Has anyone had a holiday on a train.

Lullabelle

Lullabelle

Midlands, England
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Recently we have been watching 2 different programmes about holidays on trains.
One is Michael Portillo going across Australia and the other is a different train journey every week, fantastic scenery.
These have caught our attention and would like to do it at some point. Has anyone on here had a holiday on a train? If so was it good or bad?
 
Not an entire holiday, but parts of one.

Probably the most in one go was a Prague-Munich holiday, with day trips by train to a couple of places outside Munich. No overnights, though.

My parents rode the train from St. Paul, Minnesota to somewhere out in Montana, probably more than a thousand miles, and the one thing my dad always mentions is getting trapped, butt-naked, in the upper sleeping berth and having to get the porter to get him unstuck. ☺️
 
It's sort of, but not exactly the same, but we did a nine-day river cruise from Passau to Budapest and that was fantastic.

The reason I mention it was that the nicest part was unpacking once, but visiting several places on the way. I'd imagine a train would be the same in that respect, and a riverboat cabin is probably just marginally bigger than a train cabin. :)
 
When I am in Yurrip, I use trains a lot. I always got a Rail/Car deal in the UK. I'd use the train to get comfortably across country, and get a car for areas like the Lake District, that are nice to see by car.

Over here, we really don't have any good rail services, other than some local services in the larger cities. Our national rail service is AMTRACK, and it is seriously underfunded, and not used much, other than between Boston, NYC and Washington on the East coast.

For at least thirty years, there have been plans for a bullet train in Texas, where all of the cities are a four hour-plus drive apart. The would be two lines, one going from Dallas to Austin to San Antonio and to Houston. The other line would connect Houston to Dallas. It has never had enough public support to become a reality. Texans would rather fly from city-to-city, or drive it in a 3-ton SUV.

CD
 
caseydog said:
When I am in Yurrip, I use trains a lot. I always got a Rail/Car deal in the UK. I'd use the train to get comfortably across country, and get a car for areas like the Lake District, that are nice to see by car.

Over here, we really don't have any good rail services, other than some local services in the larger cities. Our national rail service is AMTRACK, and it is seriously underfunded, and not used much, other than between Boston, NYC and Washington on the East coast.

For at least thirty years, there have been plans for a bullet train in Texas, where all of the cities are a four hour-plus drive apart. The would be two lines, one going from Dallas to Austin to San Antonio and to Houston. The other line would connect Houston to Dallas. It has never had enough public support to become a reality. Texans would rather fly from city-to-city, or drive it in a 3-ton SUV.

CD
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Recently I watched a TV documentary about poor infrastructure in the US due to the low tax system. Our railways have suffered over recent years due to underfunding and privatisation, and are not generally a pleasant way to get around. Unless there are parking cost/convenience issues at your destination then it is usually cheaper and easier to drive. Thank goodness air pollution and global warming don't exist, otherwise our governments might have to tackle this issue.
 
morning glory said:
Neither do we really - as @epicuric says...
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I haven't been to the UK in quite a while. I liked train travel back then. I guess it has changed -- or you have higher expectations than we do. Long distance passenger rail service has been bad here for a long, long time.

As epicuric said, our infrastructure here is crumbling, mostly due to tax cuts. It varies from state to state. Texas roads, and airports are not horrible, but not best in class, either. Poorer states are worse. When I cross into Oklahoma or Louisiana from Texas, the highways take a noticeable step down right at the border.

I travel between Dallas and Houston a lot. Thats about 250 miles. The drive sucks. I would love to park my butt in a seat and take a nap on a train for that trip.

CD
 
morning glory said:
Neither do we really - as @epicuric says...
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As much as it pains me to say it, being the Britophile that I am...but I have to agree. Having taken trains in a handful of countries in Europe, the least pleasant times I've had dealing with trains has been in Britain. :(

The thing is, it's never been just the train travel itself (though that's been far from perfect), it's getting a ticket and getting on the train that's just as much of a mess.

We took the train from London (Paddington) to Bath, returning same day, and bought tickets well in advance online. First, you better have a fully-qualified process manager to help you with the tickets, as there are categories for full fare rates, singles, returns, off-peak, express, seniors, students, tourist, weekend, and any number of other seemingly nonsensical categories (I fully expected to see one for people traveling with hats preferring to sit on the left side of the car while humming a jaunty tune), and all these categories could be combined, as in off-peak senior weekend single. Honestly, the grid with all the permutations was too big to fit on the screen.

I thought I was just an idiot, but later, talking to some other British friends, they laughed and said, "Don't worry about it, we live here and we can't understand it, either!" Apparently, there's a scheme to streamline the whole ticketing process, but I don't know if it's happened yet.

Anyway, I went to pick up tickets at the self-serve kiosk. Two adults out to Bath and back, same day. Guess how many ticket-like stubs the machine spit out? Nine! Nine #%@! stubs that all looked almost exactly the same. There was a ticket for each of us each way, that was four right there. Then a stub for the reservation over all, then another stub for each of us for the reservation and then a couple more just for fun, and they all had control numbers on them, but they seemed to be in random order, like if I put them in numerical order, I had my return ticket first, followed by the overall reservation stub, followed by the wife's reservation stub, followed by her ticket going out, etc. No discernible order whatsoever.

Then, the station: keep in mind, we lived in Britain, we've traveled back several times, we take the train on occasion, so it wasn't like first-time confusion.

We got onto the platform area about 45 minutes before we were to leave, just to make sure. Train to Bath with specific platform isn't listed. No problem, it's early.

30 minutes...20 minutes...15 minutes...no train, so I went to ask: "Yeah, it'll be listed and they'll announce it at about 10 minutes before departure, unless it's delayed, but it's not delayed as of now."

10 minutes...seven minutes...six minutes, still no listing. Back to ask: "Yeah, it's not delayed, but it's not ready yet, and I don't have the platform. Don't worry, they'll announce it."

"Not ready yet," - doesn't that mean it's delayed? Apparently not.

Finally, out of nowhere: "THE 07:42 DEPARTURE TO BATH IS PREPARING TO LEAVE FROM PLATFORM 2. ALL PASSENGERS TRAVELING TO BATH ON THE 07:42 SERVICE SHOULD BE ON BOARD AT THIS TIME!"

Great, and we're at the other end of the terminal!

We had to hoof it and barely, and I mean barely made that train.

The way back was worse, because there were service disruptions and a four hour delay, and all the people who would have traveled during those four hours were stuck onto one train back and it was standing-room-only and we missed supper.
 
TastyReuben said:
As much as it pains me to say it, being the Britophile that I am...but I have to agree. Having taken trains in a handful of countries in Europe, the least pleasant times I've had dealing with trains has been in Britain. :(

The thing is, it's never been just the train travel itself (though that's been far from perfect), it's getting a ticket and getting on the train that's just as much of a mess.

We took the train from London (Paddington) to Bath, returning same day, and bought tickets well in advance online. First, you better have a fully-qualified process manager to help you with the tickets, as there are categories for full fare rates, singles, returns, off-peak, express, seniors, students, tourist, weekend, and any number of other seemingly nonsensical categories (I fully expected to see one for people traveling with hats preferring to sit on the left side of the car while humming a jaunty tune), and all these categories could be combined, as in off-peak senior weekend single. Honestly, the grid with all the permutations was too big to fit on the screen.

I thought I was just an idiot, but later, talking to some other British friends, they laughed and said, "Don't worry about it, we live here and we can't understand it, either!" Apparently, there's a scheme to streamline the whole ticketing process, but I don't know if it's happened yet.

Anyway, I went to pick up tickets at the self-serve kiosk. Two adults out to Bath and back, same day. Guess how many ticket-like stubs the machine spit out? Nine! Nine #%@! stubs that all looked almost exactly the same. There was a ticket for each of us each way, that was four right there. Then a stub for the reservation over all, then another stub for each of us for the reservation and then a couple more just for fun, and they all had control numbers on them, but they seemed to be in random order, like if I put them in numerical order, I had my return ticket first, followed by the overall reservation stub, followed by the wife's reservation stub, followed by her ticket going out, etc. No discernible order whatsoever.

Then, the station: keep in mind, we lived in Britain, we've traveled back several times, we take the train on occasion, so it wasn't like first-time confusion.

We got onto the platform area about 45 minutes before we were to leave, just to make sure. Train to Bath with specific platform isn't listed. No problem, it's early.

30 minutes...20 minutes...15 minutes...no train, so I went to ask: "Yeah, it'll be listed and they'll announce it at about 10 minutes before departure, unless it's delayed, but it's not delayed as of now."

10 minutes...seven minutes...six minutes, still no listing. Back to ask: "Yeah, it's not delayed, but it's not ready yet, and I don't have the platform. Don't worry, they'll announce it."

"Not ready yet," - doesn't that mean it's delayed? Apparently not.

Finally, out of nowhere: "THE 07:42 DEPARTURE TO BATH IS PREPARING TO LEAVE FROM PLATFORM 2. ALL PASSENGERS TRAVELING TO BATH ON THE 07:42 SERVICE SHOULD BE ON BOARD AT THIS TIME!"

Great, and we're at the other end of the terminal!

We had to hoof it and barely, and I mean barely made that train.

The way back was worse, because there were service disruptions and a four hour delay, and all the people who would have traveled during those four hours were stuck onto one train back and it was standing-room-only and we missed supper.
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You said it all! :roflmao: Well its not really funny that the train system is so bad - but I loved the way you wrote about it.
 
I think on the whole we have fairly decent rail services in the UK - yes they could be improved, and some train companies are better than others, but overall I think we're doing OK. I've been on trains throughout Europe - they all have their good and bad points, but its worth remembering that most of the good European rail systems are a) nationwide, and b) state-owned (neither of which are true in the UK). I don't want to get into politics, but the privatisation and fragmentation of the UK's railways means that it works very differently to most other European rail networks.

I totally get what you're saying about the ticket options though TastyReuben - they can be confusing, but they do make more sense when you understand that the fare system is basically designed to manage passenger numbers by making it more expensive to travel at peak times. I'll try to explain it as best I can....

There are 3 basic levels of tickets: Anytime tickets are the most expensive, no need to plan ahead and you can catch any train without any restrictions. You can even stop off somewhere on route for a visit (break of journey) if you want. But you'll pay £££ for this level of flexibility. Then you have two levels of more restricted tickets: SuperOffPeak & OffPeak. These have time restrictions meaning typically you can't travel at peak times, SuperOffPeak is cheaper than OffPeak, but has more restrictions. Peak, OffPeak and SuperOffPeak times are all set by the train companies depending on their busy periods and they don't change - a general rule of thumb for the South East is that London-bound OffPeak tickets are valid on trains arriving in London after 9am, and SuperOffPeak on trains arriving after midday. These tickets are offered in Singles and Returns (a Return is usually only pennies more than a Single).

Then you have a fourth class of tickets which work totally differently: Advance tickets. They're Singles only, and are only available on longer distance routes and they incentivise people to book ahead of time in return for cheaper but totally non-flexible journeys. The pricing for these works like airline seats and the cheapest buckets sell out first. You can get some real bargains on long distance travel if you book as soon as the cheap seats are released.

Ok, so that's the ticketing system explained......just one complexity to add.......Railcards. These are discount cards you can buy which typically reduce the price of your ticket by 1/3. They're available for various sections of society: young people, older people, students, families, couples etc.. but are typically only worth buying if you make a lot of train journeys.

There are also occasional promotional fares which are of course outside the usual ticketing rules, but these are run by the individual train operating companies so will vary according to route - that's unavoidable given the privatisation of the railways.
 
MrsDangermouse - thanks for the explanation. I think you can see, though, that starting off with "there are 3 basic levels of tickets," then adding, "Then you have a fourth class," followed by, "just one complexity to add," topped off with, "occasional promotional fares," and differences between individual rail companies, and all the subcategories within those three, er four, um make that five types of tickets, and you can see where that "simple" system isn't so simple at all, especially if someone hasn't used it before, or uses it infrequently. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Anyway.....to get back to the original question..... no we haven't done such a holiday, but we also enjoyed Michael Portillo's programmes about train travel. Chris Tarrant also did a couple of series on extreme railway journeys which were good too.

TastyReuben said:
The reason I mention it was that the nicest part was unpacking once, but visiting several places on the way.
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I think this is exactly the problem with a train holiday...you'd need to pack and unpack every night. There are a few sleeper trains but mostly those are just overnight journeys rather than multi-day trips. Its one of the reasons we bought a motorhome.......we get to see lots of places and no packing and unpacking :)
 
TastyReuben said:
MrsDangermouse - thanks for the explanation. I think you can see, though, that starting off with "there are 3 basic levels of tickets," then adding, "Then you have a fourth class," followed by, "just one complexity to add," topped off with, "occasional promotional fares," and differences between individual rail companies, and all the subcategories within those three, er four, um make that five types of tickets, and you can see where that "simple" system isn't so simple at all, especially if someone hasn't used it before, or uses it infrequently. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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Ahh but I never said it was "simple", just that it does make sense when you understand better how it works :okay:
I think for visitors all you need to remember is that you choose from four types of ticket depending on how much flexibility you need/are willing to pay for.
 
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