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European Sleepers - What routes would be feasible?

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Nick_C

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... and the hassle and time of reaching an airport makes the train journey much less stressful and not longer, than flying.

That's the big thing for me - I find train journeys much less stressful than flying (or more to the point, airports).

Also the time difference often isn't as big as people make out - taking the Nice example, the train journey is quoted above as 8-9 hours from London. For me, it's an hour to St Pancras, plus 30 mins check-in and a bit of leeway gives 10-11 hours total. To fly, the flight may only be two hours, but I've got to allow two hours to get to Gatwick, plus two in the airport, plus another at the other end to get out through customs, baggage check etc and get into Nice itself - so that's at least 7 hours. Either way I've used a whole day travelling, so I may as well do it in a relaxing way rather than a stressful one.

It's not always cheaper to fly either - I've done London-Krakow by train for less using some of Seat61's tips.
 

Austriantrain

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Your text is a little ambiguous. All of the above are indeed reasons to use the train, but over longer distances many more people will choose to fly because it's usually quicker and cheaper.

I never meant to say otherwise. I was trying to point out the reasons why some (not that many) people will choose the train and why 20 minutes more or less on such a long journey will not make a difference to them.
 

HSTEd

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I never meant to say otherwise. I was trying to point out the reasons why some (not that many) people will choose the train and why 20 minutes more or less on such a long journey will not make a difference to them.

When you tell them how much cheaper a day train ticket will be than a night train though, many will opt for the former.
And as I said, the continuing development of high speed rail infrastructure across the continent will rapidly reduce journey times.
 

Bald Rick

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That's the big thing for me - I find train journeys much less stressful than flying (or more to the point, airports).

Also the time difference often isn't as big as people make out - taking the Nice example, the train journey is quoted above as 8-9 hours from London. For me, it's an hour to St Pancras, plus 30 mins check-in and a bit of leeway gives 10-11 hours total. To fly, the flight may only be two hours, but I've got to allow two hours to get to Gatwick, plus two in the airport, plus another at the other end to get out through customs, baggage check etc and get into Nice itself - so that's at least 7 hours. Either way I've used a whole day travelling, so I may as well do it in a relaxing way rather than a stressful one.

It's not always cheaper to fly either - I've done London-Krakow by train for less using some of Seat61's tips.

The time difference, of course, varies depending where your start / finish points are, relative distances to airports, and how long it takes to get through them.

In my case, I’m 20 mins from Luton, would allow 90 mins max at the airport, 2hr flight, 30 minutes that end (maximum), and another 30 mins on the tram. Less than 5 hours from my front door to my friends’ place in central Nice a couple of minutes from the station, with breakfast at home and (a rather expensive) lunch on the Promenade Des Anglais. Whilst I’m closer to Luton than the average distance that most people in London / South East are to airports, its not by much.

And I have to say, much less stressful, and overall more comfortable than the train when I did it - even if it was about 8h30 (with a fairly swift transit across Paris). Cheaper on the plane too - and that’s with free travel in France and staff rate on the Eurostar.

And that’s why almost everyone flies.
 

Austriantrain

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When you tell them how much cheaper a day train ticket will be than a night train though, many will opt for the former.
And as I said, the continuing development of high speed rail infrastructure across the continent will rapidly reduce journey times.

Doubtful. There are not that many major projects currently ongoing. And I actually doubt that it is going to change fast, not only because of the consequences of Covid for state funds. The countries that „love“ HSR, mainly France, Italy and Spain have reached the limit of what they can realistically build.

Everything to the East of these countries has a much more nuanced approach to HSR: They will build it mostly when capacity on classic lines is used up, in some cases also to bypass really slow stretches, but usually not on the scale of the „HSR Fanclub“. Nonstop running at 320 km/h for extremely long distances will probably not be achieved anywhere; also of course, because these countries are often much more polycentric (as is Italy of course, but their most important cities can almost all be served on one single route) and such a „HSR-mostly“ network will often not make sense for them.

E.g. Paris - Stuttgart will not get any faster any time soon. Paris - Munich will when the Stuttgart - Ulm new line opens, but that will be it, and journey times will still not be anywhere comparable to what can, for instance, be achieved between Lille and Marseille or Barcelona and Malaga.
 
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