131–135 of 135 posts
Here we are wishing that we had daytime trains half as good in the US. Yes it's fine if you live near the northeast corridor, but what about the rest of us out here in "flyover country"?
You can take long distance trains, which incidentally have pretty nice sleeping accommodations, much nicer than most European sleeper trains.
Are these all proper sleeper trains? I took the one that goes from Gdańsk to Kołobrzeg in Poland many years ago (with a bunch of friends) going to a "copy party"(yes before the Internet we had parties for copying software in person, eventually they turned into demoscene events). We spent the entire night drinking beer and smoking weed, but this was in a normal 8 seat compartment. I don't remember if there were sleepe…
Not really. While it looks good on paper, booking some of these is quite a pain. I loved travelling by train as a kid, and would love to do it now, but when you compare the offers, it's quite bad. A flight is 1:15 between 2 places of interest for me. The train routes on this map exist (used it twice), but part of it is at night but only has normal compartments. Whole train journey is 15:34 (compared to 1:15 flight),…
Those sound good on paper but then reality hits you. Last summer we as a family decided to take a night train to reach our vacation destination. What should have been 6-7 hour car drive was ~12 hour train ride. Sleep was not great, getting to and out of train stations, herding two small kids etc so at the time we've reached our destination we were pretty tired. Much more tired if we just drove. The route back is wher…
With how things change in EU (i.e. combustion engine ban after 2035), driving for seven hours does not look to be an option for long. At some point the airliners may have to take more drastic emission curbing measures too, so in the long run, despite its inconveniences, the electrified rail may become the only real travel option for masses out there.
To approach this from a different angle — we have a euro7 norm that has been brewing for quite some time now and we still failed to come to an agreement. And there are talks now that the norm should also include production of EVs, electricity production and pollution from degrading brakes and tyres. Which is again stalling it even further.
So the reality might be that 2035 ban will be pushed further into the future as the date comes closer.
As a young traveller I took a handful of night trains...one time a family member had shared a bottle of homemade grappa - I was super excited about this! We were on a night train sharing a sleeper with an Austrian single mom with a couple of tweens. I think we were headed to somewhere deep in the Italian boot and it was summer - so very hot, with eight people in the sleeper car. Somewhere in the middle of the night,…
Oh wow. Based solely on my own grappa experiences, that may have been for the best.
Here we are wishing that we had daytime trains half as good in the US. Yes it's fine if you live near the northeast corridor, but what about the rest of us out here in "flyover country"?
Amtrak runs a whole 3 cross country services. Empire Builder (parallel Canada to Oregon), California Zephyr (Chicago to SF straightish line), Southeast Chief (LA through the Southern border states). These trains run through some of the most sparsely populated low demand regions to exist. Every state in the lower 48 except for Wyoming has at least one service passing through it. There's only so much Amtrak can do. At…
To get an impression, just have a look at the first map from there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_and_Rio_Grande_Western_...
What can be seen there extends to much of the rest of the CONUS. Therefore I conclude it has nothing to do with life style, tradeoffs regarding location, and so on.
> We can't make trains to literally everywhere...
You could, and you did.
Then the Great Depression and WWII came, and after this you decided to throw it all away for the automobile.
The same with streetcars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
vs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streetcar_systems_in_t...