The 32 greatest train movies of all time

What are the greatest train movies of all time? Well, that's a tricky question to answer when you take into account the history that these vehicles have with the silver screen. Trains have been a part of cinema history since almost the very beginning; one of the first great films was a silent, 50-second-long short of a train pulling into a French station.

Although there's almost certainly no truth to the popular myth that audiences in 1985 ran screaming from the theater because they thought the image on the screen was a real oncoming locomotive, train movies would have audiences clapping and cheering at the movies for decades and decades to come. In short, there is surprisingly a lot of train-centered films to pick from come your next movie night.

However, these are the 32 greatest train movies in film history. Many of them are set entirely on trains or feature something railroad-related as the major inciting incident. Others don't stay on the train tracks the entire time but instead have one incredible, iconic scene that merits their inclusion. All aboard, because this list is leaving the station.

32. The Polar Express

Year: 2004
Director: Robert Zemeckis

Inexplicably, a holiday classic despite looking like a nightmare straight from the darkest depths of the uncanny valley, Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of the truly beloved children's book might be alright if not for the motion-capture technology he used to make it. The train itself in The Polar Express is actually kind of wonderful as it makes a magical Christmas journey to the North Pole; the humans aboard, including a conductor played by Tom Hanks, are dead-eyed and bad to look at.

31. The Girl on the Train

Year: 2016
Director: Tate Taylor

This adaptation of author Paula Hawkins' popular novel of the same name stars Emily Blunt who delivers a good performance as always. The problem with The Girl on the Train, which follows a woman whose personal issues make her an unreliable narrator and who becomes involved when a woman she always noticed while riding the train goes missing, is that it seems to think it's an intelligent, psychological thriller. However, The Girl on the Train really is a pulpy airport paperback. That's not an insult, as those can be extremely enjoyable. The movie just needed to have a little more fun.

30. Death Train

Year: 1993
Director: David Jackson

A cool thing about trains is how big and fast they are, and Death Train, an early-'90s made-for-TV movie with a surprisingly stacked cast, understands that. When a rogue Russian general (Christopher Lee) loads a nuke on a train bound for Iraq with the hopes that it will force the former Soviet Union to invade and thereby regain their global superpower status, the United Nations must act to stop the train and recover the bomb. Patrick Stewart and Pierce Brosnan star in this enjoyable enough action movie whose geopolitics make it a fascinating '90s time capsule.

29. Bullet Train

Year: 2022
Director: David Leitch

Director and stunt coordinator David Leitch got behind the controls of this 2022 Brad Pitt vehicle, following Pitt's retired assassin as he boards a bullet train in Japan for one last job, trying to recover a briefcase on behalf of his client. Unfortunately for him, there are a bunch of other highly trained killers aboard hoping to get the briefcase for themselves. Although not extraordinary, Bullet Train has solid action and solid laughs, even if it does seem a little too pleased with how clever it thinks it is.

28. Breakheart Pass

Year: 1975
Director: Tom Gries

A pulpy Western that's also a whodunit mystery and features practical stunts like a real train getting derailed and spectacularly crashing for the cameras, Breakheart Pass is a lot of movie. Charles Bronson stars as an undercover agent aboard a train headed for the frontier in the 1870s when he discovers that the passengers aboard are being offed one by one. Lacking in subtlety but making up for it in gruff machismo (if that's your thing), there are parts of Breakheart Pass that haven't aged especially well. The sight of a real train crashing, though, somehow hits on a different level even today than the best CGI could hope for.

27. TransSiberian

Year: 2008
Director: Brad Anderson

Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer star as married couple Roy and Jessie as they journey from Beijing to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Along the way, they encounter another couple (played by Kate Mara and Eduardo Noriega), soon finding themselves involved in a tense, drug-smuggling operation filled with murder, danger, and deception. It's a nice suspenseful thriller that uses its setting well; when you're on a moving train you're inherently kind of trapped on it, even more so if the only thing outside the windows is the icy Siberian wilderness.

26. The Bullet Train

Year: 1975
Director: Junya Sato

Just under 20 years before Keanu Reeves sat behind the wheel of a bus that couldn't slow down or else it would explode, a bullet train (Shinkansen) sped through Japan, unable to go under 80 km/hr or else the bomb aboard would go off. The Bullet Train is an exciting action flick that's also a testament to the near-immaculate professionalism of Japan's public transportation. A sequel, Bullet Train Explosion, hit Netflix 50 years after the original.

25. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Year: 2001
Director: Chris Columbus

The Hogwarts Express, the magical train that takes students from Platform 9¾ to the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, features in almost every Harry Potter movie. It's perhaps never more magical than in the first one, as its in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that the Boy Who Lived (Daniel Radcliffe) first meets his future friends-for-life Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) and gets his first real taste of the warmth and wonder of Hogwarts and his new life.

24. Runaway Train

Year: 1985
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky

Runaway Train sounds like it could be any number of mostly forgotten '80s action movies, were it not for the fact that the movie scored three Academy Award nominations—including two acting nods for Jon Voight and Eric Roberts. The pair play escaped convicts who get out of prison only to find themselves trapped on a speeding, runaway train as it plows through the Alaskan wilderness. Another reason Runaway Train is notable? It's Danny Trejo's feature film debut, though his part is tiny.

23. Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Year: 2017
Director: Kenneth Branagh

The 2017 remake of Murder on the Orient Express, an adaptation of arguably the most celebrated Agatha Christie novel, isn't as good as the 1974 film that came before it. There's a modern sheen to star-director Kenneth Branagh's take that is enjoyable enough to watch but robs the movie of some of its cozy whodunit gravitas. What the remake does have going for it is an absurdly great cast, including Tom Bateman, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Daisy Ridley.

22. Source Code

Year: 2011
Director: Duncan Jones

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this clever sci-fi action flick, playing a US Army officer who, thanks to some cutting-edge technology (that makes no sense if you think about it too hard but makes for a cool movie premise if you just go with it), is inside a virtual recreation of a train shortly before it explodes. His mission? Relive the simulation over and over again until he can find some clue from before the bombing that might identify the culprit and stop another attack.

21. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning

Year: 2023
Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Tom Cruise's IMF agent extraordinaire, Ethan Hunt, must race to put a stop to a rogue, seemingly omnipotent AI before it gets in the wrong hands or destroys the world. His impossible mission culminates aboard the Orient Express, where Ethan and pickpocket-turned ally Grace (Hayley Atwell) try to recover the crucial key to controlling the Entity as things go off the rails—literally. The bad guys blow up a bridge, sending the whole train over the edge, and Ethan and Grace have to climb up car after car, dodging falling obstacles, in one of the greatest action set pieces the franchise has to offer.

20. The Taking of Pelham 123

Year: 2009
Director: Tony Scott

The 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 doesn't have the same 1970s charm and unparalleled New York City vibe as the 1974 movie, but it does have Tony Scott in the director's chair, and Tony Scott knew how to make a film propulsive. Denzel Washington stars as an MTA subway dispatcher who finds himself negotiating with a hijacker (John Travolta) who has taken a subway train hostage. Scott ramps up the energy for the remake, resulting in a fast-moving film that sometimes puts style and action over substance, but the style and the action are pretty enjoyable nonetheless.

19. High Noon

Year: 1952
Director: Fred Zinnemann

Very little of the classic Western High Noon takes place on a train, but the arrival of one locomotive is central to the plot. Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, the marshal of a small New Mexico town who is ready to retire with his new bride (Grace Kelly). However, a dangerous criminal he helped put behind bars has gotten out, and he's due in town on the 12 o'clock train and wants revenge. As the clock ticks in real time, Kane attempts to gather up a posse before the train arrives—but nobody in town has the courage to stand with him.

18. Closely Watched Trains

Year: 1966
Director: Jiří Menzel

Famed Czech New Wave director Jiří Menzel's 1966 movie Closely Watched Trains is a comedic coming-of-age story with a decidedly dark slant, following a young man, Miloš Hrma, as he gets his first job at a train station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. Miloš isn't really interested in the war or doing work, though. Instead, like many youths, he's interested in girls. That youthful lust ends up getting him more involved than he might have wanted.

17. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Year: 1987
Director: John Hughes

Trains are the form of transportation that make up a full third of the title of John Hughes' classic '80s comedy. Steve Martin and John Candy star as two very different travelers—an uptight executive and a good-natured buffoon—who end up having to make a complicated trip to Chicago together when a series of mishaps derails their original plans. It's a great buddy movie, one of the best road trip movies, and a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition, since it culminates in the pair having a nice turkey dinner together.

16. The Warriors

Year: 1979
Director: Walter Hill

In this cult classic, colorful gangs have essentially overtaken New York City. A midnight summit draws every gang to Van Cortlandt Park way up in the Bronx—including the Warriors, a gang from Coney Island, way down in Brooklyn. When the Warriors are framed for the murder of the gang leader proposing an alliance, they need to flee back to Brooklyn with every cop and every gang member in the city on their tail. This involves taking the subway, and as anybody who has ever lived in New York will tell you, it's a long, long journey. (Even more so when you have groups with names like the Baseball Furies chasing you with bats.)

15. Blind Chance

Year: 1987
Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski

Blind Chance, from Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, explores how seemingly little things can drastically change the course of our lives. The film shows what happens when a young man, Witek (Bogusław Linda), tries to catch a train to Warsaw. Told in three parts depicting three different scenarios—one where he bumps into a man and barely catches the train, one where he bumps the man and ends up getting himself arrested, and one where he bumps into the man and apologies, missing the train but meeting an old fling—Blind Chance is an exceptional film that might make you think really carefully about the next time you need to board a train.

14. The Wrong Trousers

Year: 1993
Director: Nick Park

The second and best of the Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers, follows the cheery, cheese-obsessed inventor and his loyal-but-exasperated silent hound after a penguin criminal called Feathers McGraw uses Wallace's latest invention, robotic pants, to steal a diamond. The action culminates on a high-speed chase aboard a toy train set; an extremely fun and inventive sequence that at one point has Gromit laying down track as fast as he can while the tiny locomotive he's on speeds ahead.

13. The Darjeeling Limited

Year: 2007
Director: Wes Anderson

Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Adrien Brody star as three estranged brothers who decide to reunite in India and go on a journey of healing and self-discovery aboard the titular train. Although frequently considered one of Wes Anderson's lesser movies—and certainly one that invites criticism in the way its white protagonists use India as an exotic local for their own spiritual journey—The Darjeeling Limited is a stylish, profound movie about grief and sibling bonds, and it's got a pretty great train at the center of it.

12. Spider-Man 2

Year: 2004
Director: Sam Raimi

One of the greatest action sequences in any superhero movie takes place in Sam Raimi's second Spider-Man movie as Spidey (Tobey Maguire) fights Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) atop a subway train as it speeds through New York City on an elevated rail. It's thrilling, but even more than that, it's an incredible showcase of heroism of all kinds, as Spider-Man puts it all on the line to stop the train from crashing and killing everyone aboard—and the average New Yorkers inside step forward to protect Spidey as best they can from this supervillain. There's a reason why Spider-Man 2 is one of the greatest New York City movies of all time… even if the specific above-ground train that the Web-Slinger's riding on doesn't actually exist.

11. The Great Train Robbery

Year: 1903
Director: Edwin S. Porter

One of the earliest and greatest Westerns, 1903's The Great Train Robbery is a 13-minute silent short film about exactly what you'd expect it to be with that title. Over the course of its short but action-packed (especially for the era) runtime, The Great Train Robbery follows a group of thieves as they steal from a locomotive at gunpoint in the Wild West before fleeing to the wilderness and eventually getting caught and shot themselves by a local posse. Though a fairly rudimentary narrative by modern standards, The Great Train Robbery's story and violence helped it stand out during cinema's early era.

10. Snowpiercer

Year: 2013
Director: Bong Joon Ho

Korean director Bong Joon Ho's English-language debut takes place entirely aboard a futuristic train that speeds around the entire world; the last refuge of humanity following a climate apocalypse that rendered the outside world a barren, frozen hellscape. Snowpiercer is an action-packed class metaphor; the first-class riders near the front of the train live in luxury; the people back in the caboose live in squalor. Rebellion is inevitable, and Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) ends up leading the residents of the tail section in a violent, bizarre fight towards the engine room.

9. Before Sunrise

Year: 1995
Director: Richard Linklater

A thing trains have over driving a car is that you're unlikely to meet the person of your dreams if you're both behind the wheel of your own automobile. In contrast, if you're on the same train from Budapest to Vienna, as Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) are, you might get to talking. Richard Linklater's universally acclaimed romance film follows Jesse and Céline after they disembark and decide to spend the night together. It's a magical film, and it's all possible because of trains.

8. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Year: 1974
Director: Sidney Lumet

The great Sidney Lumet was the engineer behind the definitive adaptation of Agatha Christie's iconic 1934 mystery novel of the same name. Albert Finney stars as the great Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, a passenger on the Orient Express who is determined to discover the culprit behind the murder of an American business tycoon. Anyone in the all-star casts—whose ranks include Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, and Vanessa Redgrave—might be responsible. They all had a motive…

7. Strangers on a Train

Year: 1951
Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Farley Granger plays Guy Haines, an up-and-coming tennis star who wants to divorce his wife so he can marry his girlfriend. While riding a train, Bruno Antony (Robert Walker), a man who is eventually revealed to be a psychopath, starts chatting with him. Bruno would really like for his father not to be around anymore; Guy wants his wife out of the picture. Why not do a "murder swap," Bruno proposes. That way, they'd both get away with it, since they're just strangers on the train with no connection to each other or the victims. Although Guy doesn't agree to this insane idea, Bruno goes ahead with it anyway and kills Guy's wife, putting the tennis player in a bind when Bruno demands Guy follow through on his end of the "bargain."

6. Train to Busan

Year: 2016
Director: Yeon Sang-ho

One of the best zombie movies of the century so far is also a great train movie, as 2016's Train to Busan follows a workaholic father and his somewhat estranged young daughter as they board a high-speed rail train to Busan, where the movie is set, just as a zombie outbreak begins. Although only one infected gets aboard at first, it soon spreads through the cars like a violent, bloody wildfire, forcing father, daughter, and the surviving passengers to flee for their lives towards their engine. Exhilarating and scary with a surprisingly devastating emotional core, Train to Busan is a horror and locomotive masterpiece.

5. Brief Encounter

Year: 1954
Director: David Lean

Celia Johnson stars as Laura Jesson, a woman in a fine-enough but passion-free marriage living in England who has a chance meeting with Trevor Howard as Dr Alec Harvey at a train station. When the two cross paths again, they hit it off, beginning a torrid emotional affair as they meet during her weekly trip to Milford each Thursday. An astounding film about passion and repression, Brief Encounter is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.

4. Unstoppable

Year: 2010
Director: Tony Scott

Unstoppable isn't a train movie so much as it's a movie about, as Rosario Dawson's character calls it, "a missile the size of the Chrysler Building." Tony Scott's final film stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as a veteran engineer and a hotshot rookie, respectively, who become the only chance of stopping a runaway freight train speeding towards a populated area—and the train is loaded with toxic and volatile chemicals. Unstoppable is a thrill, and Scott, the director of Top Gun, who has some experience making things look like they are going as fast as they really are on camera, ensures that the runaway locomotive looks every bit the speeding juggernaut it is.

3. The General

Year: 1926
Directors Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman

Buster Keaton stars in what might be the most incredible collection of stunts ever filmed. In The General, Keaton plays a Civil War-era train engineer who must single-handedly try to chase down the enemy soldiers who have stolen his train, with the girl he's in love with aboard! A masterpiece of physical comedy and early silent-era action, it's worth reminding yourself periodically during The General that Keaton is doing all these antics on top of or in front of an actual moving train. It's insanely dangerous and insanely fun to watch.

2. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Year: 1974
Director: Joseph Sargent

Perhaps the greatest movie about New York City ever made, 1974's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a lovingly grimy portrait of the Big Apple, telling the story of a group of hijackers (led by Robert Shaw) who have taken control of a subway car. It's up to Lt. Zachary Garber (played by the great Walter Matthau at perhaps his most hangdog) to handle this hostage situation and bring the criminals to justice. It's a breezy, textured crime thriller.

1. The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station

Year: 1986
Directors: Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière

No movie about trains has delivered on the promise of its title as fully as the Lumière Brothers' landmark 1986 silent short film. Titled L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat in the original French, the 50-second short shows a locomotive as it does indeed arrive at La Ciotat Station, with people mulling about on the platform. It is, in a sense, the purest form of train cinema imaginable, even if it's not quite thrilling enough to actually get people panicking in the theater, afraid they're about to get run over by a team engine exploding through the screen.