I recently spent three months working in Europe and train travel was extremely romantic and comfortable.
I agree, this is just VIA being overpriced and shitty.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Train travel is amazing. NORTH AMERICAN train travel is shit ass
when i was in the UK, i took a train from london to Glasgow. train was >200kph, and, without exaggeration, as quiet as a library.
Arrived 15 minutes before it left, had a beer on it, was in glasgow in no time. Highly recommended.
as an expat, it can be mixed though. If you rely on it for commuting and travel at rush hour, it's just a different kind of hell.
I rode from Stockholm to Copenhagen and back. There were 2 issues with delayed or canceled trains, leading to potential missed connections and some pragmatic opportunism.
Still. It was awesome. It was fast, effective, safe and comfortable.
I worry that our own rail system has never been all those things, and will never be all those things, and I dearly hope to be proved wonderfully wrong.
We wanted to do a train elopment in Canada, needed to book 10+ months early and was gonna cost us 14k to cross the country one way with a two person sleeper.
Oh if we just wanted to cross the country on the train it will still be 1k one way each for a seat.
Train travel here is a joke, i just wanna take trains without having to worry about it costing an arm and a leg along with knowing there's a high chance I'll get stuck somewhere waiting as via doesn't have right of way.
Seems the lowest cost trains are double the cost of the lowest airfares (at least that I checked), but I bet the train is still more comfortable. I've only ridden trains in other countries though, so I can't say for certain.
but I bet the train is still more comfortable
It's not. In business class, you're immediately behind the engine -- you get to hear it blast the horn multiple times at every crossing.
And no matter which class you're in, the freight trains have beat the piss out of almost every set of tracks, so that when you're at speed, it just about knocks your fillings out -- nevermind the idea of actually getting any work done on paper or laptop because of the constant motion.
Your best bet is to get high/drunk before you get on the train and sleep through it.
Yikes, that's disappointing. If the tracks are beat up by freight trains though, doesn't that also affect the luxury riders / tourists? I guess there must be soundproofing for them?
Trains I was on in other countries (crowded or not, higher price tiers and lower) were always smooth and quiet rides at the least. Also, I only saw crowded trains a few times, so in most cases they were quite comfy as well.
There are no dedicated tracks for passengers trains outside major cities. If you travel between Quebec City and Windsor on Via Rail, you're almost exclusively on freight tracks. Between Montreal and Kingston is like being shaken left and right non-stop for nearly two hours. Impossible to read a book / tablet / phone, type on a laptop -- eating and drinking is difficult.
Meanwhile, the TGV/ICE trains move at over 300km/h, and the speed & motion are imperceptable, even on curves.
From the handful of times I rode the train, it's only more comfortable if you plan to sleep. At full speed, it's pretty rough. That being said, you won't be at speed for long--you'll get stuck behind freight and go at a snail's pace for an hour or two at a time, most of the way. If someone is picking you up, tell them not to bother until a few hours after you're scheduled to arrive.
Train travel isn't romantic if I use it twice a day to commute.
I implore you to go to some place outside North America for a month and use trains twice a day. Even the worst choices are better than VIA rail.
Oh, I live in London, and use the tube.
When Amtrak can figure out how to keep trains on the tracks with the literal billions of dollars in free money they get yearly, only then will I ride one.