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Ten films with memorable train journeys

What makes memorable train journeys hold attention is the way cinema finds drama in both what happens aboard a carriage and the landscapes passing outside it. A station platform, a tunnel or a sudden change of weather can alter the meaning of everything said between two passengers. These journeys turn movement into suspense, comedy or reflection, and make the route itself part of the story. Learn more about How To Start A Herb Spiral For Small Spaces.

For Australian viewers, the subject has familiar echoes. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth all have rail cultures shaped by suburban commutes, long-distance services and the occasional dramatic delay. An arvo screening can recreate that rhythm: a carriage window in the afternoon, a story unfolding at its own pace. The comparison is useful because these films understand both the routine and the disruption of travel.

Physical media makes this kind of discovery especially satisfying. A cover, a director’s cut or a familiar transfer can offer an alternative to a streaming interface that quietly nudges every choice towards the same popular recommendations. Browsing a rental shelf still permits accidents, comparisons and the pleasure of following a single performer or director across decades.

Seattle’s Rain City Video embraces that approach, with tens of thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays spanning classic, foreign, cult, documentary, independent and mainstream cinema. Its online film rental catalogue opens the door for viewers who want a particular journey rather than whatever an algorithm decides to offer next, whether they are planning a quiet evening or a long weekend with friends.

Classic engines and comic chaos

In The General (1926), Buster Keaton turns a Civil War railway into the setting for his most astonishing physical comedy. His engineer drives a locomotive pursued by Union soldiers, and the famous sequence in which the track is pulled from beneath the train combines engineering ingenuity with increasingly precarious stunts. The railway is not merely a backdrop; its wheels, couplings and steam become participants in the comedy.

Hitchcock brought a different energy to the railway in The 39 Steps (1935). A vague hand from an enemy sends journalist Richard Hannay racing across Scotland towards London, with train services helping him evade pursuit. The famous Scottish scenes place him beside a loch and among windswept moors, while the railway journeys sustain the chase. His nervous behaviour at a picnic produces one of the screen’s great demonstrations of physical suspense.

The Lady Vanishes (1938) turns an English country railway into a mechanism for mystery. A service delayed by eccentric cricket players creates confusion around a vanished passenger, while a hollow cricket ball conceals the vital clue. People enter and leave the train with motives concealed, and the carriage repeatedly changes who can be seen and who knows the truth. Keaton makes us laugh at machinery; Hitchcock makes us study it.

Suspicion and elegance in the same carriage

Strangers on a Train (1951) begins with a proposal that sounds like dark humour: two strangers agree to exchange murders, each killing the other’s obstacle. Hitchcock develops that device across intersecting lives, from a watched sporting event to a crowded carriage. The railway matters because temporary proximity allows the conspiracy to grow, while passing scenery creates a rhythm of approach and withdrawal that the characters cannot control.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974) replaces Hitchcock’s nervous mobility with Agatha Christie’s immaculate ensemble. The snowbound train travelling from Istanbul towards Western Europe becomes a hotel, a courtroom and a suspicious waiting room. Each passenger carries a possible motive, but the film’s real achievement is visual: the camera studies faces, gestures and shared spaces until the reader of the frame can piece together the puzzle.

One film conceals danger among strangers, while the other displays it in plain sight. Both make the carriage’s restricted geography essential to the suspense. For viewers who want a lasting edition rather than an evening’s rental, Rain City Video’s second-hand section offers a route towards building a shelf around favourite directors, performers and railway stories.

Railways under extreme pressure

Runaway Train (1985) begins with a prison transport crossing a frozen Soviet wilderness. The train’s violence and speed escalate until surviving the journey appears more important than escaping it. Andrei Konchalovsky photographs the carriages with a cold, metallic intensity, while arguments over brakes, fuel and authority turn the passengers into a volatile community. A railway that once represented order becomes something with no reliable control.

In The Train (1964), Costa-Gavras turns a railway line into a front in the French Resistance. Its driver refuses to let a train carrying prisoners continue towards a camp, sabotaging the track and accepting the consequences for passengers and captors alike. The measured storytelling makes each obstruction more disturbing. Stopping the journey is presented as an act of conscience, yet the film also examines the terrible responsibility carried by the person who pulls the lever.

Shanghai Express (1932) offers a different kind of danger: melodrama at full speed. Marlene Dietrich plays a glamorous passenger whose past catches up with her aboard a train crossing dangerous territory, where bandits and rival plans converge. Josef von Sternberg uses mirrored walls, rushing sand and close-ups to amplify every flirtation and threat. The result is a railway thriller in which movement constantly promises escape without ever delivering it.

Long-distance eccentricities and sealed worlds

Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited (2007) sends three brothers across India in a colourful but argumentative pilgrimage. Their spiritual ambitions are repeatedly interrupted by personal resentments, missed connections and railway bureaucracy. The train supplies visual pleasure as it moves through the landscape, but it also keeps the brothers together with the conflicts they have been avoiding. Its final emotional turn makes the journey feel less like simple tourism than an examination of family.

The soundtrack is central to that experience, and a neighbourhood record shop can be a natural place to prepare for it. Seattle’s Hubbard’s Music and More reflects the independent retail culture familiar from Australian inner-city strips, where music discovery and film communities often overlap. Snowpiercer (2013) offers a very different musical world, but equally uses the sounds of engines, alarms and confinement to make its railway feel like a complete civilisation.

Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer places survivors aboard a perpetually moving train divided into rigid social classes. The carriages become a map of inequality, from the privileged compartments to the crowded tail. Movement no longer means freedom: crossing the train requires violence, and even the engine at its centre remains governed by rules about who deserves warmth and power. The journey survives because stopping is impossible.

Both films make the railway a test of character. In The Darjeeling Limited, movement offers a chance to mend relationships, though the conclusion is painfully ironic. Snowpiercer suggests that continued movement can become another form of violence. Their trains travel in opposite emotional directions, yet both show how a closed metal environment magnifies behaviour that might otherwise remain ordinary.

Two ways to build a train-themed night

A railway-themed evening can be organised by tone rather than chronology. The compact option favours visual comedy and tightly plotted suspense, while the longer option gives the carriage more time to reveal its passengers and surrounding landscape.

For a compact evening:

Rain City Video’s short-film rental collection provides a useful extension for viewers who want shorter pieces of cinema without surrendering the pleasure of discovery.

For a longer and more intense journey:

The compact route leaves space for conversation between films, with each journey ending before the audience loses its appetite for carriages. The longer route rewards patience. Its passengers become more revealing as the journey continues, and the landscapes outside acquire emotional weight that a brief sequence could not establish.

Keeping the journey on a physical shelf

Physical media suits railway films because it preserves the details that make them distinctive. Aspect ratios, film grain, subtitle design and soundtrack transfers remain tangible features rather than invisible defaults. A disc can also bring together films made decades apart, allowing a home collection to trace changing styles of travel, comedy and suspense. Rain City Video’s shelves make that sense of continuity tangible for Seattle visitors and viewers browsing from overseas.

Australian release history gives physical collecting its own character. Many locally issued DVDs use PAL transfers, while Blu-ray is generally region-free, allowing collections to combine discs from different countries. Classification differences and the timing of Australian releases mean that a local shelf can tell a different story from a North American one. Independent cinemas, film clubs and specialist second-hand sellers also keep film discovery active when streaming catalogues rotate.

Compact living spaces inspire their own small viewing rituals. In a Sydney or Melbourne flat, even the windowsill can join the ritual: starting a herb spiral turns a limited patch into a deliberate sequence of layered growth. It is not a film set, but the appeal is related: order, rhythm and visible progress reward close attention.

A train journey works on film because it makes waiting part of the experience. Every carriage scene changes the distance between people, and every passing landscape gives the story a wider world. On a disc, that sense of departure can linger long after the final credit.