10 Things to Love About Train Travel
I heart trains! It’s hands down the greenest way to travel – train travel releases 10 times fewer greenhouse gases per average passenger journey than flying. Here are ten more reasons why train travel is the antidote to everything I hate about airports, flying and long car journeys.
1. Trains are faster than most short-haul flights, when you take into account the time spent getting to and from the airport and going through security.
2. Railway stations are generally in the center of town – ideal when you arrive in an unfamiliar city and need to find your way to the hotel.
3. Any security checks are less cumbersome than airport security. You don’t have to get there more than half an hour early at the most and you can pack your water – or that bottle of wine you picked up on your holiday.
4. There’s usually plenty of room on board to stretch out and you are free to get up and walk around.
5. You don’t need to keep your eyes on the road, deal with unruly passengers or share the road with pig-headed drivers. Instead you can read your book, do the crossword, call your friends, or just look out the window and watch the world go by. Sometimes there’s even free wifi on board.
6. It’s fast. While US rail network Amtrak could do with a bit of TLC, I’ve still found it a reasonable way to get from New York City to Washington DC, and from Seattle to Vancouver. In Europe, it’s a different story – the continent is crisscrossed with high-speed services. Even in the UK, where rail services are generally less reliable and fast than elsewhere in Europe, it beats the rat race on the overcrowded motorways. For example, it takes just over two hours to go from London to York by train, compared with five or six hours by car.
7. For longer journeys, there are usually sleeper services on offer for a reasonable price, so you can go to sleep and wake up in a new place. It costs a lot less money than a flat bed seat in a plane or a hotel for the night on a road trip.
8. The pricing structure is transparent, especially if you book online and can see all the options laid out before you. Tickets usually go on sale 90 days in advance (120 days in the case of the Eurostar from London to Paris or Brussels) and the earlier you book, the cheaper it is. It’s worth making sure you book a seat as well as a ticket in case the train is full.
9. It’s possible to go almost anywhere in the world if you have the time – The Man in Seat 61 shows you how.
10. The train can be is more than just a way to get from A to B and can be part of the holiday itself. The website Luxury Trains has a few appealing suggestions – how romantic and luxurious would it be to see Europe from the comfort of the gorgeous old-time Orient Express? Or if you’re hankering after the Australian outback, there’s a new service operating from Adelaide to Darwin called the Ghan and Platinum service sounds quite wonderful.
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5 Comments
December 25th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Couldn’t agree more, Caitlin. Last year The Man In Seat 61 got me to Greece and back – 3 days each way, and adventures in themselves. Where I can, I travel by train.
A big plus for me is the social element. In my experience it’s much easier to strike up a decent conversation with people on a train.
But the other major factor, in fact the most important, is something I can only describe as a feeling of adventurous honesty. When I go somewhere new by plane, I step into a metal tube in my own country, and I step out the samemetal tube somewhere completely different. I feel like I’ve walked the length of that metal tube, and no more. It’s almost like teleportation. But travelling by trains (and other forms of land transport) make me feel much more like I’ve *earned* my destination – I’ve actually travelled over the land in between and seen and felt it changing under my feet.
In comparison, flying feels like cheating.
For thoughts on this, I can recommend Alain de Botton’s extraordinary ‘The Art Of Travel’.
December 29th, 2008 at 6:39 am
I continue to enjoy train travel for all the reasons sited above. Currently on a holiday break in NYC, taking the train to the airport, buzzing around town on the subway and hopping on a metro train to the country beat cabs and cars.
And the point about pricing is key – simple, direct, cheaper in advance, and not a ripoff with short notice. The airline industry could learn a thing or two on that front. There’s nothing worse than booking way in advance, but having to pay a higher price, or booking at the last minute at triple the discount rate of a few weeks prior.
Oh yea, then there’s the green angle and the lack of traffic jams on the road. I only wish we had a rail system here as nice as they have in Europe.
Global Patriot’s last blog post..Blessed Unrest – Insight #1
November 13th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Caitlin, That’s an excellent list explaining why train travel is best. Of course electric trains are better than old diesel ones as they can use electricity generated by renewables or by nuclear to reduce the carbon footprint even further. We have reached the age when oil production can no longer keep pace with demand so expect to see train travel come to the fore.
One day we might even get a railway connecting the Trans Siberian Express to North America via a tunnel under the Bering Straight. Well I can but dream.
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