Summer is over, but autumn is in, and it's the perfect time to explore some of Europe's incredible countryside - over a train ride with a warm tea in hand.
This week we've taken a tour of Britain and beyond to bring you some of the most delightful journeys going - with views to match.
See our pick of the best below.
1. The Cinque Terre, Italy , 2 hours
The Cinque Terre, five spectacular Unesco-listed villages painted across the steep Ligurian coast, are stitched together by a great piece of railway engineering connecting La Spezia and Genoa.
Until the coming of the railway in the 1950s, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso were all pretty much isolated in their own little worlds of fishing and cliff-top vineyards, but now they are hugely popular, with tourists combining the train with hiking trails to get from one village to the next.
Until the coming of the railway in the 1950s, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso were all pretty much isolated in their own little worlds of fishing and cliff-top vineyards, but now they are hugely popular, with tourists combining the train with hiking trails to get from one village to the next. The best walk is from Riomaggiore’s station platform through vineyards to the platform at Manarola.
Stay on the train, and you get to see a lot of tunnels!
2. Harz Mountain Railway, Germany , 90 mins
This privately run railway runs up and over the rolling Harz, a forested mountain range that sits between Hanover and Leipzig. The towns are charming, but what makes the whole thing particularly spectacular are the charismatic old steam locomotives that work the service – even in the winter snow.
The network links Wernigerode and Quedlinburg in the north and Nordhausen in the south, all of them pretty places with timber-framed houses and cobbled streets. Wernigerode has the largest engine shed, and trains rumble down the streets. Summer attracts walkers, particularly on the line that climbs up the Brocken mountain (1,125metres).
3. The Golden Pass Railway, Switzerland , 3 hours
Swiss trains make molehills out of mountains, and this one climbs effortlessly from the lakeside town of Montreux up to the winter resort of Gstaad, over the pass behind it and down again. It’s a real ear-popper of a journey, zagging its way up the mountainside behind Montreux, unravelling Lake Geneva as it goes.
Once it’s high enough, the train burrows inland, bursting through into a hidden world of wildflower-covered meadows to where the fashionable celebrity-packed resort of Gstaad sits on a bend just before it goes over the final pass.
Once over the top, you have to change trains at Zweisimmen on to a more mundane service that travels back down to lakeside level again, this time to Spiez on turquoise Lake Thun.
4. The Bohinj Railway, Slovenia , 2 hours
This is a backwater line originally built by Austro-Hungarians seeking a convenient route to Slovenia’s elegant lakes and Italy’s vineyards.
It links Jesenice by the Austrian border with Nova Goricia which sits on the border with Italy, rambling en route past lakes Bled and Bohinj in the Julian Alps. Bled is something of a genteel spa resort, with a lovely church-topped island in its middle.
Bohinj is wilder, more mountain-surrounded, good for hiking. After Bohinj the train burrows through a 6km tunnel before bursting out into the valley of the Soca river, famous for its marble trout and its emerald green colour, and where the recent Narnia films were made.
5. Fort William to Mallaig , Scotland, 75 mins
This route hosts the only scheduled steam-hauled service in the UK, the ‘Jacobite’, which played the part of the ‘Hogwarts Express’ in the Harry Potter films. Its landmark is the Glenfinnan Viaduct, with mountains behind, and – in the movie – with Harry and Ron in a flying car above.
Beyond Glenfinnan the train climbs through forests of ash trees, threading its way from glen to glen. The peaks above are habitually streaked with waterfalls, and the land around is littered with lochs.
The last part of the journey into Mallaig is through some of the UK’s most spectacular coastal scenery out across the Sound of Arisaig. The line is serviced by normal Scotrail trains year-round, with steam-hauled extras from April to October.
6. The Inlandsbanan , Sweden, 13 hours
This Inlandsbanan is a day-long journey that runs up the spine of Sweden, from Gällivare to Östersund, but only during the summer.
While the nation’s conventional rail services stick to inhabited coastal areas, the Inlandsbanan strikes down through the one of the wildest stretches of track in the world, crossing the Arctic Circle, and travellingthrough 700 miles of forest.
Its stops are more a celebration of the places it passes than for picking up passengers. Few railways, for example, have a halt with the legend “weather permitting, the train will stop here to allow passengers to have a swim” in the timetable.
Many travellers break their journey with an overnight stop along the line for a taste of the Sami’s reindeer-herding lifestyle.
7. Ashford to Hastings, Kent , 40 mins
There can be few more incongruous changes of trains than at Ashford, Kent, where the Eurostar thunders through and the high speed Javelin trains ease to a stop after a 38-minute ride from London.
Waiting over on platform 2C is the two-coach Marshlink trundler, which sets off to jog across the flats of Romney Marshes to Hastings, on a journey into a different world.
The lowlands speak instantly of northern Europe, with the hulk of Dungeness nuclear power station on the horizon. Then comes Rye, a fortified medieval film-set-ready little town perched on a hill, laced with cobbled lanes and tea shops.
And finally Hastings, home to wartime series ‘Foyle’s War’, with mossy-roofed townhouses and a fleet of fishing boats winched up the shingle.
8. The Little Yellow Train, France , 3 hours
‘Le Petit Train Jaune’ is a mountain goat of a service which runs up the flank of the French Pyrenees to Latour-de-Carol, on the border with Spain. It starts at Villefranche de Conflent, a medieval fortified town which changed hands between French and Spanish, before climbing through 19 tunnels up to the highest railway station in France (La Bolquère) at 1,593 metres.
En route it crosses its own power source - local rivers, producers of hydro-electricity. Some of the rolling stock dates back to the early 1900s, including open carriages in summertime, and a curiosity near the end of the journey is the Spanish enclave of Llivia, a little splodge of Spain surrounded by France.
9. The Achensee Bahn , Austria, 50 mins
The Achensee Bahn, the oldest steam cog railway in Europe, has been puffing up and over the mountain to the turquoise waters of the lake at Achensee for the last 128 years. Originally built to bring timber out of the mountains, the locomotives now bring tourists over the hill to connect with lake cruises.
The old steam engines, with their boilers on an angle to cope with the slope, look cranky on the flat, but once the track branches upwards they come into their own, and you can feel their heartbeat – the pulse of the pistons – as the cogwheel engages and you surge up through forests and wildflowers.
10. The Flåmsbana , Norway, 55 mins
Flåm is a sleepy tourist settlement at the head of Aurlandsfjord, where visitors step off fjord ferries on day-trip packages from Bergen called ‘Norway in a Nutshell’.
From here, the Flåm Railway, one of the steepest railways in the world, creaks and squeals its way up a tortuous valley full of tumbling rocks, stopping briefly by the thundering waterfall of Kjossfossen for everyone to pile out and take photos. At the top is Myrdal, where passengers connect with the mainline to get back to Bergen.