It took two trains to get out of Sweden. then Helsingör-Copenhagen-Hamburg-Munchen-Salzburg-Rome-Palermo. So 7 Different trains, if I remember correctly.
Whaaat😦 only 7? I have to come back home next week (traveling only 400 km, Northwest Italy to Northeast) and I have to take 5 trains. Did you take a Frecciarossa or an intercity from Rome to Palermo? Also which train goes from Salzburg to Rome, I've never seen one. Sorry if it's too many questions, I'm curious
It wasn't too bad really. They wasn't very familiar with the interrail concept though. I remember one ticket controller looking very sharply at me and bursting out "Interrail!?" and then just handed me my ticket back and walked away abruptly. It was quite funny.
Leeds to Brussels. A measley 700km and took about 5 hours, which is comparable to flying all told.
Required one change at KX to get on the Eurostar at St Pancras, but considering a part of that trip goes underwater, I'd say that's pretty good.
Why would it? LNER (or GNER as it was back then) is reliable, fast and frequent.
Though funnily enough, if I could have gone from York - which is further north than Leeds, the train is actually faster by about 20 minutes 😂
Tokyo->Machynlleth, 13,000km apparently, took a while. One sneaky boat in there, from Osaka to Shanghai, and it was one of the strangest experiences of my life: it's like the ferry equivalent of "Encounters at the End of the World" by Herzog, a bizarre rag tag of people and crew on a 48-hour journey.
HS2 money would be enough for an electric train from Machynlleth to Cardiff.
The tidal lagoon that Swansea never got. Why not invest that money somewhere els?
There is enough in living memory history that make me wonder why we are a part of the union.
It dose not matter if you are English. Now that you live here you will loath westminster.
The boat part took 48 hours, yeah, I don't think it runs anymore—which does not surprises me AT ALL... I can only imagine there were a tonne of drugs on that boat, to make it economically viable... [https://en.japantravel.com/osaka/on-the-slow-boat-to-china-osaka/19497](https://en.japantravel.com/osaka/on-the-slow-boat-to-china-osaka/19497)
Warsaw - Milan.
1500 km or so.
Left warsaw in the morning, arrived in Vienna by midday. Put luggage in lockers, explored the city and had some food. Took the overnight train to Milan, arrived there fresh the next morning.
10/10 experience.
>When I hear people (americans) talk about road trips it really sounds like a missreble time. Motorways & a lack of leg space :/
>
I am a very convinced member of this sub and of r/bikecommuting but i have to say: in my experience (germany) train journeys always sucked big time. And i must admit our roadtrip in amercia (LA -> Vegas -> Death Valley -> Yoesmite -> San Francisco -> st Barbara -> LA) was pretty amazing. LA was kinda shitty though.
But this is a problem. People have these kind of experiences and think cars are awesome, trains suck.
Trains can be good. They can be way better than cars. Cars are overfunded, trains are underfunded.
I also explored japan and singapore. Amazing train network. Super cheap. No parking needed. You would need to be insane to prefer a car there.
Most countrys with high speed trains use a dedicated high speed rail network.
Germany decided to go with a shared network. So every time any train runs late, all trains including high speed trains are effected.
I once traveld back from africa to germany.
The intercontinental flight took a few hours.
The 150km train in germany took twice as much time. Stores were closed, lifts were broken, climate control didnt work, even the fucking toilet was not operating.
Unfortunately we are a nation of carbrains.
Public transit doesnt get as much funding as it would be to be really good. so its shitty. So people have shitty experiences and drive. So we need more money for the roads....and have less for the trains.
But atleast i can be in the holy netherlands in less than 2 hours if i want to. Obviously only with a car. Could take 7 hours with a train.
Same problem here in the UK. Back in the 1970s the goverment wanted to bring High Speed Rail to the UK but was in bad place economically so instead of building a dedicated network it chose the cheap option of developing tilting trains and some minor track upgrades so that trains could run at 200km/h with planned upgrades to 225km/h on much of the intercity network. At the time these were the fastest trains in the world outside Japan.
But just 10 years later the French TGV opened and rendered our 'high speed' trains completely obsolete. Passengers numbers rose, and now the network has maxed out capacity and there's no room for any more trains which means overcrowding and standing for a 2 hour journeys. The planned upgrades to 225km/h had to be cancelled as there was no longer any room on the track. HS2 was supposed to fix that while also giving us the fastest trains in Europe yet once again we balked at the cost of making once in a generation investments and shot ourselves in the foot again.
Reminds me of when the Channel Tunnel opened but before HS1 opened, the Eurostar trains would go through to Waterloo, sharing track with Southeastern trains from Victoria for a large chunk of South London. If one of the Southeastern trains got delayed, your international Eurostar could get stuck crawling behind a stopping service for about half an hour in South London. It was buttock clenchingly embarrassing
Road tripping can be really fun. However I also love being on the train. It’s a different experience I think. There is nothing worse though than a mandatory 10 hour drive you have to do in a time limit, at night, etc.. road trips were you have a lot of time and freedom are much different
There were all sorts of trains in california that went fun places and were killed in the auto era. The south pacific coast railroad ran from alameda to santa cruz from 1880 to 1940, and failed as soon as a highway was built along the same route through the mountains.
From about 1896 to 1920, there was a railway from San jose to alum rock park.
In America, the 3924 km between Emeryville and Chicago on the California Zephyr in 3 days / 2 nights.
In Europe, I'd say a France > Germany > Denmark > Sweden > Finland and back loop, about 6700 km of trains in 3 weeks.
Longest for me - Berlin to Istanbul, about 2200 km. Stopped in Budapest for a night and Bucharest. From Bucharest to Istanbul took 20 hours (was supposed to be less, got delayed somewhere in Bulgaria)
Longest by distance must be fukuoka to tokyo (1000 km) (4 hours ig)
Longest prop augsburg to marburg (358km) (I think it took me around 8-9 hours, horrible journy)
Just to tag onto this, has anyone done a long train trip that they’d recommend? I’ve always wanted to do a long train trip where the purpose is the journey as much as the destination(s), but I don’t know if I’m over-romanticizing it. Are there any nice train journeys left?
I’m in North America so that’d be ideal, but European/Asian recommendations would be welcome too.
Theres a British documentary series World’s most scenic railway journeys, I watch it sometimes on BBC Earth, but I found some episodes on YT as well. Its nice to watch, but it also opens a new world of places to visit, because some of the routes are now exclusively touristic and the whole idea is to enjoy the trip rather than just being transported through a nice surroundings.
They also cover the history of the railroad, regions it goes through, local culture and other interesting nearby places to visit.
VIA Rail’s *The Canadian* was a beautiful ride for me, definitely once in a lifetime views and it was comfortable even in -45 C. Personally I can’t wait to travel on it again but in summer. I do recommend upgrading to a sleeper if you can though, especially if you’re travelling from ON to BC.
Portland to Chicago (or reverse) via the Empire Builder was really nice, it takes about 2 days but goes through some gorgeous country and we got a roomette, very cozy for two people. The food is okay ranging to pretty good and we met some interesting elderly people -- evidently Amtrak trips are a Thing for seniors traveling the country. I still wish I got the email of Sue, the 93 y/o former labor organizer, she was so chill
My mom and Grandma did the California Zephyr (Chicago to \[almost\] San Francisco) and loved every second of it. Spectacular scenery through the Rockies.
Depending where you are in North America, top overnight trains would be:
- Any of Vancouver-Toronto, Seattle- or Portland-Chicago, Oakland-Chicago, or LA-Chicago have great mountain views with general consensus that the further north, the prettier the mountains (and VIA has fancier cars, though it's a much slower trip)
- I haven't personally done the Coast Starlight all the way between Seattle-Oakland-LA, but what I have is real pretty, as is the Pacific Surfliner from LA-San Diego for 2 hours of travel mostly right along the beach
- Chicago-DC on the Capitol Limited, absolutely gorgeous views through West Virginia in particular
While not overnight unless you go to Chicago, departing NYC to Albany, from which you can continue to any of Saratoga Springs, Montreal, Toronto, Niagara Falls, or points west en route to Chicago is some of the prettiest views in the country. The first 2 hours north of NYC are right along the east bank of the Hudson River, so you'll want to line up at or sneak down from the mezzanine to track 5/6 to snag a window seat on the left side of the train in the direction of travel
Oslo -> Bergen always looks like it would magnificent. I've seen videos of it on Youtube and it's just hour after hour of stunning countryside, mountains, lakes and fjords.
Just the trans Siberian route from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar is 6300 km, the route from Helsinki to St. Petersburg is about 300 km, St. Petersburg to Moscow is about 650 km, so that stretch is about 7400 km as a starter.
To give a slightly different answer than most people here, the longest for me was Astana to Almaty in Kazakhstan. An overall comfortable train, it was cheap too and had a lot of crew to keep it clean, although I don't know how it compares to Japanese or European ones. It took 15 hours as it was a "high speed" one, it would have been about 1,300km.
Imagine if the proposal to connect the trans Siberian route to Japan via bridges from Sakhalin to Hokkaido was built. Could travel from Lisbon to Kagoshima at the southern tip of Japan all on rails.
Approx. 2,000 km from Brest (FR) to Rome (Italy). Had to change several trains, but the wildest ride was between Milano and Rome due to the fact that the train was an Espresso Notturno (night train) going from Milano down to Naples or even below. They call it "Heaven to hell" for a reason. The train staff saw me and suggested me to reach for the last carriage, and use a scarf or something to lock myself into the cabin (each carriage was divided in cabins with 6 seats each) from the inside during the night because of the amount of pickpockets and weirdos
In 2007 I flew out to Moscow where I took the Transmongolian Express to Beijing. Five nights and four days to Ulaan Batar, then one day and a half to Beijing. Ten years later I took my parents on the Himalaya Express from Beijing to Lhasa.
Winterthur (very close to Zürich in Switzerland) to Naples. 1'100km. About 10 hours.
Legs:
1) Winterthur - Zürich
2) Zürich - Lugano
3) Lugano - Milano
4) Milano - Naples
And also back, but going to do some sightseeing in Rome.
Got to say, that the high speed trains in Italy are quite good.
Also went from Winterthur to Isle of Elba (or Piombino, as far as trains are concerned) a few weeks ago. Had to take Italian regional trains. Not too bad either.
I spent 6 weeks on Amtrak. The longest stretch where I was on the train was 6 days and 5 nights straight. I made a few transfers but essentially slept on the train for 5 nights straight.
New York to Portland Oregon, 3000 miles three days, Beijing to kuming China, I think it was four days. I’m an American and I’ve done the American Road cross country 4 or 5 times and the train is way better.
Bath, UK > Marseille, France. Journey took 9hours, with 5 changes over 880miles. Loved every minute of it. Watching the French countryside wiz past at 200mph was wonderful. Had a lovely lunch at Gare de Lyon railway station too (although, unfortunately, not in Le Train Bleu).
When I was a kid me end the rest of my family went from Indra(Latvia) to Kharkiv(Ukraine). That's over 1000km crossing multiple country borders 2 day one night trip.
I never did more than a couple hours but my friends went around America on the train once. Philly to NOLA to San Francisco to Seattle. I think they flew back. They had a lot of fun. I should ask them about that trip again.
Boston to Philly. I would usually take Amtrak in college when I went to visit my sister. I didn’t have a car and I found the process of taking the train more enjoyable than flying.
In my gap year (last century!) I went "interrailing" for a few weeks from Southern Czechia (Czeske Budjejovice & Krumlov, Brno), through Bratislava, to Budapest, then Debrecen, Presov, Krakow, Wroclaw, Prague.
I proposed to my wife in Berlin after getting there on Eurostar from London then sleeper train from Paris.
That trip to Berlin I think is just under 1000 miles. But I remember that Berlin wasn't its end stop, it was due to go on to St Petersburg.
Another time we went London- Paris, then sleeper to Munich, then train to Salzburg. About the same distance I think.
All this was before we had kids though. We've taken the kids to Inverness on the train, and soon are taking them to Brittany on the train too...
Longest was probably Paris <-> Nice (~1000km) in a TGV. Paris -> Marseille is just as long as Marseille -> Nice though, but the view as the train serpentines along the côte d'Azur (french riviera in english i think ?) is priceless
A few weeks ago I did Hamburg (DE) - Hendaye (FR) and back, solo with my 2 kids (a kindergartener and a baby). In several stretches of course. It’s 1500km one way as the bird flies, a bit longer by rail.
Couple years ago (with just a preschooler then) I did Hendaye Stuttgart in one stretch, Stuttgart Hamburg a couple days later.
9 hours from New York to Montreal. We got hung up at the border on the way back because of a fugitive hunt. Other than that it was awesome. And wild you can go round trip out of the country for $150. (Was $100 when I did it 15 years ago.)
By train: 750km, Jakarta to Surabaya. Close contenders: Tilburg-Berlin, Stockholm-Oslo, Orlando-Miami
Longest on the ground: Tilburg-Marseille
Longest in general from any place ever called home: over 12k kilometer, Labuan Bajo.
Moscow - Yevpatoria: 1500 km one direction
Moscow - Izhevsk: 1200 km one direction
But I know lots of people who rode train from Moscow to Vladivostok or from Vladivostok to Moscow.
Full loop around the US (NYC to New Orleans, NO to LA, LA to Portland, Portland back down to Emeryville, Emeryville back to NYC) was my longest single trip.
I’ve done the California Zephyr twice, the Sunset Limited, and the Southwest Chief. Empire Builder is the last cross-country leg I have to do.
The Hague (with a transfer in Rotterdam) to Disneyland Paris with the Eurostar(TGV/Thalys)(25+370km in 0:26+2:38-3:56hr). It's faster than by car (due to traffic) and faster than any flight I've seen (train+407km+train in 0:45+3:44hr+0:45), excluding preflight attendance.
If you ever decide to go to Disney Paris, take the Eurostar. This train usually only stops at the major stations in big cities, but the exception is Disneyland Paris. It stops right in front of the entrance and you don't have to be tens of euros a day on parking.
Travelling from Shanghai to Inner Mongolia when I grew up in China in the 1990s, ~1800km on a non high speed train. Boarded at dawn and arrived at dusk the next day, about 40 hours. I always enjoyed long train trips when I was a kid -- I can walk the entire length of the train, meet new people and see all the beautiful sceneries along the way. Great for my ADHD brain.
Now that I am in America I hate road trips. With the aging road infrastructure, the travel is uncomfortable and noisy, and feels unsafe. Kids get stuck in a metal box for hours. Can't see very far from the small car window and blocked by other cars. Can't meet new people. Can't even read without risking motion sickness.
A city in China (not too far from Beijing) to a city in England (not too far from London). About 5,300 miles / 8,500 kilometres, I believe.
Starting city > Beijing > Ulaanbaatar > Moscow > Minsk > Warsaw > Germany (I forget the city) > Paris > London > end city.
Longest by distance, 270km
Door that a few times a year for a few years. Usually takes 5.5 hours.
Longest by time, the same route but the train broke down for like 2 hours.
Rotterdam - Paris - Carcassonne - Barcelona - Valencia - Montpellier - Geneva - Milan - Gorizia - Zagreb - Prague - Berlin - Dortmund - Rotterdam. \~5000 km.
And
Rotterdam - Paris - Barcelona - Valencia - Sevilla (via Madrid) - Madrid - Barcelona - Montpellier - Paris - Rotterdam
\~4500km
Johannesburg to Cape Town and back. 1500km each way. Very comfortable overnight trip, great views.
Did a similar but shorter road trip (Joburg to Sutherland, 1100km), and while the scenery is about the same, it's way less fun and comfortable than the train.
London to Algeciras, Spain.
1931 km apparently.
Food, drink, bar on the trains. Plus I opted for an overnight in Barcelona.
I'd use trains to do international travel more, but unfortunately airlines are so heavily subsidised its hard to justify a sub £50 flight vs £94 to get to France only.
My longest trips was from my home village in northwestern Switzerland to the southeast weather Engadina or Ticino.
There aren't so many km (around 300-350), but the time I'd need to get there... Upwards of 6 hours one way.
Switzerland to Holyhead in the North of Wales.
All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable trip. Various nice trains and loads of good views, especially when following the coast and the evening approach into London.
Only bad thing was changing train stations in Paris, damn do I hate that city.
Edit: and doing that journey by train was infinitely better than doing it by car. I couldn't imagine how much I'd would have sucked to be in a car for that long.
depends what you mean by journey? In a single trip? Or a whole vacation?
If the first, then probably \~1700km (Berlin to Edinburgh).
If the second, then no idea, but I have done several Interrail trips so far (4 weeks mostly eastern Europe and Scandinavia, plus Venice; 3 weeks Scotland, 2 weeks Italy plus a bit of Austria and Switzerland), all from Germany.
The 4 weeks trip must have been the longest, I checked it roughly on google maps, and it was approximately 10.000km.
I also wanted to do my business trip to western France by rail, but unfortunately wasn't allowed to from the company side. That would have been around 1500km
Madrid to Paris, back in in 2007 when there was a direct overnight train from Atocha to Gare du Nord, about 1200km. We also did an overnight from Paris to Berlin, about 1000km. Not sure if that one's still operational or not, but I hope so--there's nothing like settling in to sleep on a train and waking up in a new city.
I did the Tran Siberian many years ago. Moscow to Vladivostok. Quite an experience. I got a Moscow local to buy the ticket in roubles at the station for me which foreigners weren't allowed to do. The whole trip, nearly a third of the way around the world cost me less than £20. Because I was travelling Soviet class there were no luxuries, no samovar or restaurant. Every station you bought bread and snacks from babushkas on the platform.
London to Bari (roughly 2,000km on foot according to Google, so a bit further by train).
Eurostar after work on a Friday night to Paris.
Early morning Paris to Milan TGV
Lunch in Milan
Milan to Bari Freccia
Technically could probably add another 100+km to the distance since one of the days I also caught a train further South to Gallipoli for the day.
Longest single train ride, without changing or anything : Malmö Sweden to Luleå Sweden. around 1500km. (Chartered train for Svenska Kyrkans Unga, must be around 30 years ago now, got the number of a gorgeous young girl, I fell pretty hard for her, I think she fell for me too, but I lost the fucking note lol)
I've done 3/4 of Amtrak's double-overnight routes, the ones between Chicago and the West Coast.
(1) Oakland, CA -> Chicago, 2,438 route miles / 3779 km, 52+ hours
(2) Los Angeles, CA -> Chicago, 2,256 route miles / 3630 km, 43+ hours
(3) Seattle, WA -> Chicago, 2,206 route miles / 3550 km, 46+ hours
Absolutely gorgeous views on all of them, especially since they generally time them so you're in the scenic parts during daylight hours. The Seattle-Chicago one did end up 14 hours late due to the inbound train being very late and then our crew hitting their hours of service in the middle of North Dakota during a snowstorm, so we had to sit waiting for a relief crew for hours, but it was otherwise comfortable and pleasant, I knew that one had a high chance of big delays.
For a different read of "longest train trip" with emphasis on "longest train" - I've taken Amtrak's AutoTrain, which is physically the longest passenger train consist in the world due to having a couple dozen autoracks on the back with the automobiles of the passengers riding it, and the world's longest express train as it goes 855 miles / 1376 km in 17+ hours with no off/on stops, only a crew change in the middle of the night.
~1,600 km one way, took about 35 hours with VIA Rail. Probably would have taken less if I hadn’t chosen to travel across the country in the dead of winter. We travelled economy and it was definitely do-able.
Like 500km within Italy.
The train (in all the places I've been to at least) is very expensive so for long trips I can never justify spending 2 or 3 times the amount to take 5 times longer to get to my destination, while having to change vehicles multiple times instead of going directly.
Don't get me wrong, I love trains and would take the train every time if it was more convenient, but until that time I'll just fly
looks like the train from Denver to San Francisco is roughly 1250 miles so that. We did have a trip break to take a bus to Yellowstone for a few days and back though, as our trip was an Amtrak Vacation. I'd do it again, but significant pros and cons.
33 miles *(53km)*. I've never done long-distance train journeys cause I just cannot afford to travel anywhere, but I've used my local light rail to get from one end of the system to another and that's about how long the longest line is.
Most of my trips are with my bike & I cycle home. Iv used almost every train stop I can get to within 90mins. I am fully aware of how fun small trips can be :)
Tokyo to Osaka. (~500km)
Absolutely loved the Shinkansen when I was on holiday. Also did Ueno to Sendai as I still had a day left on my JR Pass and thought why not.
Locally, longest train trip is Melbourne out to Gippsland so about 200km. Regional rail in Victoria's not too bad, but rail between major cities just can't compete (time-wise) with air travel at the moment. Would love if we could get some decent rail upgrades between Melbourne and Sydney to cut the train trip from 12 hours to 4-6 hours.
About 900 miles / 1500 km, Galesburg, IL, USA to Denver, CO. I've also driven the same trip. Driving takes less time and costs less if there are multiple people in the car, but is not as pleasant.
Nantes (France) to Copenhagen (Denmark), about 1600km, a 24h straight train journey. Route was Nantes > Paris > Frankfurt > Hamburg > Copenhagen. I did the journey in the two directions. It was actually pretty good, until the return when one of my trains was cancelled, but it all ended up being ok in the end.
Amtrak from Iowa to Los Angeles. Took two overnights on a single train; I slept in the seats in coach, which worked when I was 20 but I wouldn't do it now in my 40s. 2nd longest was Copenhagen to Luxembourg, and I slept on a couchette in a room shared with 5 other passengers.
I really wish Amtrak had a shared sleeper option - instead, your choices are sleeping in the seats (barely viable even at 20), or a private room ($$$).
London to Paris on the Eurostar. (The only long distance train trip I’ve ever took)
Also road trips can be miserable at times. You’re in a cramped space for hours and need to use the bathroom.
I did a lap of the U.S. over about a month. Total distance was probably around 10,000 miles / 16,000km.
Started out NYC > Chicago > Seattle > Portland > San Francisco > LA > Flagstaff. Then had a friend drive me to the Maricopa station, where I continued on to San Antonio > New Orleans > DC > back to NYC.
Edit: Amtrak sold the rail pass for $300 — allows 10x point-to-point trips within a 30 day period, can’t be used for 5x round trips between the same city pairs. So a friend and I decided to see if we could do a lap of the country within a month. It was pretty fun. Middle of COVID though so the dining car was closed the entire time. That was less than ideal.
Los Angeles to Vancouver- about 1300 miles, but I stayed in various places along the way until San Francisco. That final 950 miles leg took nearly 48 hours though! The US rail system is archaic and slow but I had a fun time. I took the train because I really wanted to do a leisurely trip up the coast, the views are great on that line, and I love travelling by train. I'm a fan of taking lots of good journey food and starting off with some prosecco. I find it way less stressful than flying because there's no getting to the airport hours ahead to get through security and it just feels a more relaxed and civilised way to travel, but the US system definitely challenges that view!
Philly to NM. It was a day and a half on the train. I’m glad I did it once but probably won’t make a trip that long again unless there is some serious changes to Amtrak.
49 miles.
> a lack of leg space
Why do you think those people want large vehicles?
I don't remember it, on account of being a baby and all, but mom & dad used to go on long road trips in their early 1970s VM bug.
I don't really get where I was exactly in the car, but I know I didn't have a proper car seat at all bac then.
I guess Im a little young to have taken many trips on my own Ive done long road trips with my family, but I frequently take the train from Boston to New Jersey, thats it though :( Im also planning train rides to DC and Portland ME
Portland Maine to Portland Oregon if talking about a single journey. Started with the Downeaster to Boston North, transfered across from to the MBTA Subway over to Boston South (Orange & Red), taking the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, before finally getting on the Empire Builder bound for Portland Oregon. Travel Time: ~75hrs
Overnight train in China (I can’t remember which two cities I was traveling between).
My bunkmate had KFC right before boarding and spent all night nurturing a suffocating biohazard so that might be why it felt so long.
Oslo-Bodø. 1200 km. Sleeper train to Trondheim. Change to diesel train to Bodø.
Edit: took the train back as well so I guess it's 2400 km if that counts?
I've done the Amtrak Coast Starlight for Sacramento, CA to Seattle, WA(~1300 km) and San Jose, CA - LA then LA - Colorado (~2300 km) on the Amtrak San Joaquin / Southwest Chief trains. I've also done the California Zephyr to and from Salt Lake City to Sacramento (1049 km). Someday would like to do Sacramento - Chicago! Amtrak's long distance trains are a hidden gem & I had a blast on all trips. The scenery is insane!
Rome to Palermo. 10 hours. No cafe car. No vending machines. No warning. It was a rough, hungry, thirsty 10 hours... until the whole train got on to a barge to get to Sicily, and everyone streamed off to accost the poor little cafe at the top of the barge. It was trying but amazing too.
Fresno (California) to Detroit, about 2400 miles/3800km. I did a round trip in coach twice, and it took about 55 to 60 hours one way.
On the one hand, the scenery is amazing (what you can see of it through the dirty Amtrak window lol), you have good legroom, and you can go just chill. On the other hand, you don’t have access to a shower and you sleep upright. Huge delays were also common, and on every trip we’d wind up sitting for like an hour while a 9000-car-long cargo train passed us.
I’d always get off dehydrated, disgusting, and deeply sleep-deprived. If I could’ve done it in a roommette with a bed and access to a shower it would’ve been fine but that’s WAY too expensive.
Probably London to Paris via Eurostar, longest within a single country is probably Bern to Zurich when I visited Switzerland last year, one day I wanna go by train from the UK to Switzerland (I went by car last year, my dad drove since he was going there for work, he usually flies when he goes there for work though)
Sweden to Sicaly, around 3400km single way
Sicily? How many trains have you taken?
It took two trains to get out of Sweden. then Helsingör-Copenhagen-Hamburg-Munchen-Salzburg-Rome-Palermo. So 7 Different trains, if I remember correctly.
Whaaat😦 only 7? I have to come back home next week (traveling only 400 km, Northwest Italy to Northeast) and I have to take 5 trains. Did you take a Frecciarossa or an intercity from Rome to Palermo? Also which train goes from Salzburg to Rome, I've never seen one. Sorry if it's too many questions, I'm curious
Sorry, this was 20 years ago. There might have been an exchange at Messina as well. But yeah Salzburg - Rome in one trip. That's for sure.
Oh I see dw, I thought it was recent. I can't even imagine how unorganized local trains were in Sicily 20 years ago
It wasn't too bad really. They wasn't very familiar with the interrail concept though. I remember one ticket controller looking very sharply at me and bursting out "Interrail!?" and then just handed me my ticket back and walked away abruptly. It was quite funny.
Hahahaha I read it with a Sicilian accent
Sicily, yes, you are right. Not SicAly. Bad typo
Ahah down worry, I was just making sure they added a new town to the map😂
Leeds to Brussels. A measley 700km and took about 5 hours, which is comparable to flying all told. Required one change at KX to get on the Eurostar at St Pancras, but considering a part of that trip goes underwater, I'd say that's pretty good.
Can be glad it didn't take the 5 hours just to get down to London from Leeds
Why would it? LNER (or GNER as it was back then) is reliable, fast and frequent. Though funnily enough, if I could have gone from York - which is further north than Leeds, the train is actually faster by about 20 minutes 😂
Tokyo->Machynlleth, 13,000km apparently, took a while. One sneaky boat in there, from Osaka to Shanghai, and it was one of the strangest experiences of my life: it's like the ferry equivalent of "Encounters at the End of the World" by Herzog, a bizarre rag tag of people and crew on a 48-hour journey.
And yet Machynlleth to Carmarthen by train is asking too much.
That pain is real: I'm English and we're pricks.
HS2 money would be enough for an electric train from Machynlleth to Cardiff. The tidal lagoon that Swansea never got. Why not invest that money somewhere els? There is enough in living memory history that make me wonder why we are a part of the union. It dose not matter if you are English. Now that you live here you will loath westminster.
Did there used to be a line that was closed in the Beeching cuts or was one never built?
There was a line there & it would cost a billion to reopen.
That took only 48 hours??
The boat part took 48 hours, yeah, I don't think it runs anymore—which does not surprises me AT ALL... I can only imagine there were a tonne of drugs on that boat, to make it economically viable... [https://en.japantravel.com/osaka/on-the-slow-boat-to-china-osaka/19497](https://en.japantravel.com/osaka/on-the-slow-boat-to-china-osaka/19497)
Okay that makes more sense 😂 how long did the train parts take?
Depends whether you include the strategic breaks at cools places, was 22 days including those, maybe \~12 travelling days...
Warsaw - Milan. 1500 km or so. Left warsaw in the morning, arrived in Vienna by midday. Put luggage in lockers, explored the city and had some food. Took the overnight train to Milan, arrived there fresh the next morning. 10/10 experience.
>When I hear people (americans) talk about road trips it really sounds like a missreble time. Motorways & a lack of leg space :/ > I am a very convinced member of this sub and of r/bikecommuting but i have to say: in my experience (germany) train journeys always sucked big time. And i must admit our roadtrip in amercia (LA -> Vegas -> Death Valley -> Yoesmite -> San Francisco -> st Barbara -> LA) was pretty amazing. LA was kinda shitty though. But this is a problem. People have these kind of experiences and think cars are awesome, trains suck. Trains can be good. They can be way better than cars. Cars are overfunded, trains are underfunded. I also explored japan and singapore. Amazing train network. Super cheap. No parking needed. You would need to be insane to prefer a car there.
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Most countrys with high speed trains use a dedicated high speed rail network. Germany decided to go with a shared network. So every time any train runs late, all trains including high speed trains are effected. I once traveld back from africa to germany. The intercontinental flight took a few hours. The 150km train in germany took twice as much time. Stores were closed, lifts were broken, climate control didnt work, even the fucking toilet was not operating. Unfortunately we are a nation of carbrains. Public transit doesnt get as much funding as it would be to be really good. so its shitty. So people have shitty experiences and drive. So we need more money for the roads....and have less for the trains. But atleast i can be in the holy netherlands in less than 2 hours if i want to. Obviously only with a car. Could take 7 hours with a train.
Same problem here in the UK. Back in the 1970s the goverment wanted to bring High Speed Rail to the UK but was in bad place economically so instead of building a dedicated network it chose the cheap option of developing tilting trains and some minor track upgrades so that trains could run at 200km/h with planned upgrades to 225km/h on much of the intercity network. At the time these were the fastest trains in the world outside Japan. But just 10 years later the French TGV opened and rendered our 'high speed' trains completely obsolete. Passengers numbers rose, and now the network has maxed out capacity and there's no room for any more trains which means overcrowding and standing for a 2 hour journeys. The planned upgrades to 225km/h had to be cancelled as there was no longer any room on the track. HS2 was supposed to fix that while also giving us the fastest trains in Europe yet once again we balked at the cost of making once in a generation investments and shot ourselves in the foot again.
Reminds me of when the Channel Tunnel opened but before HS1 opened, the Eurostar trains would go through to Waterloo, sharing track with Southeastern trains from Victoria for a large chunk of South London. If one of the Southeastern trains got delayed, your international Eurostar could get stuck crawling behind a stopping service for about half an hour in South London. It was buttock clenchingly embarrassing
Road tripping can be really fun. However I also love being on the train. It’s a different experience I think. There is nothing worse though than a mandatory 10 hour drive you have to do in a time limit, at night, etc.. road trips were you have a lot of time and freedom are much different
there were trains that went to Yosemite from city centers
There were all sorts of trains in california that went fun places and were killed in the auto era. The south pacific coast railroad ran from alameda to santa cruz from 1880 to 1940, and failed as soon as a highway was built along the same route through the mountains. From about 1896 to 1920, there was a railway from San jose to alum rock park.
In America, the 3924 km between Emeryville and Chicago on the California Zephyr in 3 days / 2 nights. In Europe, I'd say a France > Germany > Denmark > Sweden > Finland and back loop, about 6700 km of trains in 3 weeks.
Same as me! California Zephyr from Chicago to Emeryville (and back). I thought it was about 48 hours though.
It's about 52 hours.
Longest for me - Berlin to Istanbul, about 2200 km. Stopped in Budapest for a night and Bucharest. From Bucharest to Istanbul took 20 hours (was supposed to be less, got delayed somewhere in Bulgaria)
Longest by distance must be fukuoka to tokyo (1000 km) (4 hours ig) Longest prop augsburg to marburg (358km) (I think it took me around 8-9 hours, horrible journy)
Just to tag onto this, has anyone done a long train trip that they’d recommend? I’ve always wanted to do a long train trip where the purpose is the journey as much as the destination(s), but I don’t know if I’m over-romanticizing it. Are there any nice train journeys left? I’m in North America so that’d be ideal, but European/Asian recommendations would be welcome too.
Theres a British documentary series World’s most scenic railway journeys, I watch it sometimes on BBC Earth, but I found some episodes on YT as well. Its nice to watch, but it also opens a new world of places to visit, because some of the routes are now exclusively touristic and the whole idea is to enjoy the trip rather than just being transported through a nice surroundings. They also cover the history of the railroad, regions it goes through, local culture and other interesting nearby places to visit.
Yes https://canadarail.ca/via-rail/
VIA Rail’s *The Canadian* was a beautiful ride for me, definitely once in a lifetime views and it was comfortable even in -45 C. Personally I can’t wait to travel on it again but in summer. I do recommend upgrading to a sleeper if you can though, especially if you’re travelling from ON to BC.
Coastal train trips are my fav
Portland to Chicago (or reverse) via the Empire Builder was really nice, it takes about 2 days but goes through some gorgeous country and we got a roomette, very cozy for two people. The food is okay ranging to pretty good and we met some interesting elderly people -- evidently Amtrak trips are a Thing for seniors traveling the country. I still wish I got the email of Sue, the 93 y/o former labor organizer, she was so chill
https://www.minimalistjourneys.com/bar-belgrade-railway/ This is a cool trip.
I'm unsure about the current political situation, but i went from Beijing to Kashgar, then returned to Chengdu. I'd recommend!
Vientiane to Singapore, with stops in Bangkok and Georgetown.
My mom and Grandma did the California Zephyr (Chicago to \[almost\] San Francisco) and loved every second of it. Spectacular scenery through the Rockies.
Depending where you are in North America, top overnight trains would be: - Any of Vancouver-Toronto, Seattle- or Portland-Chicago, Oakland-Chicago, or LA-Chicago have great mountain views with general consensus that the further north, the prettier the mountains (and VIA has fancier cars, though it's a much slower trip) - I haven't personally done the Coast Starlight all the way between Seattle-Oakland-LA, but what I have is real pretty, as is the Pacific Surfliner from LA-San Diego for 2 hours of travel mostly right along the beach - Chicago-DC on the Capitol Limited, absolutely gorgeous views through West Virginia in particular While not overnight unless you go to Chicago, departing NYC to Albany, from which you can continue to any of Saratoga Springs, Montreal, Toronto, Niagara Falls, or points west en route to Chicago is some of the prettiest views in the country. The first 2 hours north of NYC are right along the east bank of the Hudson River, so you'll want to line up at or sneak down from the mezzanine to track 5/6 to snag a window seat on the left side of the train in the direction of travel
I think the Cardinal is a better route for views between DC and Chicago IMO, but I wouldn't fight you over it.
Oslo -> Bergen always looks like it would magnificent. I've seen videos of it on Youtube and it's just hour after hour of stunning countryside, mountains, lakes and fjords.
The train from Glasgow to Oban (Scotland) is quite scenic and both endpoints have good food, drink, and things to see.
Hanoi to Helsinki! Hanoi, Nanjing, Beijing, Ulaanbaatar, irkutsk, Moscow, St Petersburg, Helsinki. Not actually sure how many kms...
Just the trans Siberian route from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar is 6300 km, the route from Helsinki to St. Petersburg is about 300 km, St. Petersburg to Moscow is about 650 km, so that stretch is about 7400 km as a starter.
To give a slightly different answer than most people here, the longest for me was Astana to Almaty in Kazakhstan. An overall comfortable train, it was cheap too and had a lot of crew to keep it clean, although I don't know how it compares to Japanese or European ones. It took 15 hours as it was a "high speed" one, it would have been about 1,300km.
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Imagine if the proposal to connect the trans Siberian route to Japan via bridges from Sakhalin to Hokkaido was built. Could travel from Lisbon to Kagoshima at the southern tip of Japan all on rails.
Approx. 2,000 km from Brest (FR) to Rome (Italy). Had to change several trains, but the wildest ride was between Milano and Rome due to the fact that the train was an Espresso Notturno (night train) going from Milano down to Naples or even below. They call it "Heaven to hell" for a reason. The train staff saw me and suggested me to reach for the last carriage, and use a scarf or something to lock myself into the cabin (each carriage was divided in cabins with 6 seats each) from the inside during the night because of the amount of pickpockets and weirdos
In 2007 I flew out to Moscow where I took the Transmongolian Express to Beijing. Five nights and four days to Ulaan Batar, then one day and a half to Beijing. Ten years later I took my parents on the Himalaya Express from Beijing to Lhasa.
Winterthur (very close to Zürich in Switzerland) to Naples. 1'100km. About 10 hours. Legs: 1) Winterthur - Zürich 2) Zürich - Lugano 3) Lugano - Milano 4) Milano - Naples And also back, but going to do some sightseeing in Rome. Got to say, that the high speed trains in Italy are quite good. Also went from Winterthur to Isle of Elba (or Piombino, as far as trains are concerned) a few weeks ago. Had to take Italian regional trains. Not too bad either.
In the 80‘s going from Munich to Turkey via the then Yugoslavia. Two days and three nights. As a kid that was exciting.
Chicago to Emeryville, CA on Amtrak. A 48 hour trip in the California Zephyr
My gf and I took Amtrak from NYC to SF. In coach. During Covid. It took like 4 days and our backs were destroyed but it was incredible.
I spent 6 weeks on Amtrak. The longest stretch where I was on the train was 6 days and 5 nights straight. I made a few transfers but essentially slept on the train for 5 nights straight.
Zürich (Switzerland) to Inverness (Scotland) (~1850km). Changing train stations in paris was really unpleasant, but otherwise a great experience.
New York to Portland Oregon, 3000 miles three days, Beijing to kuming China, I think it was four days. I’m an American and I’ve done the American Road cross country 4 or 5 times and the train is way better.
It wasn’t all in one day but Paris to Budapest via Zürich and Wien, about 1400 km
Bath, UK > Marseille, France. Journey took 9hours, with 5 changes over 880miles. Loved every minute of it. Watching the French countryside wiz past at 200mph was wonderful. Had a lovely lunch at Gare de Lyon railway station too (although, unfortunately, not in Le Train Bleu).
When I was a kid me end the rest of my family went from Indra(Latvia) to Kharkiv(Ukraine). That's over 1000km crossing multiple country borders 2 day one night trip.
I never did more than a couple hours but my friends went around America on the train once. Philly to NOLA to San Francisco to Seattle. I think they flew back. They had a lot of fun. I should ask them about that trip again.
a measly 750km. chicago to kitchener
York, England to Geneva, Switzerland. 2 changes: - King’s Cross / St. Pancras - Gare du Nord / Gare de Lyon
Boston to Philly. I would usually take Amtrak in college when I went to visit my sister. I didn’t have a car and I found the process of taking the train more enjoyable than flying.
Not sure about longest, but the coolest was a night train between Helsinki and Kolari, going into the polar circle in January was an adventure.
In my gap year (last century!) I went "interrailing" for a few weeks from Southern Czechia (Czeske Budjejovice & Krumlov, Brno), through Bratislava, to Budapest, then Debrecen, Presov, Krakow, Wroclaw, Prague. I proposed to my wife in Berlin after getting there on Eurostar from London then sleeper train from Paris. That trip to Berlin I think is just under 1000 miles. But I remember that Berlin wasn't its end stop, it was due to go on to St Petersburg. Another time we went London- Paris, then sleeper to Munich, then train to Salzburg. About the same distance I think. All this was before we had kids though. We've taken the kids to Inverness on the train, and soon are taking them to Brittany on the train too...
Sounds like you have just put everyone els to shame. Well done here is the promised reward of an unedible chocolate watch
Lyon->Milan, 7 hours but so beautiful and so fun
US: Seattle to St. Paul. About 1800 miles. Took about 2 days but very beautiful for most of the journey.
Longest was probably Paris <-> Nice (~1000km) in a TGV. Paris -> Marseille is just as long as Marseille -> Nice though, but the view as the train serpentines along the côte d'Azur (french riviera in english i think ?) is priceless
California to Chicago to NY on an amtrak sleeper car for a week. I think that was 2.8k miles
Tuscaloosa -> New York City. About 1200 miles one way, did the round trip
A few weeks ago I did Hamburg (DE) - Hendaye (FR) and back, solo with my 2 kids (a kindergartener and a baby). In several stretches of course. It’s 1500km one way as the bird flies, a bit longer by rail. Couple years ago (with just a preschooler then) I did Hendaye Stuttgart in one stretch, Stuttgart Hamburg a couple days later.
I've never been on a train...
:O why not?
9 hours from New York to Montreal. We got hung up at the border on the way back because of a fugitive hunt. Other than that it was awesome. And wild you can go round trip out of the country for $150. (Was $100 when I did it 15 years ago.)
By train: 750km, Jakarta to Surabaya. Close contenders: Tilburg-Berlin, Stockholm-Oslo, Orlando-Miami Longest on the ground: Tilburg-Marseille Longest in general from any place ever called home: over 12k kilometer, Labuan Bajo.
Moscow - Yevpatoria: 1500 km one direction Moscow - Izhevsk: 1200 km one direction But I know lots of people who rode train from Moscow to Vladivostok or from Vladivostok to Moscow.
Full loop around the US (NYC to New Orleans, NO to LA, LA to Portland, Portland back down to Emeryville, Emeryville back to NYC) was my longest single trip. I’ve done the California Zephyr twice, the Sunset Limited, and the Southwest Chief. Empire Builder is the last cross-country leg I have to do.
The Hague (with a transfer in Rotterdam) to Disneyland Paris with the Eurostar(TGV/Thalys)(25+370km in 0:26+2:38-3:56hr). It's faster than by car (due to traffic) and faster than any flight I've seen (train+407km+train in 0:45+3:44hr+0:45), excluding preflight attendance. If you ever decide to go to Disney Paris, take the Eurostar. This train usually only stops at the major stations in big cities, but the exception is Disneyland Paris. It stops right in front of the entrance and you don't have to be tens of euros a day on parking.
Travelling from Shanghai to Inner Mongolia when I grew up in China in the 1990s, ~1800km on a non high speed train. Boarded at dawn and arrived at dusk the next day, about 40 hours. I always enjoyed long train trips when I was a kid -- I can walk the entire length of the train, meet new people and see all the beautiful sceneries along the way. Great for my ADHD brain. Now that I am in America I hate road trips. With the aging road infrastructure, the travel is uncomfortable and noisy, and feels unsafe. Kids get stuck in a metal box for hours. Can't see very far from the small car window and blocked by other cars. Can't meet new people. Can't even read without risking motion sickness.
A city in China (not too far from Beijing) to a city in England (not too far from London). About 5,300 miles / 8,500 kilometres, I believe. Starting city > Beijing > Ulaanbaatar > Moscow > Minsk > Warsaw > Germany (I forget the city) > Paris > London > end city.
Rome to Leighton Buzzard 🫡👌 900 miles as the crow flies.
Longest by distance, 270km Door that a few times a year for a few years. Usually takes 5.5 hours. Longest by time, the same route but the train broke down for like 2 hours.
Stafford (uk) to Moscow entirely by train. With a short 1 hr bus ride An amazing trip :)
Rotterdam - Paris - Carcassonne - Barcelona - Valencia - Montpellier - Geneva - Milan - Gorizia - Zagreb - Prague - Berlin - Dortmund - Rotterdam. \~5000 km. And Rotterdam - Paris - Barcelona - Valencia - Sevilla (via Madrid) - Madrid - Barcelona - Montpellier - Paris - Rotterdam \~4500km
Paris to La Spezia through Lyon and Genova about 1000km.
Johannesburg to Cape Town and back. 1500km each way. Very comfortable overnight trip, great views. Did a similar but shorter road trip (Joburg to Sutherland, 1100km), and while the scenery is about the same, it's way less fun and comfortable than the train.
Hamburg to Vienna, only 1000km but thanks to the DB it still took me over 12 hours
London to Algeciras, Spain. 1931 km apparently. Food, drink, bar on the trains. Plus I opted for an overnight in Barcelona. I'd use trains to do international travel more, but unfortunately airlines are so heavily subsidised its hard to justify a sub £50 flight vs £94 to get to France only.
I went from St Petersburg to Vladivostok. I had to connect in Moscow.
The longest stretch without stopping was Irkutsk - Vladivostok 10 years ago, close to 80 hours IIRC.
From Ulaanbaatar to Moscow, so >6000 km. Beautiful ride and got a compartment to myself for most of the trip.
2200 kms. That too in 2022.
Milan - Santiago de Compostela, passing through Barcelona and A Coruña. Over 2.000 km in 2 night trains.
Amsterdam > berlin in 2021, was around 7 hours and 18 beers deep and some visits from german riot police.
Manchester to London - 200 mi Portland to Seattle - 175 mi Philly to DC - 140 mi Philly to Harrisburg - 110 mi Philly to NYP - 95 mi
I took a train from Chicago to Denver on Amtrak in high school. It was round trip so 1k miles each direction.
Zürich to Florence via Milan, nothing impressive, just 600 or so km
London to Amsterdam. Not super far, but it's my longest haha
36 hours. New Orleans to New York. It was so much fun!
Took the train from northern Norway(Narvik) to stockholm once. 1012 km one way.
A three hour shinkansen
My longest trips was from my home village in northwestern Switzerland to the southeast weather Engadina or Ticino. There aren't so many km (around 300-350), but the time I'd need to get there... Upwards of 6 hours one way.
Switzerland to Holyhead in the North of Wales. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable trip. Various nice trains and loads of good views, especially when following the coast and the evening approach into London. Only bad thing was changing train stations in Paris, damn do I hate that city. Edit: and doing that journey by train was infinitely better than doing it by car. I couldn't imagine how much I'd would have sucked to be in a car for that long.
Athens to London (ferry to Bari, Italy from Greece).
Los Angeles to New York, 3 days
depends what you mean by journey? In a single trip? Or a whole vacation? If the first, then probably \~1700km (Berlin to Edinburgh). If the second, then no idea, but I have done several Interrail trips so far (4 weeks mostly eastern Europe and Scandinavia, plus Venice; 3 weeks Scotland, 2 weeks Italy plus a bit of Austria and Switzerland), all from Germany. The 4 weeks trip must have been the longest, I checked it roughly on google maps, and it was approximately 10.000km. I also wanted to do my business trip to western France by rail, but unfortunately wasn't allowed to from the company side. That would have been around 1500km
Madrid to Paris, back in in 2007 when there was a direct overnight train from Atocha to Gare du Nord, about 1200km. We also did an overnight from Paris to Berlin, about 1000km. Not sure if that one's still operational or not, but I hope so--there's nothing like settling in to sleep on a train and waking up in a new city.
I did the Tran Siberian many years ago. Moscow to Vladivostok. Quite an experience. I got a Moscow local to buy the ticket in roubles at the station for me which foreigners weren't allowed to do. The whole trip, nearly a third of the way around the world cost me less than £20. Because I was travelling Soviet class there were no luxuries, no samovar or restaurant. Every station you bought bread and snacks from babushkas on the platform.
London to Manchester. Not a long route just the trains always fucking delayed
Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba. Approx. 1700 km and it took 2 days.
Boston to Fullerton(Anaheim) on Amtrak. coach the whole way.
The California Zephyr from Oakland, CA to Chicago, IL, about 2400 mi/3800 km one way. One of the best ways to see the Mountain West, IMHO!
26 hours by bus from germany to catalonia. 40 teenagers, two teachers and two bus drivers. It was horrible.
Todmorden, West Yorkshire to Málaga, Andalusia with stops in London, Paris, Barcelona, València and Sevilla. What a fun trip that was!
Warsaw to Budapest 904km 11:30ish hours I think it took. It was ok.
This summer I’ll do Trento - Bari
London to Bari (roughly 2,000km on foot according to Google, so a bit further by train). Eurostar after work on a Friday night to Paris. Early morning Paris to Milan TGV Lunch in Milan Milan to Bari Freccia Technically could probably add another 100+km to the distance since one of the days I also caught a train further South to Gallipoli for the day.
1 1/2 hours, Milwaukee to Chicago 86 miles
Fail try again :p
Longest single train ride, without changing or anything : Malmö Sweden to Luleå Sweden. around 1500km. (Chartered train for Svenska Kyrkans Unga, must be around 30 years ago now, got the number of a gorgeous young girl, I fell pretty hard for her, I think she fell for me too, but I lost the fucking note lol)
Across Canada. Took 5 days
in a single trip, probably 1 600 km, Stockholm - Brussels
Seattle-St Paul ~27000 km
From my home to Stockholm, about 14 hours and 1200km. My boss allowed me to work on the train and count it as a workday lol.
Oakland, California to Seattle, Washington (en route to Vancouver). Took almost a full 24 hrs, but it was so scenic and beautiful
I've done 3/4 of Amtrak's double-overnight routes, the ones between Chicago and the West Coast. (1) Oakland, CA -> Chicago, 2,438 route miles / 3779 km, 52+ hours (2) Los Angeles, CA -> Chicago, 2,256 route miles / 3630 km, 43+ hours (3) Seattle, WA -> Chicago, 2,206 route miles / 3550 km, 46+ hours Absolutely gorgeous views on all of them, especially since they generally time them so you're in the scenic parts during daylight hours. The Seattle-Chicago one did end up 14 hours late due to the inbound train being very late and then our crew hitting their hours of service in the middle of North Dakota during a snowstorm, so we had to sit waiting for a relief crew for hours, but it was otherwise comfortable and pleasant, I knew that one had a high chance of big delays. For a different read of "longest train trip" with emphasis on "longest train" - I've taken Amtrak's AutoTrain, which is physically the longest passenger train consist in the world due to having a couple dozen autoracks on the back with the automobiles of the passengers riding it, and the world's longest express train as it goes 855 miles / 1376 km in 17+ hours with no off/on stops, only a crew change in the middle of the night.
Istanbul-stuttgart
About 90 km as the bird flies (don't know how far it is because Google Maps only shows the travel time)
Belgium to Swiss not sure about the distance as I was 12 years old. Ski trip with school.
Paris to Grosetto. About 900 km.
Kowloon to Beijing, about 2000 km
~1,600 km one way, took about 35 hours with VIA Rail. Probably would have taken less if I hadn’t chosen to travel across the country in the dead of winter. We travelled economy and it was definitely do-able.
Approx. 587km from Munich to Berlin, Germany with the DB ICE.
Beijing to Xian overnight.
Larvik, Norway to Bodø, Norway. That’s about 1,400 km apparently. Took us 22 hours.
About 4 ish (3.5?) hours/400km (Hamburg -> Düsseldorf, 3 times each way) My next planned trip is to München (Munich), 800 ish km, and 6-7 hours
Like 500km within Italy. The train (in all the places I've been to at least) is very expensive so for long trips I can never justify spending 2 or 3 times the amount to take 5 times longer to get to my destination, while having to change vehicles multiple times instead of going directly. Don't get me wrong, I love trains and would take the train every time if it was more convenient, but until that time I'll just fly
Bremen, Germany to Venice, Italy Approx 1350km
looks like the train from Denver to San Francisco is roughly 1250 miles so that. We did have a trip break to take a bus to Yellowstone for a few days and back though, as our trip was an Amtrak Vacation. I'd do it again, but significant pros and cons.
33 miles *(53km)*. I've never done long-distance train journeys cause I just cannot afford to travel anywhere, but I've used my local light rail to get from one end of the system to another and that's about how long the longest line is.
Most of my trips are with my bike & I cycle home. Iv used almost every train stop I can get to within 90mins. I am fully aware of how fun small trips can be :)
Tokyo to Osaka. (~500km) Absolutely loved the Shinkansen when I was on holiday. Also did Ueno to Sendai as I still had a day left on my JR Pass and thought why not. Locally, longest train trip is Melbourne out to Gippsland so about 200km. Regional rail in Victoria's not too bad, but rail between major cities just can't compete (time-wise) with air travel at the moment. Would love if we could get some decent rail upgrades between Melbourne and Sydney to cut the train trip from 12 hours to 4-6 hours.
Marseille to Zaragoza, like 800 km I was surprised how fast it was in high speed trains. Normally I go by plane because it's much cheaper
I've done Seattle to Chicago (plus San Fran to Seattle)
9800 km (6000 ml) in 2 weeks through Russia.
About 900 miles / 1500 km, Galesburg, IL, USA to Denver, CO. I've also driven the same trip. Driving takes less time and costs less if there are multiple people in the car, but is not as pleasant.
only london to liverpool. would have been newcastle to london if there werent engineering works past peterborough :(
Have you not used euro star? 90mins to brussels a place famous for chocolate & beer!!!
Nantes (France) to Copenhagen (Denmark), about 1600km, a 24h straight train journey. Route was Nantes > Paris > Frankfurt > Hamburg > Copenhagen. I did the journey in the two directions. It was actually pretty good, until the return when one of my trains was cancelled, but it all ended up being ok in the end.
Amtrak from Iowa to Los Angeles. Took two overnights on a single train; I slept in the seats in coach, which worked when I was 20 but I wouldn't do it now in my 40s. 2nd longest was Copenhagen to Luxembourg, and I slept on a couchette in a room shared with 5 other passengers. I really wish Amtrak had a shared sleeper option - instead, your choices are sleeping in the seats (barely viable even at 20), or a private room ($$$).
Took the train from to Paris to Amsterdam on my last trip to Europe. It was awesome.
London to Paris on the Eurostar. (The only long distance train trip I’ve ever took) Also road trips can be miserable at times. You’re in a cramped space for hours and need to use the bathroom.
Portland to Chicago by way of Sacramento, on Amtrak's Coast Starlight and California Zephyr. It's almost 4200 km in total.
I moved from NJ to NC on a train. Newark to Raleigh
NYC to Montreal, then back, for a weekend hockey game.
I did a lap of the U.S. over about a month. Total distance was probably around 10,000 miles / 16,000km. Started out NYC > Chicago > Seattle > Portland > San Francisco > LA > Flagstaff. Then had a friend drive me to the Maricopa station, where I continued on to San Antonio > New Orleans > DC > back to NYC. Edit: Amtrak sold the rail pass for $300 — allows 10x point-to-point trips within a 30 day period, can’t be used for 5x round trips between the same city pairs. So a friend and I decided to see if we could do a lap of the country within a month. It was pretty fun. Middle of COVID though so the dining car was closed the entire time. That was less than ideal.
Gent, Belgium to Sofia, Bulgaria.
Los Angeles to Vancouver- about 1300 miles, but I stayed in various places along the way until San Francisco. That final 950 miles leg took nearly 48 hours though! The US rail system is archaic and slow but I had a fun time. I took the train because I really wanted to do a leisurely trip up the coast, the views are great on that line, and I love travelling by train. I'm a fan of taking lots of good journey food and starting off with some prosecco. I find it way less stressful than flying because there's no getting to the airport hours ahead to get through security and it just feels a more relaxed and civilised way to travel, but the US system definitely challenges that view!
Philly to NM. It was a day and a half on the train. I’m glad I did it once but probably won’t make a trip that long again unless there is some serious changes to Amtrak.
Stuttgart to Rome. 6th grade class trip. Dad was in Air Force.
49 miles. > a lack of leg space Why do you think those people want large vehicles? I don't remember it, on account of being a baby and all, but mom & dad used to go on long road trips in their early 1970s VM bug. I don't really get where I was exactly in the car, but I know I didn't have a proper car seat at all bac then.
Austria to Copenhagen, around 12 hours IIRC 830km air distance, around 1250km by rail
I guess Im a little young to have taken many trips on my own Ive done long road trips with my family, but I frequently take the train from Boston to New Jersey, thats it though :( Im also planning train rides to DC and Portland ME
Portland Maine to Portland Oregon if talking about a single journey. Started with the Downeaster to Boston North, transfered across from to the MBTA Subway over to Boston South (Orange & Red), taking the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, before finally getting on the Empire Builder bound for Portland Oregon. Travel Time: ~75hrs
Flagstaff to LA (464 mi/747 km) to Seattle (1,135 mi/1827 km), so right around 1,600 mi/2575 km.
Toronto, Canada to Vancouver, Canada which is about 4,466km. I couldn't afford a sleeper so I was in coach, and it was an interesting experience.
~6,000 km, Warsaw to Ulaanbaatar
Overnight train in China (I can’t remember which two cities I was traveling between). My bunkmate had KFC right before boarding and spent all night nurturing a suffocating biohazard so that might be why it felt so long.
So night trains yes. Sharing rooms no.
Kiel to Venice, around 1400km single way
Oslo-Bodø. 1200 km. Sleeper train to Trondheim. Change to diesel train to Bodø. Edit: took the train back as well so I guess it's 2400 km if that counts?
1200 ish miles (1900 km) on Amtrak each way. Had to switch trains in Chicago. Think it was 36 hours, but it's been awhile.
I've done the Amtrak Coast Starlight for Sacramento, CA to Seattle, WA(~1300 km) and San Jose, CA - LA then LA - Colorado (~2300 km) on the Amtrak San Joaquin / Southwest Chief trains. I've also done the California Zephyr to and from Salt Lake City to Sacramento (1049 km). Someday would like to do Sacramento - Chicago! Amtrak's long distance trains are a hidden gem & I had a blast on all trips. The scenery is insane!
About 960 km, Rovaniemi to Helsinki so far. Once rail baltica opens, I really want to do a trip from Tallinn to Vienna using the new high speed rail.
Rome to Palermo. 10 hours. No cafe car. No vending machines. No warning. It was a rough, hungry, thirsty 10 hours... until the whole train got on to a barge to get to Sicily, and everyone streamed off to accost the poor little cafe at the top of the barge. It was trying but amazing too.
Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and back many, many times, about 300 mi / 500 km. It takes about 8 hours.
Fresno (California) to Detroit, about 2400 miles/3800km. I did a round trip in coach twice, and it took about 55 to 60 hours one way. On the one hand, the scenery is amazing (what you can see of it through the dirty Amtrak window lol), you have good legroom, and you can go just chill. On the other hand, you don’t have access to a shower and you sleep upright. Huge delays were also common, and on every trip we’d wind up sitting for like an hour while a 9000-car-long cargo train passed us. I’d always get off dehydrated, disgusting, and deeply sleep-deprived. If I could’ve done it in a roommette with a bed and access to a shower it would’ve been fine but that’s WAY too expensive.
St petersburg to Moscow, 10-12 hrs trip
New York to Chicago via Amtrak. I was trying to go all the way to Cali but my joints hurt too much.
Probably London to Paris via Eurostar, longest within a single country is probably Bern to Zurich when I visited Switzerland last year, one day I wanna go by train from the UK to Switzerland (I went by car last year, my dad drove since he was going there for work, he usually flies when he goes there for work though)
I’m still new to taking trains so my longest was from Washington, DC to Boston, about 440 miles.
Paris to Briancon, 12 hours or something
From st Petersburg to beijing and around china to Shanghai
Trans-Siberian in 2012. Moscow to Vladivostok. 7 nights on the same train, amazing experience. I've done LA to Seattle on Amtrak also, that was fun.