The Ghan is the first rail service from Adelaide to Darwin on the north-south route across Australia. It was named after the camel trains that were once the only way to cross the desert. The first train ran in 2004. It had 43 carriages, measured more than 1 km in length and carried 330 passengers.
The Eurostar service was launched on 14 November, 1994, to carry passengers between London, Paris and Brussels through the channel tunnel. It can reach speeds of 300 km/h. In its first ten years it carried a total of 59 million passengers.
The French TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse or high speed train) was launched in 1981 and is an electric train service between Paris and Lyon. A specially modified TGV, the Atlantique, set a world speed record of 515.3 km/h on 18 May 1990.
Due to its dense population, Japan dumped its focus on cars and concentrated on Bullet trains (shinkansen), the world fastest scheduled rail services. They were introduced in 1964 to coincide with the Tokyo Olympic Games.
This is one of the world’s most luxurious trains and it has operated between Cape Town and Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa since 1939. The train, carriages and decor are mainly blue – hence the name.
From 1929 t0 1971, the Golden Arrow ran from Victoria, London to Dover. From there passengers could sail across the Channel and then take the French Fleche d’Or to Paris.
The Flying Scotsman provided a luxurious non-stop journey from King’s cross, London to Edinburgh, Scotland. It ran for 40 years, from 1923 until 1963.
The Trans Siberian Express travels 9,297 km between Moscow and Vladivostok. The line opened in 1914 and is the world’s longest continuous rail line.
The luxurious 20th Century Limited ran between New York and Chicago from 1902 to 1967. Considered as the most famous train in the world, it was operated by New York Central Railroad. This service was started to compete the Broadway Limited of Pennsylvania Railroad.
The Orient Express began trips from Paris, France, to Bulgaria on October 5, 1883 and from 1889 went as far as Constantinople (new Istanbul), Turkey. It was the first trans European train and traveled a total of 2,736 km across six countries in great style. It stopped running in 1977, but was re-launched five years later.
