From Moscow to Beijing: The World’s Most Insta-Worthy Luxury Train Journeys

🚂 Switzerland’s Bernina Express is Instagram’s most picturesque luxury train journey with 64,296 posts

🚂 The world-famous Jacobite luxurious steam train over the Glenfinnan Viaduct places third with 43,292 hashtagged posts

🚂 The least Instagrammed is the deluxe Venice Simplon-Orient Express (4,430 posts)

Travelling in 2020 was unachievable for most, but if the pandemic has given travellers anything, then it is a larger sense of wanderlust, and hope for 2021.

With travelling back on the agenda for many hopefuls this year, RantCasino.com analysed Instagram hashtag volumes to reveal which popular, luxury train journeys around the world travellers love to post about the most!

The most Instagrammed luxury journey is Switzerland’s Bernina Express, which follows the route through the Swiss Alps into Italy. With windows spanning the entire walls of this train, there is no missing the picturesque views of the mountains. There are a total of 64,296 hashtags for this magnificent journey! Despite this, a single adult standard ticket will only set you back approximately £52.

In second place is Scotland’s Jacobite train journey, made famous as the train that transported Harry, Ron, and Hermione to Hogwarts. There are currently 43,292 documented hashtags for this journey, and an adult standard ticket will set you back £43.

The Trans-Mongolia journey is in third place; the luxury train The Golden Eagle is the train that most frequents this route, with 35,713 hashtagged posts!

Rounding off the top 10 is The Marrakech Express in eighth place. A Moroccan route which covers hundreds of miles all the way from Casablanca to Marrakech and has inspired both songs and films alike, with just 5,156 related hashtags.

In ninth place is the Eastern & Oriental Express, described by the operators as ‘a fabled journey through the exotic East’**. This train travels from Bangkok to Singapore, stopping at wonders like River Kwai Bridge and Kuala Lumpur. Despite these historic sites, the Eastern & Oriental Express has only 4,433 hashtags on Instagram. It is quite expensive, with fares of approximately £2,163.55!

Travelling from London to Paris, Verona and Venice, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express ranks 10^th, with a total of 4,430 posts on Instagram. With fares starting at £4,000 per passenger, this journey is the most expensive of the list. This train covers all routes that the original Orient Express did, including Paris-Istanbul!

Other popular train journeys that didn’t make the top 10 are New Zealand’s Northern Explorer (4,021), the Heart of Wales Line (1,674), and Vietnam’s Reunification Express (1,132).

Since the Orient Express was formally decommissioned in 2009, and the once-renowned carriages turned into hotels, it was not included in these rankings. The Orient Express is perhaps best known for being the setting of Agatha Christie’s 1934 Murder on the Orient Express, with many travellers and budding detectives wanting to pay homage to the journey. This luxurious train has a total of 86,916 hashtagged posts on Instagram!

Methodology:

*RantCasino.com trawled Instagram for hashtags containing the trainline/journey name, as well as each possible spelling variant that existed. For a full summary of the variants, please see the attached Excel sheet.

** Belmond.com

Railway journeys were collated from lists supplied by The Telegraph, Wanderlust, and ABC News regarding popular luxury train journeys.

All data was collected on 13/01/2021 and is correct as of then, but subject to change.

Fare prices, where available, were retrieved from respective train operator websites and converted to pound sterling using Google price converter.

‘Luxurious’ is defined by a combination of scenery, accommodation, dining services, and more.

Photo supplied by Nathapol Chantvaraluk via shutterstock.com.

Header supplied by MchlSkhrv via shutterstock.com.