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Australia has a handful of rail journeys that are more of a travel experience than transport.
The Indian Pacific crosses the continent east west, taking 75 hours to make the 4,300 km journey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Pacific The Ghan travels north south between Adelaide and Darwin, taking 54hours to journey 3,000 km https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghan Both are more like a hotel on rails than a passenger train, so they're not for those in a hurry.
The Savannahlander travels from Cairns in coastal Qld through the savannah country to the west. Its a much less luxurious experience and travels a far shorter distance, but its still rated as an experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannahlander
There must be similar iconic rail journeys in other countries.
Europe is ubiquitous for being quite easy to travel all around by train, though I don't know that there's a particularly iconic route aside from the Channel Tunnel between London and Paris.
Asia is becoming a destination for this sort of thing too, for example, it isn't especially difficult to travel between the big two of China (Shanghai and Beijing) and Japan (Tokyo and Osaka/Kyoto).
Regarding other trips, I'm not completely certain but I'm sure countless interesting trips do exist.
"The Canadian" which travels from Toronto to Vancouver is the big rail trip in Canada. It takes about 3 days and takes in some stunning scenery along the way. I have never done it personally but know a few people that have and they loved it
I looked into taking the Silk Road fancy-train trip that goes from Moscow to Beijing (I think) and follows the Silk Road route to some of the old cities along the way. The cost was over $20k and I needed a fist-full of visas to cross all of the borders. I'll read about it instead.
Years ago we took a train out of Vancouver BC north to Prince George and then caught the VIA trans Canada train west to Prince Rupert on the BC coast and then took the inside passage ferry down to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island and then to Victoria by bus and finally a ferry back to Vancouver. It was a cheap trip at the time and absolutely the prettiest train trip I've ever been on. I don't think you can do that exact route anymore but have to go east to Jasper and then west to Prince Rupert...a longer trip but very scenic. The old ferryboat hit a rock and sank some years ago but they have a new one now.
I've been on three of the African epics, all 36-40 hours on wooden bench seats, no glass in the windows. All in the 1970s. I went both ways, Dakar-Bamako, one way Wadi Halfa to Khartoum, and from Kigoma to Dar es Salaam. Also the Dar to Tunduma, but that wasn't so bad, a new Chinese train fairly fast and comfy. The Khartoum train was, in parts, so crowded there were people standing.
The latter were just boring, mostly, but Dakar-Bamako was a wonderful African adventure. It goes through Kayes it midday, where most of the year it is 115-F. In the middle of the night, the twice-a-week train goes through Sahelian villages with no lights, just the sounds of children voices shouting delightedly at the train in complete darkness. In the middle of the night, the train would stop for no apparent reason, and there was a kerosene stove and sweet coffee being handed around in shared, dented chipped enameled mugs. I was the only European on the train, but not treated any differently from anyone else, but if the coffee was charged for, I was somebody's guest.
The Khartoum train was made doubly arduous because it was a continuation of the boat trip from Aswan through Lake Nasser, another 24 hours or so. No facilities on board, just sit on the deck. That was the boat that caught fire and sank ten years later with all the passengers eaten by crocodiles. When I heard the news of that, it didn's surprise me. Passengers were cooking meals on open fires below decks, where other passengers were carrying glass gallon jugs of gasoline they bought cheaply in Egypt.
Australia's transcontinental railway, heading West, has a perfectly straight stretch of track, 297 miles / 478 km long, in the desert, that's so boring that conductors are tempted to fall asleep at the controls.
"The Canadian" which travels from Toronto to Vancouver is the big rail trip in Canada. It takes about 3 days and takes in some stunning scenery along the way. I have never done it personally but know a few people that have and they loved it
Another famous route is the Copper Canyon train, an engineering marvel in Northern Mexico, http://coppercanyon.com/train ....Copper Canyon is FOUR TIMES the size of the U.S. Grand Canyon.
Here the most famous is the "Tren a las Nubes" (Train to the clouds), wich go to the high andean plateau in the arid northwest of the country and includes a bridge at 4200m asl, maybe the highest in the world. That's a touristic one, tough. The freight counterpart of the branch, crosses all the plateau to Chile border and it passes through amazing scenery, including de Devil's desert and many salt flats.
Then, in Patagonia there are two more touristic trains, both sorrounded by beatiful landscapes but with very short routes and old engines (steam ones): one is La Trochita, near Esquel, and the other is the "Train of the End of the World" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Fuegian_Railway) near Ushuaia.
Bogota to Girardot, Colombia. Only a couple of hours, but an elevation difference of about 7,500 feet. Train no longer operating.
Newfouindland's Bonavista Branch Line, the last surviving railway in Newfouindland after the shutdown of the famous Newfie Bullet. From Glovertown to Bonavista, Newfoundland, which was a narrow gauge track that had a switchback.
I rode a steam-pulled train at least once in my childhood. The train to my home town wasn't replaced by a diesel until I was about 12. When we heard the horn, we all jumped on our bikes to ride to the depot to see it.
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