Pick a country. Take the driver's seat.

What GONOM is

GONOM collects full-length train journeys filmed from the driver’s cab or the front window, and writes an original guide for each one: where the line runs, why it was built, what to watch for along the way and how you could ride it yourself. The videos stay on their owners’ YouTube channels; the guides, maps and diagrams are written and drawn by GONOM.

Spin the globe above, pick a country and choose a train. Each journey page has the video, a station-by-station route diagram drawn from open map data, the key facts about the line and links to the sources we used. New journeys arrive every day and are listed on the Notices page.

Journeys by region

• Europe · 22 — Bergen Line, Nordland Line, Flåm Line, Ofoten Line and Iron Ore Line, Roslagsbanan, Zwolle–Amsterdam via Amersfoort, Trutnov–Teplice nad Metují line, Glacier Express route, Bernina Line, Bernese Oberland Railway, Gotthard mountain line, Dartmoor Line, Highland Main Line, West Highland Line, East Coast Main Line, Semmering Railway, Left Rhine Railway through the Rhine Gorge, Douro Line, Bohinj Railway, Cinque Terre Coast Line, Dovre Line, Ferrol–Gijón Railway (Ribadeo – Viveiro)
• Asia · 12 — Gonō Line (Resort Shirakami), Yamanote Line (inner loop), Tadami Line, KTX Gangneung Line, Donghae Line, Gyeongchun Line, Yeongdong Line, Haeundae Blue Line Park, Nilgiri Mountain Railway, Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Main Line through the Hill Country, Alishan Forest Railway
• Americas · 4 — BART Yellow Line, Royal Gorge Route Railroad, Curitiba–Paranaguá Railway (Serra Verde Express), White Pass & Yukon Route
• Oceania · 1 — TranzAlpine

Subway maps

Alongside the trains, GONOM draws its own schematic maps of 35 metro networks from open station data, with notes on the stations worth getting off at: Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston, New York – New Jersey, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, London, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Milan, Budapest, Warsaw, Athens, Tbilisi.

This week's picks

A different set of three journeys is picked each week.

• Nordland LineNorway's longest railway, filmed by NRK on a summer day in 2012: fjords, forest valleys and the climb over Saltfjellet across the Arctic Circle to Bodø.
• East Coast Main LineA real-time cab ride on Britain's East Coast Main Line from York to Newcastle, across the flat Vale of York, past Durham Cathedral and over the Tyne.
• Haeundae Blue Line ParkA front-window ride on the Haeundae Sky Capsule from Cheongsapo to Mipo, on an elevated rail above the old Donghae Nambu Line along the Busan coast.

Reading guides

• How mountain railways climb: loops, spirals, switchbacks and rackWhy trains cannot simply go straight up a mountain, and how engineers used curves, spirals, zigzags, rack rails and viaducts to gain height, with GONOM rides for each.
• How to watch a cab-ride video: signals, signs and what the driver seesA viewer's guide to driver's-view train videos: signals, speed boards, gradient posts, passing loops, level crossings and tunnels, with what to look for on GONOM routes.
• Korea's east coast by rail: Gangwon, the Donghae Line and BusanHow Korea's east coast fits together by train, from the KTX to Gangneung and the new Donghae Line to Busan's seaside railway, and what each GONOM cab ride shows.
• Japan beyond the Shinkansen: slow local lines worth watchingWhy Japan's rural railways reward a slow ride: the Tadami and Gonō lines on GONOM, how one-person trains and unstaffed stations work, and how to reach them from the city.