I gave up short-haul flights 10 years ago. As a travel and transport writer, it has been challenging at times, but I have since been to 30 countries without flying. If I had to choose the most practically important things I’ve learnt from a decade on the rails, these would come out on top…
Different stations, same name
There is a city called Luxembourg in a country called Luxembourg. There is also a Paris RER station called Luxembourg, and at least half a dozen French bus stops called Luxembourg. If you ask a machine or app for a ticket to Luxembourg, it will correctly guess which one you mean most of the time. But it takes only a moment of complacency or distraction to book a useless ticket to a namesake destination – or to board the wrong train.
A few weeks ago, I bought a ticket to Essen. But the software assumed I wanted to visit a small Belgian town, and I ended up spending €9 on the wrong ticket. Numerous Neustadts and various Villeneuves (and indeed southeast England’s two very different Ashfords – in Kent and Surrey) exist to puzzle the hurried or sleep-deprived traveller.
Train Wi-Fi is not good
Significant technical hurdles stand between a train passenger and reliable internet connectivity. Or at least, that’s what I remind myself when my shared document goes offline for the seventh time due to a tunnel, steep cutting, patch of bad signal, local oversubscription to 4G networks, ageing on-board technology, or some phenomenon of physics that I’d probably quite like to read up about, if only I could access Wikipedia.
Travelling through rural or mountainous areas in what is essentially a long metal tube does not provide an ideal environment for stable internet – any business traveller should assume that meaningful collaborative work is impossible.
I have tried to work productively on more types of trains than most people, and have concluded that without your own 5G connection, online work is not feasible.
Significant technical hurdles stand between a train passenger and reliable internet connectivity (Photo: Harald Eisenberger)Sleeper trains are often disappointing
The romance of sleeper trains is overstated. As a regular user, I can attest to their usefulness when I am attempting to travel from London to, say, Austria overnight. But they are often dirty, uncomfortable, noisy, chaotic and poorly maintained – and generally compare unfavourably with two normal train journeys separated by a (stationary) hotel room.
The new generation of Nightjet, the most up-to-date sleeper trains on the European network, is quite good, but it is an exception to the rule. And I recommend taking your own sleeping bag on any sleeper.
Always aim to charge
If there is an unused plug socket on a train or in a station, fill it. On quick journeys from city to city, the chance of disruption is low and manageable, but if you have a day of multiple changes, you’ll need at least one device for your ticket, timetabling, travel updates and other crucial information that could make or break your trip.
I love a digital detox as much as any millennial, but I also like to get to my destination, and make alternative arrangements when things go wrong. So I take a phone and a battery pack, which I keep charged.
On my way to Gothenburg, I travelled from London to Copenhagen in one day, working en route. If it wasn’t for meticulous charging, I’d have run out of battery somewhere between Cologne and Hamburg.
Remember to charge when you can (Photo: Andrzej Rostek/Getty/iStockphoto)Take provisions
It sounds like elementary advice, and it is, but if you are accustomed to flying – during which you’re never more than 100m away from a €4 bottle of water – it takes a while to adjust to how poorly equipped some trains and stations are.
I’ve been on sleepers with no drinking water for 15 hours through the night and washed up at stations with no food anywhere nearby.
Even well-stocked buffet cars can quickly sell out. My preference is fruit and nut bars and still water (I keep two litres in my bag). It is best to avoid sweets and salty snacks. A delay is made much worse by dehydration, hunger and thirst.
Platforms don’t make sense
Stations in the UK generally use sequential numbers to label their platforms, with a very small number of exceptions. Across Europe, that isn’t the case.
Not only can a platform be any combination of numbers and letters (7A, B4, etc) but the length of the platform might also have sections identified by numbers or letters. Seat 81 of coach 4 might require you to board from section D of platform 3A, which means you need to use a different lift and walk 500m. Allow yourself the time to comprehend this alphabet soup. It helps to Google the station followed by “platform map English.pdf”.
Train platforms can be hard to navigate (Photo: Markus Mainka/Boarding1Now/Getty/iStock Editorial)Nobody is coming to save you
Train travel offers very little by way of safety net. An airline passenger moves through well-oiled processes in safe, organised spaces. A rail passenger, by contrast, is on their own.
An airline has a supervisory duty – a train company does not know or care where you are. I once got stuck in a small Serbian town with only euros; it was by pure chance that someone was willing to swap me some dinar so I could catch a bus.
Now, I carry £50 in local currency every time I get a train through Europe’s rural, disconnected areas.
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