Are trains now the most luxurious way to travel?

From Angola to Turkmenistan, sumptuously outfitted railroad cars are taking passengers on over-the-top journeys back in time

- MATTHEW KRONSBERG

FROM THE MID-1970s until the early 2000s, when it was flying between the United States and Europe in under four hours, the Concorde was often likened to a time machine: travelling westward aboard the supersonic jet, you'd arrive earlier than you'd departed.

Luxury train travel, while similarly champagne-soaked, bends time in a different way. "You picture Agatha Christie and the Hapsburgs," says Joan Roca, 49, the founder of Essentialist, a travel firm based in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. In other words, you feel transported back to a slower, more genteel era — one that more travellers seem eager to revisit. Railbookers, a Boston-based agency that specialises in train travel, saw revenue from luxury rail bookings grow 135% over the past three years, with a 41% jump occurring in just the last year.

Though nostalgia colours nearly every aspect of luxury train travel, however, the industry is also forward-looking, and new trains, routes and amenities are being added at a rapid clip. Onboard spas — like the new Dior-branded one on Belmond's Royal Scotsman — are a growing trend. "It really is a blast to have a full-body massage on a rolling train," says Eleanor Flagler Hardy, 73, the president and a co-founder of the Louisville-based International Society of Railway Travelers. Another shift is that cabins are getting larger. Venice Simplon-Orient-Express's new L'Observatoire suite, designed by the contemporary French artist JR, takes up the whole of a 75-foot-long carriage.