The train leaves at 7.42 in the morning and will cover roughly the distance of a short flight in a little under nine hours. This is not a flaw in the timetable but its entire purpose. The Larchline, a privately operated heritage service that climbs through the eastern Alps from the Inn valley toward the Italian border, travels at an average speed that would embarrass a cyclist. Its six carriages, restored from 1950s stock, carry no more than a hundred and twenty passengers, and every seat has been sold since June.
Slow rail is having a remarkable moment. Across Europe, night trains that were being dismantled a decade ago have returned, often full. In North America, scenic lines through the mountains of New England and the Canadian Rockies report record autumn bookings. Operators speak of a new kind of passenger: younger than the traditional rail enthusiast, less interested in locomotives than in time itself, and willing to pay a premium for a journey that deliberately refuses to be efficient.
The reasons are layered. Carbon anxiety plays a part, and so does a growing weariness with the humiliations of airports. But the travellers I met on the Larchline talked less about emissions than about attention. On a plane, the journey is dead time, something to be endured with headphones. On a slow train, the landscape becomes the event. You watch the valleys narrow, the larches turn gold, the farmhouses thin out as the line climbs. The window is the whole entertainment.
Learning to arrive late
The dining car is where the philosophy of the Larchline becomes clearest. Lunch is served over two unhurried hours: a barley soup, venison with lingonberries, a slice of walnut cake with coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in. There is no wifi, a policy the operator introduced after passengers requested it. Conversations drift between tables. A retired schoolteacher from Graz explained the geology of every passing ridge; a pair of young architects from Rotterdam sketched the stations as we pulled through them.
People board thinking they are buying a ticket to somewhere. By the afternoon they realise they have bought a day.
That line belongs to Ottilie Brandauer, who revived the service in 2019 after the regional railway abandoned it. She runs the Larchline with a staff of thirty and a stubbornness she describes as inherited from her grandfather, a signalman on the same route. She has resisted every proposal to speed the journey up, add more carriages or install screens. “Every improvement anyone suggests would destroy the thing people are coming for,” she says. “We are selling slowness. You cannot optimise slowness.”
Not everyone is convinced the trend can last. Slow rail remains expensive, and in many countries the infrastructure is fragile, dependent on subsidies, volunteers and the enthusiasm of a few determined individuals. A missed connection can turn a romantic journey into a logistical ordeal. And there is a risk that slowness becomes a boutique experience for the few rather than a genuine alternative for the many. The night-train revival will ultimately be judged by whether ordinary commuters use it, not holidaymakers.
Still, as the Larchline crested its final pass in the late afternoon, the carriage fell almost silent. The light had turned amber, the forest below was a patchwork of rust and gold, and the train slowed further to take the long curve of a timber viaduct. Somebody opened a window, and cold air carrying the smell of pine filled the carriage. Nobody reached for a camera. For a few minutes, it felt as though the journey had no destination at all, which was precisely the point.
