day departures fast, so booking a month ahead if travelling independently of a cruise line is the safer route.

Questions Readers Keep Asking

Which single train ride in America is considered the most scenic. There is no universal answer since preferences split sharply between mountain riders and coastal riders, though the California Zephyr is named most often for sheer variety within one continuous journey.

Which side of the train should I sit on for the best mountain views. On westbound Rocky Mountain routes the right side generally sits closer to canyon walls and rivers while the left opens toward broader valley views, so the choice depends on whether intimacy with rock or open sky matters more to you.

How far ahead should sleeper cars be booked. Roomettes on popular seasonal corridors such as fall foliage weeks or the Alaska summer season tend to sell out 3 to 6 months ahead, while coach seating usually remains available much closer to departure.

Do these trains allow outside food and wine on board. Most long distance Amtrak routes and heritage lines allow passengers to carry their own food and drink including personal wine for coach seating, though formal dining car service runs on its own separate reservation system.

Is cell signal reliable along these routes. Signal disappears completely through long canyon and pass sections such as Glenwood Canyon and the higher Colorado passes, so downloading offline maps and entertainment in advance serves travellers better than counting on continuous coverage.