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The longest train journey – in 2021

jonworth.eu

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Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#11

Post by hannob »

bloat wrote: post #10
dane-pgp wrote: post #6

Presumably the only way that this record could be significantly improved upon would be if Malaysia was connected to Indonesia (perhaps via the proposed Malacca Strait Bridge[0]) and then extended further if Sumatra and Java were connected (via the proposed Sunda Strait Bridge[1]). Beyond that, a rail connection from Asia to New Guinea or Australia is a lot harder to imagine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_…

How about Lisbon to New York? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait_crossing

It'd be extremely difficult to make a crossing of the bering strait work practically.

It's not just the technical challenges of building a bridge or a tunnel in pretty harsh conditions. It's also that on the russian side there is a huge area that has almost no human settlements and no infrastructure. You'd have to build a train line through an area of nothing. That also means it's difficult to imagine intermediate steps (e.g. first building half the rail line to even get there).

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#12

Post by hannob »

bobthepanda wrote: post #4
thriftwy wrote: post #3

COVID cuy the rope for many things barely tethered, such as international rail travel, so I'm not confident that we will see trains such as Paris-Moscow and Moscow-Beijing back as regular service.

At least in Europe there is a push to bring back overnight trains as an alternative to carbon-intensive flying. So it's not totally out of the realm of impossibility, particularly if things like carbon taxes change the equations.

Is there?

I mean I know there's "Year of Rail" and all that, but that doesn't seem to translate to anything more than words right now. (Like - no actual trains you could book.) The number of night trains has decreased over the last couple of years. It'd be nice if that trend would be reversed, but that will take more than proclaiming a year of rail.

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#13

Post by grishka »

thriftwy wrote: post #3

COVID cuy the rope for many things barely tethered, such as international rail travel, so I'm not confident that we will see trains such as Paris-Moscow and Moscow-Beijing back as regular service.

It's not a long route, just 3.5 hours one way, but they are preparing to restart the "allegro" (St Petersburg - Helsinki) high-speed train service soon, iirc.

The fun part is: Finland now requires a proof of vaccination to enter but doesn't recognize Russian vaccines, and vice versa. So as a Russian, if you really want, you could get Pfizer or something in countries that would let you enter with a PCR test or recognize Sputnik V, and then you'll have a EU-worthy vaccination certificate. And that's on top of still needing a Schengen visa. So I really don't know who these trains are for right now, besides like 5 people I know who did that exact thing above.

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#14

Post by ginko »

hannob wrote: post #12
bobthepanda wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Europe there is a push to bring back overnight trains as an alternative to carbon-intensive flying. So it's not totally out of the realm of impossibility, particularly if things like carbon taxes change the equations.

Is there? I mean I know there's "Year of Rail" and all that, but that doesn't seem to translate to anything more than words right now. (Like - no actual trains you could book.) The number of night trains has decreased over the last couple of years. It'd be nice if that trend would be reversed, but that will take more than proclaiming a year of rail.

Right now, and for the first time in over a decade I can again book a direct night train from Vienna to Paris:

https://www.nightjet.com/en/reiseziele/frankreich

I could book a seat on that train for tonight. AFAIK ÖBB (re-)started that line earlier this month.

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#15

Post by ginko »

bnegreve wrote: post #2

> This cannot mean the longest trip by train in terms of time or in terms of total length of track covered – we could put in dozens of interim stops to make a trip as long as possible I think the longest shortest path between two cities would make more sens than the geodesic distance

Essentially what we're looking for is the Graph Diameter[1] of the global train network.

[1] https://mathworld.wolfram.com/GraphDiameter.html

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#16

Post by fabioborellini »

grishka wrote: post #13
thriftwy wrote: post #3

COVID cuy the rope for many things barely tethered, such as international rail travel, so I'm not confident that we will see trains such as Paris-Moscow and Moscow-Beijing back as regular service.

It's not a long route, just 3.5 hours one way, but they are preparing to restart the "allegro" (St Petersburg - Helsinki) high-speed train service soon, iirc. The fun part is: Finland now requires a proof of vaccination to enter but doesn't recognize Russian vaccines, and vice versa. So as a Russian, if you really want, you could get Pfizer or something in countries that would let you enter with a PCR test or recogni…

They did restart it on last Sunday. Link in Finnish: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-12222441

The link states that two daily Allegro services have been re-instantiated. Due to Russian legislation, using the service is only possible for Finnish and Russian citizens. It is true that EU and Russia do not recognise each other's vaccines, but a negative test result allows travel. Russia seems to require a test result in any cases. It is possible that Finnish government starts requiring a negative test result on the Russian border, too, due to the omicron breakout.

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#17

Post by thriftwy »

grishka wrote: post #13
thriftwy wrote: post #3

COVID cuy the rope for many things barely tethered, such as international rail travel, so I'm not confident that we will see trains such as Paris-Moscow and Moscow-Beijing back as regular service.

It's not a long route, just 3.5 hours one way, but they are preparing to restart the "allegro" (St Petersburg - Helsinki) high-speed train service soon, iirc. The fun part is: Finland now requires a proof of vaccination to enter but doesn't recognize Russian vaccines, and vice versa. So as a Russian, if you really want, you could get Pfizer or something in countries that would let you enter with a PCR test or recogni…

On top of that, the finnish embassy basically says "Yes, we can issue you a finnish visa, but you should not count on being admitted to Finland with that visa", and that is on top of having a valid PCR test.

That's why I hold my expectations really low about international train travel. With airplanes it's actually much simpler, since air travel acts as a network and routes around failures (such as, even if you can't get from country A to country B directly, you can usually go transitting via country C without any restrictions).

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#18

Post by manuel_w »

ginko wrote: post #14
hannob wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there? I mean I know there's "Year of Rail" and all that, but that doesn't seem to translate to anything more than words right now. (Like - no actual trains you could book.) The number of night trains has decreased over the last couple of years. It'd be nice if that trend would be reversed, but that will take more than proclaiming a year of rail.

Right now, and for the first time in over a decade I can again book a direct night train from Vienna to Paris: https://www.nightjet.com/en/reiseziele/frankreich I could book a seat on that train for tonight. AFAIK ÖBB (re-)started that line earlier this month.

Need to give that one a try!

Also, the overnight train connection from Vienna to Hamburg is really convenient. I took it some years ago. If I recall correctly, the train departed at around 20:45 and arrived in Hamburg at 6:45.

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#19

Post by lmm »

hannob wrote: post #12
bobthepanda wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Europe there is a push to bring back overnight trains as an alternative to carbon-intensive flying. So it's not totally out of the realm of impossibility, particularly if things like carbon taxes change the equations.

Is there? I mean I know there's "Year of Rail" and all that, but that doesn't seem to translate to anything more than words right now. (Like - no actual trains you could book.) The number of night trains has decreased over the last couple of years. It'd be nice if that trend would be reversed, but that will take more than proclaiming a year of rail.

The Nightjet network has reconnected to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris, and OBB seems to be investing heavily. The Thelo trains from Paris-Italy have disappeared, but that was a recently opened service and frankly not very good when I rode it. When DB pulled out it looked like the end of an era, but European night trains are in better shape now than they have been for a long time, Covid notwithstanding.

Re: The longest train journey – in 2021

#20

Post by ant6n »

hannob wrote: post #12
bobthepanda wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Europe there is a push to bring back overnight trains as an alternative to carbon-intensive flying. So it's not totally out of the realm of impossibility, particularly if things like carbon taxes change the equations.

Is there? I mean I know there's "Year of Rail" and all that, but that doesn't seem to translate to anything more than words right now. (Like - no actual trains you could book.) The number of night trains has decreased over the last couple of years. It'd be nice if that trend would be reversed, but that will take more than proclaiming a year of rail.

Yes.

France brought back a bunch of national night trains. ÖBB brought back Paris-Vienna, and they have more plans. Sbb brought back Amsterdam-Zürich, also planning train to Barcelona. Sweden wants to get back into Europe (not successful yet). Poland wants to connect west again.

There's a bunch of private endeavors: berlin-Malmo-stockholm is running more often, there's a startup starting a Prag-Berlin-amsterdam-brussels service in spring '22, another older company started Alps-munich-hamburg-coast this year. There's a startup that announced all sorts of impossible routes out of Paris. Another announced brussel-berlin.

The bottom on night trains was 2017. Jon Worth probably has a bunch of opinions about that.

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