ghost train en · NOUN
Meanings
- A fairground attraction in which participants ride through a haunted house in a railcar.
- A ghost-themed excursion offered by many tourist railways around the world. Usually, a fictional story is created and performed with static displays or live actors on either side of a train. Actors and actresses play out a story on the long and narrow stage provided by the railcar aisles.
-
(UK) A rail service which does not appear in the public timetables.
'My London' website writes about an interesting phenomenon of 'London's ghost trains': "The legal procedures to close a railway line in the UK are so complex that it is cheaper to run a token 'ghost train' down the line once per day, week or month. These trains often run empty because they don't always appear on maps and timetables, hence the nickname 'ghost trains'." What a waste!
2025 October 29, Vitali Vitaliev, “Haunted by the past”, in RAIL, number 1047, page 68:
- (UK) A supernatural manifestation of a railway locomotive or passenger cars.
- An unmanned train rolling on the train line.
-
A train service that no longer exists, having stopped running.
As a second-year student at Kharkiv University, I took a summer job as a conductor of the train that ran from Novorossiysk on the Russian Black Sea coast to Kaliningrad in the Baltics - a 48-hour journey via Kharkiv, from where the train originated. In modern geographical terms, it went across four independent states: Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Lithuania. As such, it has now joined the long list of 'ghost trains', extinguished by the ongoing war.
2024 September 4, Vitali Vitaliev, “A salute to Ukraine's 'Second Army'”, in RAIL, number 1017, page 47:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ghost trains | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Hypernyms
dark ride (fairground attraction)
Synonyms
Translations (18)
cs strašidelná dráha (fairground attraction) · ru дорога пеще́ра ужасов (fairground attraction) · hu szellemvasút (fairground attraction) · pt trem-fantasma (fairground attraction) · de Geisterzug (theatrical performance beside a train) · de Geisterbahn (fairground attraction) · sv spöktåg (fairground attraction) · fr train fantôme (fairground attraction) · fi aavejuna (supernatural manifestation of a train) · fi miehittämätön juna (unmanned train) · tr korku tüneli (fairground attraction) · fr train fantôme (unmanned train) · es tren del terror (fairground attraction) · es tren infernal (fairground attraction) · es tren fantasma (fairground attraction) · sk strašidelná dráha (fairground attraction) · fi kummitusjuna (theatrical performance beside a train) · fi kummitusjuna (fairground attraction)