There's something so beautifully romantic about trains. Perhaps that's why filmmakers love them. I can't help but think of the characters in Days of Heaven, migrating across the Texas Panhandle for work and a new life. Or the wonderful opening scene of Clouds of Sils Maria, with Kristen Stewart ducking and weaving, the barrier between Juliette Binoche and the frenzied celebrity culture of the outside world. Or the scene in Pather Panchali where the young kids encounter a train for the first time and you understand that they haven't just seen a train, but indeed they've gotten a glimpse at modernity, at a brave new world that they don't understand, but will come to encompass them.
Everybody loves their road films but I think trains are the ultimate film vehicle.
Trains are very comfortable to travel in as well imho. Better than planes, because no airport hassles and the seats are better, and you can move around if the baby next to you is crying; better than buses because a smoother ride; and better than driving yourself because you can relax and read a book.
I'd also add better toilets, or more convenient, at least. Most of the buses do not have them and those that do have them are just too cumbersome (you risk half of the bus hearing you doing your thing while inside in there). And "holding it in" (so to speak) until the next stop is no civilised way to travel, especially after a certain age.
In Canada (or at least Quebec) sure, train was more comfortable than bus in my experience, and I'd expect anything to be more comfortable than the absolutely awful experience I had with Greyhound in the US. Commuter trains in Montreal weren't what I'd call comfortable though, but that's probably the same everywhere.
In France, bus is less comfortable mostly because it's so much slower, but the ride on the highway is smooth (you can't beat TGV but the other trains often ride partially on older, uncomfortable track). And you can't really move in trains if a baby next to you is crying, as seats are reserved (they are on TGV and IC trains but not on TER though). You can always take the risk to go to an empty one but you will probably have to move again next stop (and maybe find yours occupied in turn).
In Vietnam, bus is infinitely more comfortable than rail, on one side you can find cheap enough buses that are very comfortable (both the ride and the on-board amenities) and on the other side the train is definitely not smooth at all. I take the train because I like trains, but there's no question buses are more comfortable (and generally faster as well).
Well-maintained, modern trains on good tracks are comfortable, but they're maybe not as common as you might think.
>Trains are very comfortable to travel in as well imho.
Depends on the train, for example the British government had a "temporary" solution in the 1980s of putting train wheels on Leyland buses and using them as substitutes for proper trains in the poorer parts of the country. These were about as fast and comfortable as they sound and were only taken out of service for good this year.
Honestly British rail travel in general is about as comfortable as pulling teeth with rusty pliers, it's usually very crowded and unreliable but it's also ruinously expensive to the point you get absurd stories about it being cheaper to get to Scotland via Barcelona or similarly torturous routes by plane than it is to take the train.
For UK travel it depends a bit I think - a daily commuter's experience will be a lot different to that of somebody who is making off-peak leisure trips. For the latter my experience is that there's rarely crowding (especially in these pandemic times!) and that advance purchase (fixed to a specific train) tickets are often pretty good value.
(Writing this on a train from Exeter to Dawlish. The sleeper train from London to Penzance is good if you like that kind of thing.)
> it's usually very crowded and unreliable but it's also ruinously expensive
Given there are many alternatives - including coach (national express + megabus), air, driving, and not going at all - in addition to competition on many lines (for example you can do Manchester-London in first class at high speed for £500 return, or you can choose to pay £45 return and spend an extra hour traveling), it can't be that expensive.
Paris-Bordeaux is about 400 miles takes 2hrs, is regularly available off-peak for ~€30 booked a few hours in advance and the 2nd class seat is a spacious as a first class seat on a UK train. UK trains are slow and absurdly expensive for what you get.
Well HS2 is a belated attempt to start building a high speed, high capacity network, about 30 years later than France, and look at the trouble that brings.
There is no public appetite in the UK for more rail capacity, or for faster services, so the only way to control numbers and prevent people from being (mostly) left behind is to increase costs on the busiest services.
This is fortunate too, the UK does not want to subsidise rail to the same extent as france -- Rail subsidies per passenger km (in euro-cents)
Isn't "Rail subsidies per passenger km (in euro-cents)" a bit of a strange metric? If the UK would half the amount of passengers, this metric would double, but it would definitely not be an improvement I'd say?
The UK makes a conscious decision not to subsidise its rail network to the extent of France and Germany. I'd rather we had spent the last 40 years building high speed lines, but as a country we didn't want that.
My list would be
* HS2 as now planned, extended up the east coast to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen
With junctions to allow services to run as appropriate for demand (e.g. Swansea-Cardiff-Bristol-Birmingham once an hour, continuing to Manchester or Leeds, Swansea-Cardiff-Bristol-London twice an hour, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Newcastle-Edinburgh, etc)
Had we done that we'd have the capacity to offer cut price, but alas we didn't.
As it stands, trains - especially cross country ones - are massively crowded even with the price as high as it is, because people prefer to take a dog-slow overcrowded train from Reading to Manchester, rather than to take a cheaper coach.
But the TGV network makes a profit as does the intercity network in the UK. So those subsidies are for commuter rail which make dense cities viable economic centres. If you don't subsidise those services then many more people are either forced to drive or they don't make a trip. If you take Kings Cross station as an example it would be literally impossible for 750,000 cars to pass through that area in the morning rush hour and once they got to their destination you would need 4.8 square miles of car parking area with circulation aisles. There are five more major rail termini in London with passenger number as high or higher than that and another five smaller ones that probably add up to one more. Major European and Asian cities are not viable without commuter rail. I would argue that the higher the subsidy, the better lubricated your cities are.
The problem with the UK is that if you compare HS2 to comparable French lines, we are 10 times less efficient at procuring public projects than they are. They can cross the Massif Central for ~€30m/mile, we cross the Midlands for ~€300m/mile. In flat country their costs are much lower, Paris-Bordeaux cost ~€10m/mile.
> British rail travel in general is about as comfortable as pulling teeth with rusty pliers
A reminder to foreigners that this should be read assuming typical British self-deprecation.
Trains/carriages (so seats, noise etc) in Britain are usually of lower quality than their closest competitors in nearby countries (France, Germany, Netherlands, etc), and outside south east England they're also more expensive. However, they are generally more frequent, and the system as a whole is the safest in the world.
With London being so large, there are some commuter/suburban rail routes that cover significant distances, like Bedford to Brighton. I wouldn't choose to travel that route for the sake of the journey, but Høje Taastrup to København H on the commuter train is also less comfortable than on a regional or intercity train.
Let me introduce you to old soviet trains, from my memories of a couple of cross country trips. Cozy, you line up by the window in the hallway as it pulls away while your parents unpack and put the suitcases in the high-up compartment in the little room - 2 bunk beds. You get the top one where you hang out and later fall asleep watching the window and listening to the train. There are 4 spots, so you have a guest joining you for the trip, and he tells you interesting stories and plays chess w/ you while drinking his tea. Magic.
Trains when I went back to Russia for a couple of years as an adult: mix of soviet and modern cars. In the soviet ones, the bedding is still from those soviet times. It's itchy, you're not sure whether it's clean, it smells a little funny. The toilets are disgusting, and you want to wash your hands and face from a water bottle -just trust me on that. You got some bunk mates in the 4-bed room. They're annoying, they're idiots, and they pretend to drink tea in class, while mostly just drinking cheap vodka. They step out by the car entrance to smoke every ten minutes, but reak of booze, BO, and smoke - so the whole car reaks too.
The new cars are clean, double the price, nice toilets, everything is plastic, everything smells like plastic. It feels like you're on an airplane. There's no magic.
Spent about a month in Kazakhstan, but flew in there from Moscow. Honestly - egh. Nothing special, just a smaller city with fairly friendly people trying to get through the day.
I had a similar experience in Egypt. I was on an organized tour with tour office and part of the trip is a long overnight train from Aswan to Cairo. The train looked terrible from the outside, very dirty. Insides were horribly cramped, no running water, toilets were unusuable. But the beds were surprisingly comfy and we managed to sleep all the way to Cairo.
Unfortunately, as I later learned, they are very unsafe too over there. Just two weeks after my trip a train crash happened with multiple fatalities, and months after it happened again.
Everybody loves their road films but I think trains are the ultimate film vehicle.