I rapidly concluded long distance train travel is not viable.
On one occasion I had two days of travel booked, and the very first train was an hour late, which led to a missed connection, and that was it - there was no way I could make my next train, and I lost some hundreds of euros of booked tickets and accommodation, and the compensation offered - if I had the will power to fight through the incredibly hostile claims mechanism on-line - was 30 euro. I was also stuck, as I had left my origin (a long-term AirBnB) and the next place I would live was at my destination. Fortunately, I was in Paris, so I travel to de Gaulle and booked a flight to my destination (where it was then necessary to book a hotel for an night, as I was a day early); I paid some hundreds more euros to complete my journey.
Essentially the problem is that the longer a train journey, the more late it will be, and if you miss a connection, you can lose everything afterwards; but you have to book everything in advance, because the main train routes are fully booked if you try to buy a ticket on the day.
So it just doesn't add up.
My fear is that some influencer/personality is going to start posting about the train system, and then it's going to become a crowded mess :P It feels a bit like a well kept secret right now. I think one of the things that makes it so enjoyable is that it's so uncrowded most of the time. I almost always get two seats to myself every time I take it (in coach). And there's somehow always a table available in the observation car whenever I decide to go there. Or you sit with someone and make a new friend :P
Would highly recommend!
As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
It felt like a bit of Wild West time travel to spend days on a train in the amazing landscapes. The food in the dining car was surprisingly good, but got boring by the third day.
It is one of the most amazing train trips in the world, and tbh the article doesn´t really do it justice. The day the train spends slowly going up and down the rockies, are just incredible, the scenery is amazing, and you get to know other passengers and the conductors along the way. Had some great card games in the scenery car.
To Amtrak's credit - we complained and they refunded our entire journey.
This is a huge issue. Cargo trains legally have to yield to passenger trains, but in recent decades cargo trains have been made longer and longer, so they no longer physically fit into the passing sidings (which usually are built for 75 cars). It's a mess.
As an European myself, try to do a train trip in south of Italy and then discover if it's efficient enough
See recent video "I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)":
Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-280 km/h range.
The problem isn’t the big country, it’s the slow trains (that even get deprioritized after cargo, to add insult to the injury).
Or do you expect that fast trains would unlock a lot of travel between Chicago and Seattle?
Edit
Rare = majority of tourists in Europe go to specific cities and countries. There are trips between countries but it is rare to go around ALL Europe by train. Trains are significantly more expensive that flights.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/487572/leading-european-....
1980 called and wants your attitude back.
I don't know which country exactly you mean, I live in central Europe (Slovenia) and no train goes over 200 km/h, most go 60-80 km/h.
Also, every time I'm at the train station in Ljubljana (Slovenia's capital), there's an announcement about the train from Budapest being ~40min late. And it's a way shittier looking train than the local commute ones going 60.
Much of Western Europe has yellow, orange, red and purple lines, i.e. lines over 200km/h.
Parts of Central and Eastern Europe do not, as you say.
The distance between Paris and Strasbourg is >400km, so even the "slow" connection has an average speed of ~200 km/h. The actual regional train connection (TER) takes nearly 5 hours with plenty of stops in between. Slightly faster non-regional but non-TGV connections only exist on lines that are not served by TGVs.
One took maybe 6 hours. The other 12+ or some such. The 12+ hour took almost the same route, but stopped at every. single. town.
Woe to the person wanting to go from Ottawa to Toronto, and buying the wrong ticket. This is pre-Internet so research was less common and easy, and if you have no idea it could matter...
I recall this being named the "milk run".
Used to be, decades ago, just show up and go to the plane like it was a bus. Some dude would take your luggage and throw it into the cargo hold.
You'd be boarded and gone in 15.
When landed, they'd open then cargo hold and hand out luggage.
I had this experience in a transfer to a prop plane in Mexico. Fast, easy, quick.
You can get from London to Paris by train in less time than it takes to go from Manhattan to boarding a plane at JFK.
It's BS. In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens. You do not in fact need to get to airports hours in advance, and security theater in airports is still excruciating, but you can get PreCheck or Clear and cut the time way down. There is some time advantage to boarding trains, but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours.
Paris and London are only 213 miles apart! It's about 2/3rds the distance that SF is from LA, much less say SF to Seattle or NYC to Chicago. Rail travel works great in Europe because distances are small, density is high, and the cities grew up centered around rail infrastructure.
In japanese and korean media (my experience is with a ton of anime and k dramas, more in the former than the latter though) trains are very common casual and serious backdrops for a variety of scenes, either within the train, at the station, or just a train passing by on the bridge in the background.
In Hollywood/American TV, it's always cars, with the occasional airport/plane. It riles me up quite unreasonably that shows/movies set in New York fuckin city with 24-7 subway service, and characters are shown trying to catch a cab in Manhattan in the middle of the night to go 20 blocks away. At least Marvelous Mrs. Maisel acknowledged this directly as a class thing for some characters and other characters took the train, but most movies just assume the American viewer cannot relate to someone using the subway.
Except for the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Classic:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planes,_Trains_and_Automobiles
Of course it’s because these shows are shot in LA, and they have Manhattan street sets built and ready in Hollywood studio lot, but no subway set.
Almost everything set in London uses either the disused Aldwych Station on the Piccadilly Line, the disused Charing Cross station on the Jubilee Line, or the Waterloo and City line at weekends when it is normally closed — sometimes even when the setting ought to be a much larger train and style of station elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldwych_tube_station#Use_in_me...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross_tube_station#Use...
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/filming-and-photography/fi...
I then went down to Miami, train was fairly full - not many stayed on the entire trip but I wouldn’t expect them to, they got off at various stations along the way. Everyone I head in the dining car was American.
So you can take a train to New York, or DC, or a number of lesser cities, and not need a car when you arrive.
However you can take the 1310 from LA to Phoenix, then half an hour wait before the 2245 to St Louis, and a 1h25 wait at 0720 for a St Louis to New York.
66 hours with 64 hours on the actual bus, miserable for both you and your fellow passengers.
Well the US is the 3rd largest country in the world, with the 3rd largest population, and in terms of rail tonne-km is also 3rd.
I.e. it sits where you'd expect, per sq km and per capita.
Passenger wise though it's 10th.
So if the US government would wanted to build out cross country passenger rail they would either have to build new tracks, or use eminent domain to take back control of the existing tracks. Both options would be very expensive and wildly unpopular.
For example, by limiting the maximum length of a freight train.
Then relatively minor subsidies (e.g. additional passing loops) could be used to improve reliability.
The US population is fairly concentrated around the 'edges'. About 40% of the population lives in a coastal county:
* https://ecowatch.noaa.gov/thematic/coastal-population
And two-thirds of the population with-in 100 miles (160 km) of the border:
(It's a figurative example I'm not sure there's a train from Seattle to SF)
I'm just saying, this is such a rare use case that it's not as high of a priority as expanding the roads that 80% or more of the residents in a city use daily. Whereas for freight it makes a ton of sense.
(fun fact, there actually is a train route there!)
As some who used to travel for meetings quite a lot to a city 3 hours away by high speed rail, it really isn't. Once you take into account that you can show up for your train 5 mins before it leaves, plus the fact that the train station is almost always much closer to where you want to be, the difference in time between trains and planes pretty much disappears for shorter trips.
Plus the train is just so much nicer and more comfortable. It's quieter. Your seats are much bigger and have more legroom than even the nicest business class seats. You can get up and walk around if you want. You often have a restaurant car where you can sit and grab a drink or something to eat. Train travel is just so much more relaxing compared to flying.
Even for flights which take 45 minutes in the air, I’d never expect to get to the airport, through security, through all the boarding and unboarding nonsense, and from the destination airport to where I was actually going, in 3 hours.
IIRC last time I was in Seattle airport, after I got off the plane (which was late, of course), I spent half an hour just walking through airport and to the rather inconveniently located light rail. Everything involving flying takes forever.
Someone can definitely do worst, that's out of discussion. We are looking at the upside potential.
The picture of this post show interstate trains that are old, slow and dirty. I'm sure standards can improve.