Eurostart buys 10 Valero trainsets to expand fleet.

[Chris]

Probably not much in it, and it would be nicer by train, but if you could fly from Manchester/Glasgow etc, then it would be quicker by air than domestic trains and changes to get to London. And 7.5 hours is a record, so it may be around 9 (?) hours all the way to Rome.

[audigex]

200mph train
500mph plane

Gives a maximum of up to about a 2 hour flight/4 hour train journey where the train is better. Between 3 hours flight and 5 hours train it's probably about equal (depending on where you need to start/end relative to the airport and station). Above a 3 hour flight the plane wins. And we're still only looking capital cities. Within the UK, you're adding an extra hour just by going out of London.

So basically most of France, Holland, Belgium. The top of spain and west of germany. Possibly into Switzerland? Anything beyond that is going to remain the domain of the aeroplane.

[Dave]

Good if you're frightened of flying though. Or if you don't like the concept of airports, etc.

[orudge]

Or, indeed, if you just want to have a more civilised journey. Alas, unless you're flying a full-service airline in business class, there's little pleasant about flying these days. But, of course, if you're trying to go from Aberdeen to Rome, it'll inevitably take longer to get to London by rail than it would take to get from London to Rome by rail - even with a connection, so the plane is generally more competitive there.

[Kevo00]

I once traveled from Durham to Olomouc in the Czech Republic by train - took me about 30 hours all in, but that was doing Brussels - Berlin by couchette then EuroCity train down to Pardubice in Czech, then changing to a CD train to Olomouc. Could probably have done it faster by not spending an evening in Brussels, but hey it was fun.

[Dave]

Probably good to do once.