World's Scariest Train Rides

Courtesy White Pass & Yukon Route Alaska

Most train rides are so slow and languorous that you're nearly lulled into a nap as you glide serenely past scenes of forested hillsides and wildflower-dotted meadows.

Some train rides, however, are disconcerting enough to prompt unease in even the calmest travelers. Alaska's White Pass & Yukon Route, for example, seems to chug almost straight up in the air (it climbs some 3,000 vertical feet in just 20 miles); on Argentina's aptly named Tren a las Nubes ("Train to the Clouds"), the Andean views are vertigo-inducing at almost 14,000 feet.