After All: The gentle art of refreshing one's life with trains

Yes I'm always so envious of his train journeys as Vitali seems to have covered most of the globe.  His accounts of those journeys, sum up recollections of bygone times when train travel was enjoyable and very often relaxing.  The longest journey I've ever made by train was the sleeper from Inverness to Penzance but I was only three years old, so have little recollection of the journey.

Loved the announcement that passengers were reminded not to raise their voices!

Whenever possible I travel by rail. I know I am spoilt by Swiss Railways but it is wonderful to travel to the Tessin via the new Gothard rail tunnel in just over 3 hours when the motorists are spending the same time in the queue for the Gothard road tunnel   Trips on into Italy are also by rail easier than negotiating the motorways around Milan. I have yet to take some of the longer journeys but I find it exciting to look at the departure board at Zürich Main Station and see direct trains to places like Amsterdam and Hamburg.


I have traveled on the Bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo a very relaxing 6 hour trip but scary because it was built up the whole way, factories, houses and shops, no green spaces  


The Chinese high speed rail is also very good, ridiculously cheap and with some, to me, strange ideas. As a foreigner I had to present my passport to buy a ticket which then had the passport number printed on it. You had to pass your luggage through an airport type scanner to enter the station and you were only allowed on the platform shortly before your train was due. An hour long trip from Changzhou to Shanghai cost the equivalent of around £10. The Chinese also seem the find the scanners strange:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43057574


Best regards


Roger

I have always fancied a trip on the Orient Express, have come close to booking, but have always ended up booking a 'normal' holiday. I see for this year, they have suites .... looks like you get 1/2 a carriage and its en suite too! However, think I will need to start saving!.

We'll be spending our thirtieth wedding anniversary on the Harz mountain railways this year  www.hsb-wr.de Been waiting a long time for this! Last year was the Isle of Man (again for the first time), the great thing about both of these is they're not "recreated" steam lines, they just never closed in the first place!

The Harz system is also on my list


Best regards


Roger

Remind me come the summer to let you know how we get on 


Cheers, Andy

I've actually read the article that kicked this off now, I was intrigued that Jeongdongjin Station (or indeed any station) is closer to its beach than Dawlish station is, I guess this is due to the vertical distance! 


I'm glad I didn't read the original article when Lisa put up the first post - the penultimate sentence "One huge advantage of slow train journeys is that they allow you ample time to relax..." was not what I would have wanted to read having spent over an hour the evening before crammed into a luggage rack (literally) on a slow train from Bristol! (It wasn't even meant to be a slow train.) Fortunately lots of people got out at Exeter so I finally got a seat. Generally I'm pretty good at taking a Zen attitude to slow travel, but it's harder when you're bent double. Sorry, just wanted to get that off my chest - it's like hearing someone say on the radio "the joy of having a car is the freedom it gives you" when you're stuck in a 10 mile traffic jam on the M25. Mostly I do find travelling by train (fast or slow) much more relaxing than driving - certainly than driving in the badlands anywhere to the North or the East of Exeter


Cheers,


Andy

I'll go along with Roger Bryant's take on Swiss railways. Their punctuality, at least up until recently, was exemplary but some passengers are now starting to think that the network has become saturated and it only takes a little incident to throw a whole region out of joint. Punctuality is extremely important in Switzerland because of the numbers of times one often has to change trains. At least the platform numbers are known in advance so you don't waste time looking for this information.

Last year I had a two hour ride from Brig to Zürich so I prepared lots of work to get done during the journey. None of it got done! The mountains, streams, villages, forests etc etc were just too beautiful to open my laptop.(and use the special Swiss 220V adapter)

A very different journey last year was Prague to Debrecin and having to change station in Budapest using a rip off taxi. Following the Danube valley was certainly picturesque but the ensuing trek across the plains to Debrecen was frankly boring and not helped by a ticket inspector who didn't want to speak anything other then Hungarian and was only half satisfied with my reservation printed in German and Czech. Did I do him out of the possibility to impose a fine?