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Comment by baz00 | Hacker News Reader

It's not. It's expensive, noisy, takes a long time (6h door to door) and is uncomfortable as fuck.

I recently had to go to Edinburgh. It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours. Or £80 to get a plane that takes 2h door to door (1h in the air).

If I want to go anywhere in Europe it's quicker, easier and almost always cheaper to fly. Even on a bad Lufthansa flight where everything goes wrong :)

Edit: just checked I can go from my LHR to BER on Monday and back same day for £127. I can't get to the English Channel and across it at any time for twice that.

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> I recently had to go to Edinburgh. It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours.

UK rail is truly depressing.

In Japan you can take a Shinkanzen from Tokyo to Hokkaido, 4.5 hours, 800km (appx 500 miiles) for 20,000 Yen (£108) first class or 11,000 Yen (£60) standard class. And that is walk-up fare for "right now", you can use an app to get advanced fares.

And I can assure you those 4.5 hours will be insanely comfortable compared to the UK. And you can pick up some very tasty food at the station, unlike the UK where you can only buy garbage.

In the UK I agree, I'd fly from London to Edinburgh in preference to the ghastly train. Assuming the London train even leaves the station and is not delayed or cancelled, as usual.

Agreed. Japan is exceptionally good I agree. Europe not so much. Germany's rail system is a shit show for example. I had to get a taxi to a car hire place a couple of times there.

Italian, Swiss and French rails are great. Spain is a bit behind but is closing up fast.

PSA: I took a long "first class" Shinkansen trip last year, and it was hideously uncomfortable. Swaying movement made me feel sick when I did anything, and the seat was curved in a way that made it impossible to relax as a 6' tall person.

My toddler went on a rampage the whole way, too, since it was an open cabin and not a private cabin

I've never taken the train in the UK, but had a much more comfortable ride in Italy a few years back

Unfortunately we have the oldest railway in the world in continuous use, running mostly at capacity, with draconian planning laws, ridiculous land costs, population density, and a stupid general public.

You'd be hard pressed to find any capital project that's been built in the UK that anyone regrets, and that includes the Millenium Dome. I'm old enough to remember opposition to HS1 ("No to route 2!"), and opposition to CrossRail.

No one would argue that any of those were a waste.

Yet we've cancelled parts of HS2.

With the absurd bidding process of:

Govt: we have a budget of £10bn for this section in the Cotswolds, how cheap can you do it?

Bidder, erm, £9.99bn ??

Govt: ok!

Bidder: kerching!

Trying to find the link, but Rob Holden, HS1 boss, stated that HS2 budgets were publicly disclosed and the above is pretty much the outcome of contract firms knowing how much the Govt is prepared to pay.

Had we pressed ahead with HS2 we might have gotten an HS3 and 4, but that's vanishingly unlikely now.

> Assuming the London train even leaves the station and is not delayed or cancelled, as usual.

Apparently German trains are far worse than London right now.

Writing from BER airport, just took a 1.5 hour train from Berlin to get a 2.5 hour airplane to Edinburgh.

I don't think the Millennium Dome was a success. They could have spent the money more wisely.

I'm always curious about these "we should obviously do it" comments - what if it cost £1tn? Obviously not then right?

Clearly there is a price point at which you should cancel it. What price would you say that is?

> ridiculous land costs, population density

I'm with you on most points, fair enough.

But don't quote "land costs", and especially please don't cite "population density" at me when comparing UK and Japan.

A sleeper train takes 0 useful hours, because you’re asleep.

Plus you potentially save on a night’s accommodation.

Last time I took the Caledonian Sleeper was for a morning meeting in Glasgow. My colleagues flew from Luton on the first morning flight and turned up irritable and tired. I got the Cally Sleeper and was fresh as a daisy with no time wasted - in fact I could do a couple of hours’ work while they were trogging around airports and planes.

Got a kindle. Meh. 2 hours of Andy Weir and some exercise walking around the terminal. I was happy.

If you want to find excuses, we will find them. Wherever, even if it's under the stones

> A sleeper train takes 0 useful hours, because you’re asleep.

Only if you manage to fall/stay asleep...

> It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours.

Presumably for some people the sleeper saves a hotel night, so there's that.

Pricing is definitely inverted vs long ago because I would take the sleeper (archaic term for what we're now calling "night train"??) from Edinburgh to go to business meetings in London vs flying which was much more expensive, we well as inconvenient. On the train you get to walk off the platform reasonably refreshed after a night's sleep and your bacon/egg/beans breakfast and saunter to your 9am meeting. By plane you'd be getting up at 2-3am.

You must be having noisy nights at home to enjoy 2 hours door to door travel by plane. The state of the train network is terrible so it should be used as a bad example. Trains are longer but for most people they are more comfortable physically and mentally : more space for your legs, your luggage and less hassle going to the station and passing controls. Night trains are not perfect, but with earplugs they can be pleasant.

Trick is to live perpendicular to the flight path where there is good public transport ;)

As for the trains, no. Standing up with a suitcase between your legs is not uncommon. I prefer Ryanair to that.

When I travel by air I have hand luggage and that's it. Maybe if I do a couple of weeks away I'll have a small suitcase as carry on. Don't pack the kitchen sink.

2hr anywhere door to door with LHR is an amazing feat.

Surely doesn't include wait time?

Or did you mean airport door to airport door

LHR is fine if you don't have checked baggage.

Timing was 2h14m to be precise so a little over. 11 minutes to get to the airport from here. I was running somewhat late I will add!

> I can't get to the English Channel and across it at any time for twice that.

Eurostar St Pancras - Lille €144 Monday evening. But I agree that the prices of air vs rail are way out of whack.

https://www.eurostar.com/search/rw-en?origin=7015400&destina...

Yeah I'm all for fighting climate change but air travel should be excepted until there's battery-powered options available. We can't go back to the dark ages of travel. And especially internationally in Europe the rail network is shit and has way too little capacity. There's almost no good international high speed rail. It's only in countries that invested in it locally like Germany, France and Spain.

Completely agree with this.

Anyway shifting all our trips to train travel is not the answer. The answer, which I do prefer, is not travelling at all when avoidable. I only ever travel for holidays and funerals. Never on business. All business can be conducted on conference calls.

As someone who lives in another country I don't really agree. I do agree some trips (especially business) are avoidable. There's an unfortunate stigma that if you don't travel for a meeting you're not considering it important enough. I personally really like VR meetings as a replacement, they make me feel much more together.

But for personal use I don't think travelling less is an option. I hate travel but it's important to see family too. We can't just roll the world back to where a different continent was unreachable.

Recently I took a Caledonian Sleeper (Edinburgh->London) and everything was great except the cost. But UK trans are expensive in general for some reason, for commuter trains £/km even higher than for this overnight train.

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