Meanwhile, the Denali Star, with its salubrious dining car and enthusiastic, knowledgeable rail staff, felt positively luxurious.

BBC: The train that takes on Alaska��s Mt McKinley

They then proceed to a spacious art deco dining car, whose tables are set with linen tablecloths, fresh flowers and silver.

FORBES: Through the Rockies In Style

Moose sightings are two-a-penny in the Alaskan interior, an Anchorage resident later told me as I studied the lunch menu in the dining car.

BBC: The train that takes on Alaska��s Mt McKinley

Passengers travelling first-class are politely summoned into a dining car, where a portrait of the Kenyan president grins down at white linen-covered tables, while attendants shuffle dutifully about the corridors, dispensing blankets stamped with faded Kenya Railways logos.

BBC: East Africa��s best kept secret

We gather our luggage and our four small children, and make our way to the compact compartment fitted with two seats and a washbasin that will be our bedroom, dining car and playroom for the next ten-or-so hours as our train pushes south through the night towards Luxor.

BBC: Travel with children: The night train to Luxor

Brown banquettes upholstered in what the French euphemistically call moleskin but North Americans know as leatherette line both walls of the long, narrow railroad-car-like dining room, and there's a little bar just inside the front door where your bill is tallied and taxis are called.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Hungry for Paris'

She thought so again while she watched from her dining-room window a garda car arriving, and an ambulance soon after that.

NEWYORKER: Bravado

There is no record of anyone ever having been killed by a meteorite, but in recent years, there have been verified accounts of a meteorite hitting a bedroom in Alabama, a dining room in Connecticut and a parked car in Peekskill, N.

WSJ: Meteor Creates a Show, No Apparent Damage