Long Distance Rail Travel

[SeatBackForward]

Probably because of the transition from steam to diesel to electric haulage, there's a sense of evolution.

I've seen (but never flown in) a DC-3 and had a sense of nostaligia for long-lost legroom...

The other aspect that I've considered is that railway travel keeps things on a human perspective. The sights around you, the sounds, even the rush of the air if you are near an opening, are all to a"normal" scale and at a natural level (even if they rush past at 100's of km/h). When you're on a plane, the scale of humanity disappears to a macro level at 40,000ft.

 

[UP4014]

Probably because of the transition from steam to diesel to electric haulage, there's a sense of evolution.

I've seen (but never flown in) a DC-3 and had a sense of nostaligia for long-lost legroom...

Although yes, high speed trains these days are elctric, the evolution was steam, electric then diesel.

 

[AdMEL]

Long distance train trips I've been on include:

- Thai sleeper from Bangkok to Surat Thani (and v.v.) - don't recall actually getting any sleep though! Too noisy!;
- Overland from MEL-ADL, during the day (I think I've also done both directions overnight);
- A few trips in the UK (London to Bath, London to Bristol);
- Train trips all over Victoria as a child.

Haven't been on any high speed trains, yet!

On my bucket list:

- High Speed train trip;
- Ghan (as someone else mentioned, it's very expensive, but has recently had drinks included, which reduces the cost somewhat); and:

Needed to get from Barcelona to Paris in April this year with my family of four.

We looked at flying but found the overnight "Hotel Train" was cheaper per person including sleeper cabins (plus save on one nights accommodation). These cabins were each for two persons and included dinner (food and wine) and breakfast. Cabin even had an ensuite toilet and shower.

Further, the amenities kit included razor, comb, etc that was miles better than the business class amenities kit we got on QF1 380 from Sydney to London en route to Barcelona! (My collection of airline business class amenities kits shows them getting more and more basic over time but that is another story.)

Sometimes better to see the world from below the cloud than above it.

 

[jetlagger]

I've also done some interesting journeys on trains over the years.
A tremendous amount all over Europe in my earlier days & especially Switzerland covered most of the network inclusive of the smaller private trains in the alpine regions which is fantastic.
The longest & most interesting I recall, evidently many years ago was from Calcutta to Bombay on the Bombay Mail - 42 hours of sitting in an overcrowded stifling carriage in the monsoon season - miserable experience.
Of recent include the superb network of modern high speed train journeys in China & of course a favourite Japan for the efficiency & cleanliness.
I must try to dig up & post some photos.
Australia has comparatively a very antiquated & sad network of railway product.

 

[vmile]

Last Saturday afternoon, Florence to Milan, via Bologna, indicated 300kph several times, on the .italo

 

[SeatBackForward]

Last Saturday afternoon, Florence to Milan, via Bologna, indicated 300kph several times, on the .italo

View attachment 18631

Is that logo on the seat the QF logo just stretched out? (perhaps because of the high speed??)

 

[Timtammi]

Reading this has made me realize I have caught more trains than I thought

Me too! Thinking back and stretching my memory I have been on:
- Amtrak "Maple Leaf" from New York to Niagara Falls
- Amtrak New York - Washington
- Amtrak "silver service" Washington - Charleston - Savannah - Orlando
- Lots of trains in Italy - Venice - Milan. Milan - Portofino. Rome - Florence and many other shorter trips.
- TGV Zurich - Paris
- Bernina Express through the Swiss Alps and Bernina Pass
- Paris - London on the Eurostar
- Shinkansen in Japan - Tokyo - Kyoto - Osaka
- Maglev in Shanghai

and next week I'm doing the G train in China from Beijing to Shanghai return. Should be interesting!

Cheers

Timmi

 

[serfty]

Hmmm ... Melbourne-Sydney vv during the '89 pilot's strike.

Kuala Lumpur - Singapore vv on KTMB - round trip cost in First ex Kuala Lumpur was MYR105 (ex SIN r/t would have been SGD105).

Narita-xTokyo-Osaka,

Kyoto-Tokyo

Narita-xTokyo-Karuizawa

Karuizawa-Tokyo

Tokyo-Nagano & vv.

Does Folkstone to Calais vv count?

 

[thommo9]

Not as much travel here as others, but have done a couple.

- New York - Washington DC on the NE Regional, not the Acela.

- Washington DC - Boston. This was an NE Regional, luckily J class seating was available which made sleep possible. Although waking up and realising you're stationary at Penn Station, NYC was interesting!

- Helsinki - Kuopio & vv

 

[dairyfloss]

I think I might be the first to add the 'Glacier Express' from Zermatt, Switzerland - a ski village in the Swiss Alps near the Matterhorn, to St Moritz... SWMBO and I did the journey in First Class a couple of years ago. Quite nice indeed... though we were unfortunate enough to have had a quite overcast day when we did it, and so spent a lot of the time in the clouds and without the amazing views! Took about 8 hours.

Cheers.

 

[Fantic125]

does anyone know of a picture with the G Trains only in China network? On the google, all the D trains and slow trains showed up as well and made for headache working out what route the G train is for!

I use chinatrainguide.com. Just enter the stations you want to travel between and it gives you the timetable for all train types as well as travel time. Pretty easy to see which are the high speed ones.

For me, my high speed trains have been;

KTX, Seoul to Daejeon return (multiple times)
TGV, Paris to Montbard return,
ICE, Frankfurt to Stuttgart return (multiple times)
G-train; Shanghai to Danyang & return,
G-train, Shanghai to Hangzhou return,
Maglev, Shanghai
Thunderbird, Osaka to Fukui return.

I've travelled on more than I realised :shock:

 

[SeatBackForward]

While we're posting on information sources. If you want to travel on Indian Railways, forget the Official website, its useless. A more practical site is Indian Railways Time Table, PNR, Route, Fare, Arrival/Departure, Running Status - eRail.in (Better Way To Search Trains)
For Example:

12951 MUMBAI RAJDHANI
Mumbai Central to New Delhi


[TABLE="class: DataTable DataTableHeader RouteList"]
[TR]
[TD]SNo[/TD]
[TD]Code[/TD]
[TD]Stn Name[/TD]
[TD]Zone[/TD]
[TD]Div.[/TD]
[TD]Arr.[/TD]
[TD]Dep.[/TD]
[TD]Halt[/TD]
[TD]PF[/TD]
[TD]Dist.[/TD]
[TD]Day[/TD]
[TD]Remark[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[TABLE="class: DataTable RouteList"]
[TR]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]BCT[/TD]
[TD]Mumbai Central[/TD]
[TD]WR[/TD]
[TD]BCT[/TD]
[TD]First Stn[/TD]
[TD]16.40[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD]ST[/TD]
[TD]Surat[/TD]
[TD]WR[/TD]
[TD]BCT[/TD]
[TD]19.37[/TD]
[TD]19.42[/TD]
[TD]5[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]263[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]3[/TD]
[TD]BRC[/TD]
[TD]Vadodara Jn[/TD]
[TD]WR[/TD]
[TD]BRC[/TD]
[TD]21.07[/TD]
[TD]21.17[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]392[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]4[/TD]
[TD]RTM[/TD]
[TD]Ratlam Jn[/TD]
[TD]WR[/TD]
[TD]RTM[/TD]
[TD]00.37[/TD]
[TD]00.40[/TD]
[TD]3[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]653[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]5[/TD]
[TD]KOTA[/TD]
[TD]Kota Jn[/TD]
[TD]WCR[/TD]
[TD]KOTA[/TD]
[TD]03.10[/TD]
[TD]03.20[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]920[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]6[/TD]
[TD]NDLS[/TD]
[TD]New Delhi[/TD]
[TD]NR[/TD]
[TD]DLI[/TD]
[TD]08.30[/TD]
[TD]Last Stn[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[TD]1384[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Fare:
1A Class = $74AUD (Air Conditioned Booths)
2A Class = $44AUD (Air Conditioned Open Compartment shared by 4)
3A Class = $32AUD (Air Conditioned Open Compartment shared by 6)

The Rajdhani's are the top of the line "express" trains between the major Indian Cities. But as shown, about 15hrs to travel 1,384kms, Not exactly "high-speed" but if you wanted to travel overnight, this would be ideal.

 

[SeatBackForward]

Some more photos of the Journey from Seattle to Vancouver, you do go past a lot of water:

 

[SeatBackForward]

Some random shots from the door of a train in Southern India, these were taken during the rainy season, so the landscape looks a lush green colour:

 

[erkpod]

Some back story to this pic....

When I was planning this year's US trip, I knew that I had to be in Miami by a set date & that I had to be home by a set date.

On my first visit to the US in 2009, I hired a car & drove across America & back. Earlier in 2013, I Amtrakked it from coast to coast & back again. In 2014, I'm flying everywhere.

When I was planning this trip, I knew that I was starting out of LA, partly because VA only flies into LAX. I then was looking to go from LA to Miami. I thought it would be a simple case of getting on at LA, drawing a line across the country down south & that would be it. However when I was booking the trip from Australia, Amtrak's suggestions would mostly be LA - Chicago - DC - Miami. I thought "there must be a way to not go right to the top of the US to get to the south!"

Getting a rail map app & trying various combinations, the best I could seemingly do was LA - New Orleans - DC - Miami which is pretty much what I did. Rather than do that trip in one big hit, I decided to go LA - New Orleans & then spend a week there. Then I'd spend a weekend traveling New Orleans - DC - Miami. I later found out thanks to the Amtrak social media team on Twitter that the reason that my trip was so long New Orleans - Miami was because the line is still cut & services are still suspended New Orleans - Orlando after Hurricane Katrina in 2005!

So after a mild couple of days in LA & a hotish week in New Orleans, I arrived in the DC area on Australia Day. Snow was falling & you could see snow powder in the doorway sections of the train.

With about 4 hours layover, I decided to book the layover in Alexandria VA & avoid laying over in DC. I had been to the Alexandria area in 2009 & I knew people there but we didn't meet up. Hindsight is a marvelous thing. Had I layed over in DC rather than the nearby Alexandria, I would not have had to make a massive run for the Amtrak train between the Metro & Amtrak stations in Alexandria. I allowed plenty of time to come back from DC but there was a cracked rail with associated delays.

The pic was taken just after I got off the train at Alexandria with the temperature around -2C around 9am.

If I was to do that trip again, I would layover in DC even though it is not one of my most favourite cities.

 

[seanpodge]

Have done a fair bit of train travel in NE China on all classes of trains.

Beijing - Shenyang
Shenyang - Baihe (to see Mt Changbai)
Shenyang - Harbin
Harbin - Dandong
Dandong - Beijing
Harbin - Changchun
Harbin - Beijing

Have also done a bit in Europe, such as Berlin-Koln-Brussels, Brussels-London and Budapest-Prague.

Also, while it's not long distance, I'm going to include the Shanghai Maglev (at full speed) just because it's really, really cool.

 

[sinophile888]

Many years ago, Perth to Brisbane and return by train. The trip took 5 days each way with train changes at Kalgoorlie, Port Pirie, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. And it included full days in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
London to Paris and return on the Eurostar on the same day.
Hong Kong to Beijing, a 25 hour trip.
Melbourne to Geelong to see visit a sick relative.
Melbourne to Bendigo to visit the Woollen Mills.
Maglev in Shanghai before it was slowed down. Reached 431 km/hr.
Hong Kong to Guangzhou and return.
Hong Kong to Shenzhen and return (dozens of times).
Rome to Florence, Florence to Perugia, Florence to Genoa, Genoa to the Cinque Terre.

Planned for November 2013
Shenzhen to Xian (2200 km) in 9¾ hours, averaging 225km/h.
Xián to Beijing (1200 km) in 5½ hours, averaging 220 km/h.
Beijing to Shenzhen (2400 km) in 10¼ hours, averaging 235 km/h.

 

[harvyk]

Haven't done any long distance rail (hardly call CBR-SYD vv long distance), but I have been on the Shanghai maglev, sadly both times was on the super slow 300km/h services rather than the 430km/h service.

Absolutely loved it both times.

 

[UP4014]

Just went for a train ride yesterday
where it parked
Farrago Australis passengers take in the view | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
View from the obsverationplatform
From the Obs | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[JessicaTam]

Contrary to the ethos of this forum, I try to do as much intra-europe travel by train as I can. Fabulous stuff.

London-Brussels on the EuroStar
Brussels-Paris
Berlin-Frankfurt (gotta love DB F lounge in Berlin)
Paris-Frankfurt
Paris-Barcelona (overnight)
Barcelona-Madrid (300kph)
Aberdeen-London (8 hours of luxury slow travel)

and multiple short hops in EU

Australian trips:
Bluebird and Overland.