In the 19th and 20th centuries, the railways revolution in North America, permanently accelerating the pace of the journey throughout Epirus. Today, many of these railways host a variety of historic excursion trains, inviting riders to slow down and enjoy a big day out.
The trains below are the destinations on their own, offering a mixture of spectacular sights, on -site dining room and brilliant outdoor observation cars. They cross deserts, mountains, forests and canyons, pulled from diesel and steam into sections of nature only accessible with a rail. They are cylinders in geology and ecology, not to mention the story. Most are accessible, no one costs more than $ 150, and each offers a window to the varied beauty of this continent.
Ontario, Canada
Train Agawa Canyon Tour
One of Canada’s most picturesque train routes begins in the city of Sault Ste. Maria, just above the Michigan-Otario border. Initially designed to transport the area’s timber and iron ore, Algoma’s former central rail slices through the 1.2 billion Canyon Agawa on a ride so graphic that it offers some form of passenger service that focuses on leisure for decades.
Today, it is the train of the Agawa Canyon Tour, which offers full -day excursions that give riders enough time to take the landscape both on board and on foot. The train leaves at 8am. For four days, 114 miles running through Canadian Wilderness Shield, with a predetermined boat comments highlighted points of interest along the way. In Mile 102, the train descends 500 feet to the floor of the canyon (accessible only by rail), where passengers can land for 90 minutes to explore the AGAWA CANYON PARK trails, panoramic surfaces and waterfalls before traveling home.
The train runs from Friday to Monday in August, when tickets cost $ 150 (about $ 104) and daily during the peak leaf season ($ 166). Riders can prepare food, bring their own or upgrade the new Stone Gardner “Theater Car”, with its rotating chairs and a giant back window ($ 500, including the morning, lunch and drinks). Also offered: Canyon cultural tours, as well as special train excursions with drivers from the Canadian Bushplane Inheritance Center and Entomica Insectarium, possibly from the only tour of air and investment in the world.
CALIFORNIA
The Skunk train
In 1885, the West Railway of California was built to help export timber from the forests of Mendocino in northern California. One century and a half later, the railway is an accessible and graphic way to see the rest of the Redwoods in the area, the tallest living things on Earth.
The nickname for spicy rail railways, adopted in the 1920s, the Skunk train carries Skunk travelers to (now odorless) vintage passenger coaches-as a reinforced, outdoor truck-two-wheeled truck-two-speed truck. From Willits, the Wolf Tree Turn excursion offers a two -day, 16 -mile round trip to the NOYO River Gorge, thick with 1,500 years Redwoods. At half point, riders can go away and admire the surname Wolf Tree on the route, one of the oldest and largest in the forest. (Tickets from $ 65, March to December, with trains running four to five times a week during summer and autumn.)
At the other end of the line, the Pudding Creek Express parallels the 3.5 -mile estuaries from Fort Bragg in Glen Blair Junction, a TRACKS Clearance in a Redwood Grove. The return trip is flexible: catch the same train back after a rapid extent of the legs (1.5 hours of round excursion), take a later train or make a return trip along a gravel (tours of tours and walks on foot. Restored Baldwin locomotive.
Western Virginia
Potomac Eagle rail
West Virginia is a hotbed of the inheritance railway. A pillar is the picturesque Potomac Eagle railway, which takes the sights on the doorstep, a gorge deep in the Appalachian Forest that is only accessible by rail or on foot. The route packages both a graphic and a historic punch: George Washington named the Gorge during the 1748 mission and its steep ridges are a nesting habitat for the bald Eagles, which guides helping rider from the train.
The regular running of Potomac Eagle is a 35 -mile round trip from the city of Romney to the doorstep, filled with a graphic bridge crossing. Passengers remain on the table, whose five categories of service range from the seats and the-byo-allch to four levels on the boat, each with its own vintage diner. Two outdoor observation cars complete a train set regularly from a 1950s restored diesel wearing the colors of Baltimore & Ohio, the Onetetime Operator of the Railway.
In addition to the typical three -hour trip (adult tickets from $ 74, April to November), as well as trips to sunset on selected summer evenings, Potomac Eagle runs occasional all -day trips to Petersburg, where riders can take part in a stalactite.
Sinaloa & Chihuahua, Mexico
El chepe
The passenger railway has a moment in Mexico, with the new Tren Maya in Yucatán and the coast to the Tren Interoceánico coast to launch an ambitious plan to rejuvenate Intercity Rail throughout the country. But for a dedicated excursion of Mexican sights, take El Chepe, known as the Copper Canyon train.
The 390 -mile Canyon Canyon line opened in 1961 after 60 years of construction, connecting the city of the Chihuahua desert with Los Mochis on the coast and crossing a canyon system larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon. The railway is a Marvel Engineering, rising from sea level to a maximum lifting of 7,800 feet. In one of its 86 tunnels, the pieces descend 100 feet, making a 180 -degree turn into the walls of the canyon.
Until recently, El Chepe (short for Chihuahua Al Pacifico), was one of Mexico’s few passenger trains and a regular non-unfolded train-the El Chepe peripheral-continues to cross the full length of the line. Since 2018, it has been included with El Chepe Express, a luxurious tourist train with a panoramic bar with panoramic Windowed (First Class, takes an outdoor terrace bar and is preferred to the Domed Restaurant Car), which runs between Los Mochis and the mountainous city. The full journey of nine hours, one -way, starts at 2,900 pesos, or about $ 143 (the first grade is 5,400 pesos), although they are also short -term sections (and multiple nights). El Fuerte to Creel, which includes most of the 39 bridges of the line, is the main graphic stretch.
Built in 1880 and now a national historic milestone, this 64-mile narrow intellect line-which is invoiced as the “largest and highest” steam rail in North America-runs between Antonito, Colo., And Chama, Nm, crossing the state border 11 (Fans of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” could recognize Cumbres & Toltec from the original scene of the film.)
The train embraces a huge rock face, as it navigates the two picturesque high points of the line, walking the rim of the 800-foot canyon Toltec and Zig-Zag through the 10.015-foot Cumbres crossing, the highest railway mountain in the United States. Alpine meadows at the summit can see snow turbulence even in summer.
A variety of excursions is removed from each terminal between May to October, most that include lunch at half. A single -way journey along the full route lasts seven hours, as well as a one -hour return trip (tickets from $ 135). There are four categories of services, including the Mayon Living Room, but all riders can enjoy the outdoor gondola car-not to mention a GPS-enabled GPS of a historical driver application and the clearly proportional emotion of moving by one of the five restored locomotives.
New Humsire
Mount Washington Cog Railway
The PT Barnum called it “the second largest show on Earth” when it opened in 1869, but the Mount Washington Cog rail is full of superlatives. It is the second railway on the planet, as well as the world’s first railway station, which uses a rack-and-pinion system to rise to the highest northeast. Its summit -a sub -sewing tundra -is well known to see a record of weather, such as the highest surface wind observed immediately (231 miles per hour, 1934) and temperatures as low as -47 degrees Fahrenheit (before the wind).
However, “cog” runs all year long, offering hourly winter round from Marshfield Base Station (2,700 feet), part to the mountain at Waumbek Station (3,900 feet), where hot refreshments are provided and firefighters are ready for S’mores.
From May to October, trains depart hourly for the summit (6,288 feet), where riders can explore Tip Top House, the original Summit Hotel (now a museum). Biodiesel locomotives apply most trips, but some still push the mountain from carbon -burning locomotives. Tickets range from $ 52 in winter to $ 99 for an atmosphere, three hours of round excursion in the summer.
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