The World’s 100 Best Cable Cars & Mountain Railways · 2026

The Best Rack & Mountain Railways in the World

13 of the 100 lines in The World’s 100 Best Cable Cars & Mountain Railways 2026 are mountain railways, in 8 countries. The highest placed is Flåm Railway in Flåm, Norway, at number 1 in the world. Jungfrau Railway in Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland (number 3) and Gornergrat Railway in Zermatt, Switzerland (number 7) follow.

Rack railways

A toothed rail between the tracks lets the train climb gradients that ordinary wheels cannot. In Switzerland, rack railways run to Jungfraujoch, Gornergrat, Pilatus, the Brienzer Rothorn and Rigi Kulm. Pikes Peak and Mount Washington have cog railways in the United States, the Snowdon Mountain Railway climbs from Llanberis in about an hour, and the Odontotos runs through the Vouraikos Gorge from Diakopto to Kalavryta.

Mountain lines

The Flåm Railway runs about 20 kilometres from the fjord at Flåm to Myrdal. The Petit train d’Artouste is a narrow-gauge line of about 10 kilometres to a reservoir in the Pyrenees. The Tren Nariz del Diablo zigzags down the Devil’s Nose in Ecuador, and the Kuranda Scenic Railway climbs through the Barron Gorge from Cairns.