Travel by train to these cities is set to become reality with the proposed revival of the Trans Asian Railway, for which an agreement was signed by Railway Board Chairman J.P. Batra in New York.

The agreement was initialed Friday by major Asian states under the aegis of the United Nations. With Bangladesh and India entering the fold the number of countries that have has risen to 20.

Earlier, 18 countries signed the agreement at Busan in South Korea in November 2006.

The Southern corridor of the proposed Asian rail network will link China's historic Kunming province, bordering Vietnam, with Kapikule in Bulgaria in the European peninsula via a 11,460km line.

The cities to be linked include Bangkok in Thailand and idyllic towns of Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Iran and Turkey, giving Indian families a wide variety of holiday locales to pick from.

The long train corridor will be designed in such a manner that it will hook up with existing trunk routes of participating countries, giving travelers a wide choice of places to break their journey.

Officials of the participating countries will meet soon to work out the fare system and travel packaging, which could prove a boon to travelers.

The dream rail project, according to experts, will not take long to become operational as a good railway network already exists in major junctions like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand and China.

Work will start soon on "missing links" in Myanmar, remote areas of Thailand, China's Yunnan province and India's northeastern state of Mizoram, they said.

The Asian network will enter India through Tami in Kanpur, bordering Myanmar, and then make its way to Geed in Bangladesh. On the western side, the network will pass through the Wagah-Atari route on the Pakistan border.

Railway officials said one of the "missing links" was a stretch of 315km between Kanpur and Myanmar, of which 180km fails in Indian territory between Jeroboam and Tami.

The network, according to global experts, will not be a boon for tourists alone as it will also improve transport linkages between Asia and Europe and facilitate the movement of goods and containers among South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation and Association of South East Asian Nations.

Though the Indian Railways has the largest and most developed network in the region, technical experts said the multi-lateral agreement will harmonise different standards and technologies adopted by different countries.

The Trans Asian Railways project of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) aims to promote infrastructure development in the ESCAP region. An inter-government agreement to formalize the network was negotiated under UN-ESCAP and adopted by ESCAP at its 62nd session in Jakarta in April 2006.