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I love traveling by train

Canadave

Canadave

Vice Admiral
Admiral
So I'm currently sitting watching the sun set over rural Ontario, using the free WiFi service to catch up on the BBS and social networking sites, and thinking just how much I love traveling by train. Seriously, it's so bloody civilized and relaxing, it's hard to believe it's not more popular here in North America.

I mean, in Canada, the train is a huge part of our history. We're taught how it was one of the major reasons why our country was founded. And our first major political scandal involved the railway. And yet today, VIA Rail (which runs 95% of the passenger trains in the country) is chronically underfunded, and high speed rail remains a pipe dream, at best. Even the heavily trafficked Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor is limited to about 110 km\h, at best.

Anyway, didn't really mean for this to turn into a rant, but I do think it's a shame the train is so underappreciated here. Anyone else love riding the rails?
 
I also love trains. I wish I had the time to travel across country on one.

In fact one of the first things I do when I visit a large city that I've never been to before, is find out if it has a subway/light rail system, and if so, I spend a fair amount of time riding around on it with no particular destination in mind. I did that ALL DAY the first time I learned how to ride the New York City subway. :lol:
 
Canadave said:
I love traveling by train. Seriously, it's so bloody civilized and relaxing, it's hard to believe it's not more popular here in North America.
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I think you have your answer right there. ;)

I like trains. They never run in time here (thankfully: it brings up bad memories), but they always make for a interesting experience.
 
iguana_tonante said:
Canadave said:
I love traveling by train. Seriously, it's so bloody civilized and relaxing, it's hard to believe it's not more popular here in North America.
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I think you have your answer right there. ;)
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Sadly, that's true. We're all too obsessed with our damn cars over here. :(

And unfortunately, the city where I live has very little mass transit to speak of (we have the faintest imaginings of a bus service, but that's it). We could really use a rail system of some kind. On Husker football days alone, it'd pay for itself within a year. :lol:
 
iguana_tonante said:
I like trains. They never run in time here (thankfully: it brings up bad memories), but they always make for a interesting experience.
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To be honest when I lived in Bologna all trains I had to take were always on time and you just gotta love the prices of public transport in Italy.

My family lives in Venice, though which probably has the ugliest train station on Earth... at least compared to the surrounding buildings.
 
{ Emilia } said:
My family lives in Venice, though which probably has the ugliest train station on Earth... at least compared to the surrounding buildings.
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Never been to Penn Station in New York, eh? ;) I just looked up pictures, and while it's certainly not beautiful, I've seen much, much worse.

And yeah, it's true, we are too obsessed with cars to really invest in trains. It's a shame.
 
{ Emilia } said:
To be honest when I lived in Bologna all trains I had to take were always on time and you just gotta love the prices of public transport in Italy.
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Shush. The fame of Italian trains' lateness is indeed exaggerated, but you gotta keep up the story for the foreigners. You know, the wacky charm of Italy and all that stuff. ;)

{ Emilia } said:
My family lives in Venice, though which probably has the ugliest train station on Earth... at least compared to the surrounding buildings.
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Having been there recently, I have to agree.
 
Mr. Laser Beam said:
Canadave said:
{ Emilia } said:
My family lives in Venice, though which probably has the ugliest train station on Earth... at least compared to the surrounding buildings.
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Never been to Penn Station in New York, eh? ;)
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:lol:

I keep hearing about plans to remodel/expand Penn but nothing has ever come of it. God knows they need all the room they can get.
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It's a shame, really. The original Penn Station was, by all accounts, quite beautiful.
 
The few times I have travelled by train I have enjoyed it.

Unfortunately Tasmania doesn't have any regular passenger train services any more. If I remember correctly the passenger service stopped here sometime in the 1970s. Now there is a very occasional picnic train and a few steam-driven tourist trains but that is about it.
 
Trains are just wonderful. You can sit facing backwards! The simplest thrills...

also you tend to get beautiful streaming scenery. When I was in Germany, some of my best moments were between all the cities and sightseeing, just sitting on a train looking out the window.
 
This is a timely thread. I was planning to rent a Cessna 172 and fly myself up to Vermont for Easter, but the clouds are too low this weekend so I can't do it. (Need to finish up the instrument ticket already!) Instead, I just booked myself the same route on Amtrak, which I don't get to travel on very often.
 
The biggest problem with trains is getting to the train station, and then getting to your final destination when you get off. Those inconveniences add enough to the cost and journey time, to make trains annoying unless you're going to be travelling for hours and hours, and yet not far enough for a plane. Since I rarely travel that sort of middling distance, I don't find trains particularly useful.

The only exception is if the city you're travelling to is large enough to have a well-developed metro system to get you close to your destination. So I still use trains if I'm going to London (which in any case is a place I try to avoid going to often). Though I've recently found a reasonably priced London car park - no, I'm not saying where - so I may reduce even that train use now.

ETA: I do plan on doing the Orient Express at some point though.
 
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I'm fond of trains too and have had a few memorable rides in the last 55 years or so.

Chicago to Denver on the Burlington Zephyr in '54
The Bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka in '74
LA to San Francisco on the Coast Starlight on our honeymoon in '77
Eurail from Amsterdam to Stutgart in '87
Toronto to Montreal somewhere in the 90s
Shanghai Maglev in '07 (that thing rips!)

Hoping for more in the future.
 
Yeah, I'd love to be able to travel by train, but honestly, there's not enough travel routes anymore. Hardly any that go through Sudbury for instance. They mostly seem to go out east, at least the ones in Ontario, so I simply don't have access to it. It's definitely a shame because at one time we used to be a huge railway center due to the logging industry, but we've been reduced to being a footnote with not much train traffic.
 
Trains are wonderful. I used to ride back and forth to New Haven for school, local commuter train. I could sleep or read or whatever. Also used to take the Metro-North into NYC for concerts, and a couple times took Amtrak to Providence and Boston. Definitely a far better choice over I-95! I just wish they'd put a station down the street from my house like there was 50 years ago. :)
 
I've taken VIA from Toronto to Montreal a couple of times, mostly when I was the Events Director for the 2009 Worldcon and had to go up for meetings. Usually I was able to catch rides with other Toronto people who were on the committee, but once or twice our schedules didn't mesh.

I agree, the train is a very civilized way to travel, if you have the time to spare. Six hours with nothing to do but catch up on email and enjoy the scenery... heaven! :)
 
I HATE trains!

They're loud, you can't sleep in them because of the motion and sound and there's tons of people in there with you (and some of them you don't want to be near you).

I love my car.. everything considered it is more expensive than trains but it makes me more flexible, i can avoid all these people pressing in on me from all sides during rush hour and i can start whenever i like and not when the schedule says so.
 
^ Loud, you think? Maybe it's different in Germany, but I find trains here (especially long distance ones) are very quiet, especially compared to buses and planes. And I like the motion because it's very predictable. I can read on a train, for example, but I can't on a bus or in a car without getting motion-sickness. I also find the gentle side-to-side rocking motion to be very conducive to sleep...
 
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