Every few years, a travel brand comes along that makes people rethink what a destination can be. The Orient Express did it for Europe. Belmond did it for Peru and Southeast Asia. And now, a brand called Glamour Trains is doing it for China, one of the last great frontiers of luxury rail travel.
If you have not heard the name yet, you will soon. Here is the story behind the brand, what makes its trains so special, and why travelers from around the world are starting to plan entire trips around them.
Who Is Behind Glamour Trains?
Glamour Trains, known in Chinese as Xingxiang Tielv, is the railway cultural tourism brand of Fosun Infrastructure Group. If the Fosun name sounds familiar, it should. Fosun is one of China’s largest global companies, with a portfolio that includes Club Med, so the group knows a thing or two about hospitality and world-class guest experiences.
That backing matters. Building a luxury train is expensive, and running one well is even harder. It takes serious investment in rolling stock, staff training, route development, and partnerships along thousands of kilometers of railway. Glamour Trains launched with all of that in place, which is why the product feels polished rather than experimental.
The brand’s philosophy fits into a single sentence, and it appears everywhere in their materials: the train is the destination. Instead of treating rail as transport between highlights, Glamour Trains treats the journey itself as the highlight, with the landscapes of China as a moving backdrop.
The Flagship: Silk Road Express
The heart of the brand is the Silk Road Express, a train designed from the ground up for international luxury travelers.
The numbers tell you a lot about the thinking behind it. The train carries a maximum of 80 guests in 38 private suites. Compare that with a cruise ship carrying thousands, or even a large tour group hotel, and you start to understand the appeal. This is travel at a human scale. Staff learn your name on day one. The lounge never feels crowded. And every guest gets a suite with a private bathroom, proper bedding, and space to breathe.
That 80-guest limit is not a marketing line. It shapes everything on board, from the pace of dinner service to the quiet of the corridors at night. In an age where so much of travel feels mass-produced, scarcity has become the real luxury, and Glamour Trains has built its flagship around it.
Dining That Rivals Fine Restaurants
Ask past guests about their favorite part of the journey and food comes up again and again.
The Silk Road Express runs two full dining cars, one designed around Chinese cuisine and one with a refined Western atmosphere. The kitchens focus on seasonal, high-quality ingredients and weave in regional flavors from the route itself. Crossing Gansu might bring hand-pulled noodles done at a fine-dining level. A Yunnan journey might feature wild mushrooms and mountain tea. The style is often described as Michelin-inspired, and the comparison holds up.
Meals become anchors of the day. Long lunches with the desert sliding past the windows. Dinners that stretch into the evening as the lounge car fills with music. On this train, no one eats in a hurry.
Service With a Personal Touch
Two roles define the Glamour Trains service style.
The first is the train butler, available 24 hours a day for anything from a late-night tea to a forgotten charger. The second, and more unusual, is the vacation ambassador. This is a dedicated host who accompanies guests for the entire journey, on and off the train. They handle logistics, translate, arrange surprises, and generally act like a well-connected friend who happens to know everyone along the route.
Add professional laundry service, nightly turndown, and housekeeping, and the train starts to feel less like transport and more like a boutique hotel that happens to wake up in a new landscape every morning.
Spaces You Will Not Find on Any Other Train
Beyond the suites and dining cars, the Silk Road Express carries some genuinely distinctive spaces.
The most photographed is the Hanyuefu Poetry Observation Car, a panoramic carriage with a sweeping 270-degree view. It is named after classical Chinese poetry, and once you watch a Gobi sunset from its windows, the name makes sense.
The lounge car hosts curated performances that change with the regions outside, from folk music to traditional dance. And for something playful, guests can reserve a private KTV suite or an automatic mahjong room. It is a reminder that this is a Chinese luxury brand with its own character, not a copy of a European template.
Where the Trains Go
Glamour Trains has built an impressive route map in a short time, and it keeps growing.
The classic Silk Road journeys cover the legendary northwest corridor: Xining to Dunhuang, the southern route along the Taklamakan Desert, and the poetic West of the Yangguan Pass itinerary. For travelers with more time, a 17-day grand tour crosses both northern and southern Xinjiang, one of the most ambitious scheduled luxury rail journeys anywhere in the world.
The 2026 season adds a completely new chapter in China’s southwest. New routes run along the historic Yunnan-Vietnam Railway toward the border at Hekou, through the tea mountains and Bai heritage towns between Kunming and Dali, and past the karst peaks and waterfalls of Guizhou and Guangxi on the way to Shenzhen.
Beyond the flagship, the brand also operates the Hulunbuir Express in the far northeast, including a winter ice and snow journey through some of the coldest, most beautiful scenery in China, plus the charming Shiping narrow-gauge heritage train in Yunnan.
Why Travelers Are Paying Attention
A few forces are working in the brand’s favor.
First, slow travel is having a real moment. After years of rushed itineraries, more travelers want fewer places, experienced more deeply, and a luxury train is the purest form of that idea.
Second, China itself is opening up to a new wave of international tourism, and many visitors want a way to see the country that removes the friction of language, logistics, and long domestic flights. A train that handles everything, with English-speaking hosts and VIP access at every stop, solves that completely.
Third, there is simply nothing else like it in this part of the world. Europe has its famous luxury trains, but the landscapes of Xinjiang, Gansu, and Yunnan are on another scale entirely. Glamour Trains happens to hold the keys to some of the most spectacular railway scenery on the planet.
Finally, word of mouth is doing what advertising never could. Early guests came home with stories about desert sunsets from the observation car, mahjong nights with new friends, and hosts who remembered every birthday and dietary need. In luxury travel, that kind of story spreads fast. Travel advisors have started recommending the brand to clients who thought they had already seen everything, and the newest departures are filling up earlier with each season.
Final Thoughts
Great travel brands are built on a clear idea, executed with discipline. For Glamour Trains, that idea is simple: keep the guest count small, make the journey the destination, and let China’s landscapes do the rest.
Thirty-eight suites. Eighty guests. Thousands of kilometers of desert, mountain, rainforest, and history outside the window. It is a formula that has already won over its first waves of travelers, and with the new 2026 routes now open for booking, the brand’s most interesting chapter is just beginning.
If your travel list still has room for one unforgettable journey, it might be time to add a train to it.
