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

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’.