World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys

A 500-mile journey across South Africa in a luxury hotel train, which travels between Pretoria and Durban on the coast over the course of three days.

Beginning in the mountaintop town of Creel, the Chihuahua Pacifico Express - or El Chepe for short - winds its way through the Tarahumara Mountains, home to the reclusive Raramuri people. Divisadero, Mexico's most panoramic station, offers the first glimpse of Copper Canyon. Created by six separate yet conjoined gorges, it is four times the size of the Grand Canyon. The train continues on to the Urique Canyon, which at 6,200ft deep it is the deepest in North America. The final leg crosses the state of Sinaloa, Mexico's breadbasket, before reaching Los Mochis and the gateway to the Pacific Ocean.

The 200-mile Ligne de Cévennes, which travels northwards through the Massif Central to France's volcanic heart - Clermont Ferrand and the spectacular Puy De Dome. The route takes travellers across three incredible historic viaducts, plunges deep underground to explore the area's hidden wildlife and traverses through several impressive valleys. The route winds through one of the world's most spectacular national parks, before reaching its final destination, a collection of 80 dormant volcanoes.

A 600-mile journey through one of the most world's most northern countries - Finland - from Helsinki in the south to Kemijärvi in Finnish Lapland. The line whisks passengers through the thickest of forests, past vast frozen lakes 63 times the size of Lake Windermere and to station stops where time has stood still. As the train enters the Arctic Circle, it calls at Rovaniemi, a place destroyed by German soldiers at the end of the Second World War. Now the town has been re-built, famously in the shape of a reindeer, serving as the official home of Santa Claus.

A train journey across Sri Lanka along one of the world's best-preserved Victorian railways. The trip begins in the coastal city of Colombo and moves on to the country's cultural and spiritual heart in Kandy. The journey continues through a a very English town that produces some of the world's finest teas, coming to a stop at a hill station surrounded by tropical forests close to one of the world's most spectacular viaducts - the Nine Arch Bridge.