Luxury touring company Journeys of Distinction has picked its favorite rail journeys from around the world — here, a pictoral look at some of the best.

The legendary Orient Express train was on display at the Gare de l’Est railway station in Paris on Tuesday 26th April.

France’s state-owned rail company SNCF opened the train, the set of the famous Agatha Christie’s novel, to the public for an unprecedented tour.

The event marks the SNCF Thriller Prize finals, consisting in readers’ voting for their favorite detective novel of the year, along with an exhibition “Trains du mystere” showing the interlaces between rail and crime literature in the past 150 years.

A hotel in the northern Japan city of Nagano has installed one of the largest scale model railway sets in the country in a special luxury suite.

The diorama measures 6 meters by nearly 2 meters wide and displays many of the prefecture’s most popular tourist spots, including Zenkoji Temple and Nagano’s famous mountains.

The Hotel Metropolitan’s model has four kinds of electric trains that guests can steer around the track, including a miniature version of the Asama “shinkansen,” the bullet train that runs between Nagano and Tokyo.

British designers Priestmangoode have unveiled a conceptual high-speed train for the UK.

The London studio have created the design, entitled Mercury, in an attempt persuade the British government to advance the project.

Paul Priestman of Priestmangoode, designer of the iconic Virgin Pendolino train, believes that the new high speed train is vital for the future of Britain.

An exhibition of European royal trains is to go on show at the Dutch Rail Museum in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

The collection, which includes trains used by Tsar Alexander II of Russia and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, opens to the public on April 15.

The collection will be opened by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who will arrive in her own royal train — which will then go on display at the museum.

China on Saturday unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world — a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour.