Train Travel From Prague (2026) — Night Trains, Retro SteamRoutes, Day Trips & Sleeping in a Railway Wagon in the Mountains

Praha Hlavní nádraží — Prague Main Station — was built between 1901 and 1909 to a design by architect Josef Fanta. The brief was ambitious: a station that would announce the importance of the Bohemian capital in the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the visual language of the moment. What Fanta produced was a building of considerable grandeur: a central dome, decorated with allegorical figures representing the four elements, above a main hall with stained glass, ceramic tile work, carved stone and the specific quality of light that only early 20th century railway architecture achieves.

Almost nobody sees it. The station was expanded in the 1970s with a Communist-era underground level — lower, functional, connected directly to the metro. Most travellers arrive via metro, buy their tickets underground, and leave through the underground level to their platform without ever going upstairs. The Art Nouveau building above them is largely used for cafés and offices.

Go upstairs. The main hall is open and free. The dome above it is original — the frescoes, the stucco, the iron and glass. The Fantova Kavárna (Fanta’s Café) operates in the restored main hall, named after the architect, serving coffee and food in the original space. The café was restored and reopened in 2018 after decades of neglect. Sitting in Fantova Kavárna before a departure, in the Art Nouveau dome that most passengers below you will never see, is one of the better pre-train rituals available in Europe.

The station also holds one of Prague’s more significant memorials: a statue of Nicholas Winton, the British stockbroker who organised the Kindertransport from Prague in 1939, saving 669 mostly Jewish children from the Nazi occupation by arranging their transport to Britain on eight trains. The statue — showing Winton seated on a bench with two children — is in the main hall. Most people walk past it without stopping.

The train from Prague to Dresden follows the Elbe river northward through the Bohemian-Saxon Switzerland — a region of sandstone pillars, river bends and canyon walls that is among the most visually dramatic landscapes in Central Europe. The line runs directly alongside the river for much of the Czech section, through villages that have barely changed in a century, past the border at Děčín, and into the German Elbsandsteingebirge. Sit on the right side of the train travelling north (left returning) for the best river views.

Dresden itself warrants the day. The Frauenkirche, the Zwinger palace, the Albertinum gallery, the Semperoper — a city that was 80% destroyed in the February 1945 bombing and has been systematically rebuilt over seventy years, with the results now visible. The Neustadt district across the Elbe is one of the best-preserved 18th-century city districts in Germany and a genuinely lively neighbourhood in its own right. Return trains run hourly. Last train back to Prague departs around 10 PM.

European Sleeper launched its Prague–Brussels–Amsterdam service in 2023 and has become the most discussed night train in Europe — partly because of the quality of the experience (restored vintage carriages, proper sleeping compartments, a bar car), and partly because it represents something genuinely new: a private company building a cross-border sleeper network from scratch, without state subsidy, in the middle of the continent.

The train departs Prague Hlavní nádraží in the early evening and arrives Brussels-Midi the following morning, continuing to Amsterdam Centraal. The route passes through Dresden, Berlin and Cologne overnight. Accommodation options run from a seat reservation to a private sleeping compartment. The bar car operates until late and is one of the better train bar experiences available on any European service. Tickets from €29 for a seat, €89+ for a couchette.

On selected weekends from May through September, a vintage steam locomotive departs Praha-Vršovice station — one stop south of Hlavní nádraží on the Prague metro — and runs through the Berounka valley to Křivoklát, the Gothic hunting castle of the Bohemian kings, 45 kilometres west of Prague. The journey takes approximately 1.5 hours each way through some of the most unspoiled river valley landscape within day-trip distance of the city.

Křivoklát Castle is one of the oldest and best-preserved Gothic castles in Bohemia — less visited than Karlštejn, less dramatic in its setting, but richer in its interior. The castle library, the royal chapel and the dungeon (where alchemists and political prisoners were held under Rudolph II) are all accessible on guided tours. The combination of the steam train journey through the valley and the castle itself makes for a full day that is genuinely difficult to replicate with a car.

The National Technical Museum’s railway collection at Lužná u Rakovníka — a village 80 kilometres west of Prague — is the most comprehensive historical railway collection in the Czech Republic and one of the finest in Central Europe. Over 100 locomotives spanning from 19th-century steam engines to Communist-era electric units, housed in a working roundhouse (točna) that is itself historically significant. On open days in summer, some of the engines are steamed up and moved under their own power.

Getting there by train from Praha Hlavní nádraží to Rakovník takes approximately 90 minutes, with a connection or taxi the final few kilometres to the museum. It is a full day out and one that rewards anyone with even a passing interest in industrial history — the scale of the collection, the quality of the restoration work, and the specific atmosphere of a working roundhouse full of 100-year-old machinery is remarkable.

The line between Tábor and Bechyně — known as the Bechyňka — opened in 1903 as the first electric railway in Bohemia. It still operates today, 123 years later, on the same route, carrying passengers between Tábor and the spa town of Bechyně in approximately 50 minutes. The electric infrastructure has been updated; the character of the line — its narrow track, its rural stations, its passage through the South Bohemian countryside — has not changed fundamentally in over a century.

Tábor itself is worth the visit independently: a medieval Hussite town with a labyrinthine underground tunnel system beneath its historic centre, open to visitors year-round. The combination of the historical railway, the Hussite city and the spa town at the end makes this a good full-day or overnight trip from Prague by train — approximately 1.5 hours from Hlavní nádraží to Tábor on the fast service.