I found this article, in the era of flygskam and tågskryta (flight-shame and train-bragging), which shows how far a train passenger can travel in 5 hours. Interesting to compare to flying. Capital cities have the best connections, borders generally (but not always) limit travel times, and generally the best are central and Western Europe due to density of stations and speed of trains.
I also learnt a new word: isochronic, a type of map which shows equal time.
The map is here: Chronotrains
An example (darker colour equals less time:
The interesting bit about train travel is also pricing. In some places trains are viciously expensive for anyone not having local travel cards.
Me for starters will not subject myself to 12 hours of night train travel costing 3 times the price of a 40 minute air ticket.
Within France flying rarely makes sense these days, with the exception of Nice. If you count door-to-door time, including allowing enough time for security and so on, the train is as fast and vastly more comfortable and pleasant. I use the train regularly from southwest France (Dax) to Paris now and wouldn’t dream of flying.
Nice is an exception because it has such poor rail access – from Paris you zoom to Marseille in 3 hours, then spend another 3 hours trundling gently across Provence on a line built in the 1860s. Even so the overall journey time to central Paris is only 2 hours longer.
The only drawback is seat availability. Last time I did Dax-Paris I booked 10 days before and there were only a handful of seats left. Recently a friend wanted to visit us for the weekend and there wasn’t a single seat left on any train all day Friday.
Croatia is just ridiculous as I wrote in some other thread.
The cost of driving in a SUV to Courchevel and back from Oxford is roughly the same as cost of AvGas, possibly more, including ferry tickets. Assuming an overnight intermediate stop GA direct cost is much lower :)
Capitaine wrote:
The map is here: Chronotrains
How does one set the starting point? I click left, right, double-click, nothing does it?
It doesn’t work in Firefox but does in Chrome and Edge
lionel wrote:
How does one set the starting point? I click left, right, double-click, nothing does it?
Had the same problem, then loaded the site again using this link.
https://www.chronotrains.com/de
all you do is move the mouse over the map, no click, no nothing . A little cross appears and voila.
It’s impressive to see what you can do in 5 hours. I would not really want to sit in a train that long ever but basically you can reach anyplace which you can reah with a flight time of about 30 minutes by jet or 1 hour by small plane. Time to spare, take a train. Lots of places are not even reachable by train.
So I can get to Munich in 5 hours or to Frankfurt and Paris and Milan. Great. Vienna? Salzburg? Other places I actually need to go to? Nada.
That Deutsche Bahn database is a gem. So for my usual airline trip which I do 4-5 times a year I do indeed get a really convenient train offer:
Zurich 21:04 – 04:52 + 3Days |54h 48min 7 changes. Zurich – Budapest Night train. 6 hours wait for a train to Craiova, 4 hours wait for a train to Vidin, change to Sofia, 5 hours wait for a train to Plovdiv. So if I take that today, Monday, I would arrive sometime thursday oh-dark-50.
Greta is welcome to this, but I will take the plane or drive.
It’s impressive to see what you can do in 5 hours. I would not really want to sit in a train that long ever but basically you can reach anyplace which you can reah with a flight time of about 30 minutes by jet or 1 hour by small plane.
Maybe in Bulgaria, or TGV-free Switzerland. In France the trains do 300 km/h. If I take my Dax example, the train runs at normal speed (~130) to Bordeaux then non-stop to Paris at 300. It takes 3h30. From there it’s a 15 minute metro ride to my company’s office. I normally get the 0828 train, leaving home at 0740 and arriving at Montparnasse at 1158.
Let’s suppose I fly instead. The absolute minimum safe arrival time is 1h30 before the flight. So I leave home at 0740, get to BIQ/LFBZ at 0815. Suppose there’s a perfectly timed plane that leaves at 0945, it will get into CDG/ORY at about 1100. Then I walk a LONG way to the train (CDG) or take the Orlyval (ORY). In the best case, and assuming I don’t have to queue for 20 minutes to get a ticket (normal case), it’s another 1h10 or so to the office. I arrive at exactly the same time.
But… I haven’t had to stand in line multiple times, spend 30 minutes standing in a freezing/boiling jetway (Easyjet SOP), etc etc etc. I got on the train, slept/read/worked in peaceful stress-free comfort.
That’s true for every major city in France now except Nice.
Trains are boring in general but European trains in my experience were great for carrying you and your motorcycle to wherever you’d like to start your 3000 km ride. Perfect in the early spring when the starting point is in warmer, more southern weather. However nowadays the service seems to have either shrunk or disappeared entirely, so I have no interest in the train.
Ferries are still good for Corsica and Sardegna 
