One of these takes eight hours to cover 291 km. The last crosses eight time zones on a single ticket. Nine railways that run the full length of a country.
The Glacier Express crosses 291 bridges and 91 tunnels between Zermatt and St. Moritz, covering just 291 km. It markets itself as the slowest express train in the world.
Rovos Rail spends three days and two nights on 1,600 km, crossing the Highveld, the diamond country around Kimberley and the dry Karoo before the Winelands.
The 1,726 km line from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City takes 32 to 35 hours. Near the Hai Van Pass the track runs on a narrow ledge between the mountain and open sea.
The Ghan runs 2,979 km between Darwin and Adelaide, splitting Australia from north to south. It takes its name from the Afghan cameleers who first worked the route.
The Vivek Express links Dibrugarh in Assam to Kanyakumari at India's southern tip: about 4,189 km in roughly 75 hours, through eight states and 57 stops.
Sydney to Perth is 4,352 km. Out on the Nullarbor Plain the Indian Pacific runs 478 km without a single bend, the longest dead-straight railway track on Earth.
The Canadian covers 4,466 km from Toronto to Vancouver over four nights, crossing the prairies flat and empty before climbing into the Rockies around Jasper.
Moscow to Beijing takes about six days via Ulaanbaatar and the Gobi. At the Mongolia–China border the carriages are lifted so their wheels can be swapped to a new gauge.
The Trans-Siberian runs 9,289 km from Moscow to Vladivostok, the longest continuous railway anywhere. A week on board, and the clock shifts eight separate times.
None of these are museum pieces. Every route here still runs scheduled services — a whole country's width, measured out in nights instead of hours.