If you’re a full-on transport freak like me, there’s a problem. You want to go gallivanting around the world, riding all the trains, metros, and trams you can find, mixing TGV with Shinkansen, Deutsche Bahn with Amtrak, and so on.

But the harsh reality is that economic necessity means you have to do a job and get on with life most of the time, and not just sit on trains in a pensieve but ultimately aimless way.

Suffer no longer! Where once only a tiny minority would relish the opportunity of a 55-minute YouTube journey showing the entire journey on an obscure city’s metro line, the beamed-to-your-screen train experience is becoming more mainstream.

It’s early days yet, but here are just a few trains you can ride without leaving your desk. 

It’s just like being there in person, honest. Image: Google Street View.

 

Switzerland’s Rhätische Bahn

In 2012, Google Street View paired up with the Rhaetische Bahn, a local railway company separate from the country’s main SBB-CFF-FFS rail provider, to get one of the world’s most beautiful railway routes added to the Street View catalogue.

The 75.8-mile route of the Albula-Bernina railway line is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and just one of the stunning scenic routes that criss-cross the curious south-eastern part of Switzerland, where the accents are so lousy with thick Swiss German and Romansch notes that they can barely understand each other.

The Google team attached a specially adapted camera carriage to the front of a Rhaetische Bahn train, and off it trundled through the Swiss mountains. And now you can enjoy it over the cheeky Pret salad you bought as a Thursday-lunch desk treat. 

Mmmm, shiny. Image: Google Street View.

 

Japan’s newest Shinkansen

Admittedly, as much of the pleasure for train buffs is the interior of a train as it is the route, the landscape, or the rolling stock itself. Who doesn’t love a tastefully decorated, well-laid out carriage, with plush but not over-exuberant seating and clear but not crude signposting and layout guidance?

As of last year, Google Street View (again) means you can step inside the Hokuriku Shinkansen, the newest addition to the Shinkansen “bullet train” network stretching the two and a half hours from Tokyo to Kanazawa, and explore the train’s three classes – Grand Class, Green Class, and Standard.

Spoiler – it’s a really really nice train. 

This looks more impressive when you watch the real video. Image: Expedia.

 

Norway’s virtual reality train

The Flåm railway line in Western Norway passes through some of Scandinavia’s most beautiful scenery – soaring mountains, plunging valleys, crystalline lakes and dramatic rocky outcrops – and passes by Norway’s largest national park.

But Norway’s kind of expensive, right? Even if you can afford the social and financial cost of going abroad purely to ride on some good trains, the exorbitant cost of living and terrible exchange rate will hit you where it hurts the most, and in this day and age sometimes that’s just not worth it.

But thanks to a handy partnership with Expedia, the mountain line is available as a 360-degree video played at varying speeds to the soundtrack of Edvard Grieg’s Anitras Dance, or as a virtual reality experience.

I’m not entirely clear how that virtual reality experience works, but if you’re someone in the know with a VR-capable device, then this is totally something you can explore in your own free time, as long as the sensation of being virtually strapped to a train trundling through the mountains doesn’t freak you out. 

*Nerdiness intensifies*. Image: Google Street View.

 

Tiny train trips

And if all of that from-your-desk travelling feels a little strange and fabricated, you can dive right in and actually explore an entirely fake train-centred world.

Thanks to another Google Street View special, the extraordinarily detailed and intricate fantasy land of the Miniatur Wunderland – the world’s largest model railway, in Hamburg, Germany – is available from your computer screen. You can explore the ‘Swiss’ mountain valley where they’re working on a gargantuan new bridge, or pop into the Munich beer hall and hope that nobody tries to talk politics to you.

All in all, a world of fun available at the click of a mouse.

Don’t say we don’t treat you right. 

Jack May is a regular contributor to CityMetric and tweets as @JackO_May.

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