Alaska Railroad

There are bigger railways and faster ones, but few as wild as the Alaska Railroad. For some 470 miles it runs the length of the state's inhabited heart — from the ice-free port of Seward on the Gulf of Alaska, through Anchorage, past the flank of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, to Fairbanks in the deep interior.

Much of it crosses country with no roads at all. This is a railway that still stops for anyone who flags it down, that slows so passengers can photograph a bear on the riverbank, and whose flagship trains carry glass-domed carriages built for one purpose: to let you look up and out at all of it.

The line was hammered together in the early twentieth century and finished in 1923, when President Harding drove a golden spike at Nenana. A century on it belongs to the State of Alaska and carries visitors through summer and, under the northern lights, through winter. Ride the Denali Star from end to end and you get the north in a single, unforgettable day.

The mainline runs from tidewater to the interior, and most travellers ride it as two great legs.

The southern leg is the Coastal Classic, from Seward up along Turnagain Arm to Anchorage — a morning of glaciers, fjords and sheer coastal mountains, the track hung between the water and the rock. Anchorage, roughly halfway along the system, is where most journeys begin.

North of Anchorage the flagship Denali Star takes over for the long haul to Fairbanks — about 356 miles in some twelve hours. It climbs away from the coast through Wasilla and out into the Susitna valley, and near Talkeetna — a ramshackle, lovable frontier town — the Alaska Range rears up ahead. On a clear day Denali itself appears, an impossible wall of white; the crew will announce it, because it doesn't show itself often.

The train threads on past Denali National Park, over trestle bridges and braided glacial rivers, through canyons and spruce forest, before dropping into the wide interior and rolling at last into Fairbanks, gateway to the Arctic.

Somewhere in the middle, on the roadless stretch beyond Talkeetna, runs the railway's most Alaskan service of all — the Hurricane Turn, a flag-stop local that halts wherever a homesteader waves it down. There is nothing else quite like it left in America.

The Alaska Railroad's passenger trains are seasonal, and the timetable is really a set of distinct routes rather than one train. The flagship Denali Star runs daily from 13 May to 17 September 2026.

Real Denali Star times (2026):

The two trains leave each end at 08:20 and pass in the middle of the day, arriving around 20:00 — about 12 hours over 356 miles.

The other services (all summer, daily unless noted):

Good to know:

• Summer is the season — outside mid-May to mid-September, only the weekend Aurora Winter Train links Anchorage and Fairbanks.
• You don't have to ride end to end — Anchorage–Talkeetna or Anchorage–Denali makes an easy day.
• Book ahead for GoldStar — the glass-dome cars sell out in peak summer.
• Denali is a lottery — the mountain is cloud-hidden more often than not; give yourself more than one chance.

Times as of the 2026 season. Confirm current schedules with the operator — see the Tickets section below.

Tickets are booked directly with the Alaska Railroad, and the only real choice is which carriage you ride in. Both share the same route and the same views; the difference is the seat, the service and the dome. GoldStar puts you on the upper deck of a bi-level glass-domed car with a dining room below, meals and drinks included, and an open-air viewing platform. Adventure Class is the value fare — reclining seats, large windows, and shared vista-dome cars and a café you can wander up to.

Fares are seasonal, so the railroad holds the live price. Book early for July and August, when GoldStar especially sells out well ahead, and consider a package: the railroad and Alaskan operators bundle the train with Denali lodges and cruises, and many people ride north one way and fly the other.

The railroad strings together the best of south-central and interior Alaska, and every stop on it is worth time of its own. The cards below run from the sea at Seward to the interior at Fairbanks.

Two practical notes are worth having before you book. The first is Denali: the park road is closed at Mile 43 while a bridge is built over the Pretty Rocks landslide, so buses currently turn round well short of the old routes, and the Park Service expects that to last through the summer of 2026. It is still very much worth going — the accessible stretch holds the Savage River country, the visitor centre and most of the wildlife people come to see — but plan around a shorter road than the guidebooks describe.

The second is the weather. Denali is big enough to make its own, and the mountain is hidden in cloud more often than not — local operators talk about the "30% club", reckoning that only about a third of visitors ever get a clear look at it. Give it more than one chance if you can, and treat a clear day as the bonus rather than the plan. The same goes for the northern lights at Fairbanks, which need darkness as well as luck, and so belong to a winter trip rather than a summer one.

The train covers the distances by day, so nights are spent in the towns and lodges along the line — and Denali deserves at least one of them.

• Anchorage — the natural base at the start or middle of a trip, with the widest choice of hotels and easy connections north and south.
• Talkeetna — characterful lodges and a famous historic roadhouse; a fine place to break the journey and hope the mountain comes out at dawn.
• Denali National Park — a cluster of wilderness lodges and hotels near the park entrance, many built for the rail-and-tour trade; book well ahead for summer.
• Seward & Fairbanks — comfortable hotels at each end of the mainline, handy for the fjord cruises in the south and the aurora and hot springs in the north.

Alaska's summer season is short and busy: reserve lodges — especially around Denali — months in advance for July and August. In winter, Fairbanks is the place to bed down for the northern lights.