Riding the Rails With the Man in Seat 61

Q. and A. For train travelers, Mark Smith’s website is the go-to source for timetables, maps and booking details in more than 100 countries. Train travel is going through a bit of a renaissance as people reconsider the carbon emissions squashed seating and increasing fees of flying.

The man with a front-row seat to the rail resurgence is Mark Smith, the founder of the train travel website The Man in Seat 61. His site has timetables, maps, reviews, booking details and everything else needed to plan train (and even some ferry) trips in more than 100 countries. Mr. Smith started the site on a whim after buying a book on coding in 2001.

He wanted a place to show how easy it was to take the train from Britain to locations across Europe and further abroad, and had noticed how hard it was to find information on how to do it. “The travel industry is really set up to sell you flights, flights, car hires and more flights,” he said. In 2007 he was able to quit his job with British Rail to run the site full-time. Today, The Man in Seat 61 gets up to a million visitors a month, with dedicated readers across the world sending in alerts when landslides, fuel shortages and other events disrupt train schedules.

Well, it’s an interest in travel. But trains and ships treat you like a human being. You get to see where you’re going, and the journey can be as exciting and interesting as the destination. Sometimes, in this world of air travel, we forget that.

I have a young family, with kids ages 11 and 13, so I can’t get away all the time. But I try and get away as often as I can to do research trips when something really important changes. Last year I was on the brand-new Hong Kong-to-Beijing high-speed train.

“This year, I’ll be on the new Brussels-to-Vienna sleeping car.”

I enjoy the journeys, but it does become a bit of a work experience when I’m trying to get the necessary information. My Twitter may show me enjoying a nice glass of red in the seat, but it won’t show me running up and down the train, trying to get photographs and videos of each of the different types of carriage. We picked destinations to inspire you, delight you and motivate you to explore the world. It’s a bit like drinking wine: You don’t have one favorite that you drink all the time, you like different sorts at different times.