Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales

The first steam train I travelled on was the Ffestiniog Railway from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog.
I was in Wales on my way to visit Portmeirion—the site of the filming of the iconic television series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan. Portmeirion was a short walk from the Minffordd Railway Station, one of the stops on the line.

Blaenau Ffestiniog Station

Ffestiniog Railway

Ffestiniog Railway car

Minffordd Station

Portmeirion

Ffestiniog Railway map

All pictures my own.

Rothley to Louchborough, England

Great Central Railway's Rothley to Louchborough run is touted as "The UK's only Mainline Heritage Railway". From the Michael Portillo's series Great British Railway Journeys, Series 5: London to Leeds.
The heritage railway provides various speciality trips and full-course meals with a special 7-course meal on Saturdays. See the Special Events on their website.

GCR Dining Car

GCR Bar Car

Riding the Rails

I love train travel, and this site is all about train travel anywhere in the world.

For all things related to train travel in Europe see The Man in Seat 61. An exhaustive store of information of trips, trains, fares timetables. etc. Especially, check out the section on "Great train journeys" giving detailed descriptions of unforgettable rail journeys all over the world. He has dozens of videos on Youtube showing all the details of various trips, from arriving at the station to boarding, to seating or sleeping views and dining. He also includes the details on train transfers, if required.

The Great Rail Journeys website offers a huge range of rail travel excursions around the world. (They also have a selection of canal boat packages.) I do not know the quality of their offerings.

Guides: The Man in Seat 61 recommends purchasing rail maps available from the European Rail Timetable site.

Dylan's Travel Reports also has many videos showing rail trip details.

Try out some of the Real Rail Adventures videos, a PBS series available on Youtube.

For luxury train travel all over the world, a good place to start is The Luxury Train Club.They also have a Youtube channel.

Check out rail and other travel recommendations on Wanderlust Travel Magazine.

BOOKING RAIL TRAVEL

For European travel, the Man in Seat 61 recommends Rail Europe and Trainline as the easiest to use for online rail booking for trips throughout Europe though they charge a small booking fee. You can also use the booking sites for the railways of each country though they may be issues of language and ease of use. The Trainline also has a phone app called Trainline - see below.

For rail travel in France, use SNCF.

For Germany use Deutsche Bahn.  

For Italy, ItaliaRail can be booked in multiple languages and currencies. The domestic TrenItalia does not have the booking fee that ItaliaRail has (€3.50) but is not as easy to use.

For Austria use ÖBB (Österreichische Bundesbahnen).

For Switzerland use SBB (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen). To purchase rail passes use Swiss Travel Passes. For Zurich city and regional travel, including rail and buses, you can use ZVV, though rail can be booked via SBB.

In Spain use RENFE or Petrabax.

PHONE APPS

Not surprisingly, there are now lots of phone apps for looking up rail schedules and booking train tickets.

Rome2Rio

Omio

Trainline

Rail Europe

Rome2Rio, Omio, Trainline and Rail Europe are apps for general booking throughout Europe.

German Railways has the phone app DB Navigator

 

Italy has the TrenItalia app.

 

 

 

 

Switzerland has the ZVV-Tickets app.

 

Rick Steves recommends the SBB app for buying tickets in Switzerland, including ZVV tickets. It has the advantage of holding your credit card information and being able to buy ZVV tickets using just the app - tickets are held as QR codes.