Travelling on trains

Across Mongolia

I am about to start on a 3 week trip to the North Island of New Zealand which includes a train trip, the Auckland Wellington Northern Explorer, described by The Man in Seat Sixty One as

..an epic 681 kilometre (423 mile) journey right across the interior of the North Island, taking you in a single day past every kind of scenery there is, from coastline to volcanoes to mountains, from lush green farmland to thick New Zealand rainforest.

This has made me think about the train journeys I have done and why I am so enamoured of travelling by train.