What this site is
Best Train Rides is a directory of Canada's scenic and heritage railways — every operating excursion railway, heritage line and museum ride we can confirm, plus the great scheduled train journeys and the seasonal calendars (fall colours, Christmas trains) that help travellers plan around them. It exists because no such directory did: the famous names were easy to find, but Canada's smaller railways — the volunteer-run steam lines, the mine trains, the prairie excursion railways — were scattered across a hundred separate websites, and more than a few "best train rides" lists still recommend railways that have closed.
How a railway gets listed
The directory began as a complete survey of train rides in Canada. Every entry is checked against the operator's own website or official listing before it appears here: if a ride cannot be confirmed to be carrying passengers, it is not listed — whatever older listicles say. That rule cuts both ways. Two of Ontario's best-known heritage railways have closed — one as recently as 2024 — and are absent here on purpose; small rides that bigger sites have never heard of are present because their operators' own pages confirm them.
How listings are labelled
Every listing carries two labels, so the directory never flatters itself. The first says what kind of ride it is — a train operation, a small museum ride, a rail-adjacent ride (a funicular, pedal railbikes), or a miniature & park train. Miniatures are listed in their own section and never counted in the headline railway numbers. The second label is an operating status: Operating, Seasonal — dates pending, or Paused. An operation that has paused rather than closed stays listed, labelled Paused, with the position stated in its summary — and it is kept out of every operating count until it runs again.
How it stays current
Every listing card shows the month it was last checked, and the whole directory is re-checked each winter against the operators' official sources. Seasons on this site are typical operating patterns, not live departure boards — they tell you when a railway ordinarily runs, and the operator's own site is always the place to confirm this year's dates and book. Details an operator has never published — a fare, a ride duration, parking — are shown on each railway's page as "Not published by the operator" rather than guessed at.
Help keep it accurate
Local knowledge beats desk research. If you know a railway we've missed, use the submit-a-listing form; if something on a listing has changed, use the correction form (each railway's own page links straight to it). Everything suggested goes to a human review queue and is checked against the operator's official source before anything is published — nothing goes live on a suggestion alone.
Who runs it
Best Train Rides is published by the operator of RV Resources (rvresources.ca is its Canadian edition) and RV Camping Canada — Canadian travel directories for RV travellers. It is an independent guide: it is not affiliated with any railway it lists, and no operator can pay to be listed, ranked or described more kindly.