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I recently took a round trip flight from Edinburgh to London and back. If I could do it over again, I would have just taken the train.
by PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I recently took a round trip flight from Edinburgh to London and back. If I could do it over again, I would have just taken the train.
- Paul_S 7y agoI had been doing a similar trip (100km from London) very often in the past and always took the train, over the years the journey time has gone down to a little over 5 hours. I took a flight once two years ago and when you add all the waiting, security, getting to and from the airport it works out almost exactly the same, except you're more tired and can't take as many suitcases. Now, imagine we had fast trains in the uk.
- Symbiote 7y agoI was furious when I read about the government subsidy/bail-out of FlyBe last month. Many of their routes are very easily done by train -- Birmingham to Glasgow, London to Exeter, London to Newquay, London to Newcastle. Faster trains would make more places in Scotland a reasonable travel time away from London and Birmingham.
- iso947 7y agoLondon to X sure Southampton to Leeds, Manchester to Cornwall, and of course Belfast to anywhere isn’t easy or fast by train
- bogle 7y agoThe poor state of the UK railways is due to a massive lack of investment for most of the second half of the twentieth century. A huge wasted opportunity where the costs of the closures were never properly considered.
- iso947 7y agoDon’t conflate the majority of the beeching closures with a lack of investment. The problem was during the 80s when Japan and France were building new high speed railways, we weren’t. We’re now trying to catch up with HS2, which is sorely needed to free existing tracks for more and reliable services, but we need to use that as a springboard for 50 years of investment. HS2, npr, midland connect, then high speed Birmingham to Bristol/Cardiff, Cambridge, and Leeds-Newcastle-Edinburgh-Glasgow The key is to ensure we have schemes ready to go once construction winds up on the first parts, so the skills and equipment aren’t lost.
- hkmurakami 7y agoCuriuos how this changes for you if say you're carrying 2 pieces of large luggage.
- ghaff 7y agoReasonable point. I'm usually traveling to Europe with carry-on or, at most, one piece of check-in wheeled luggage. Even dealing with the single big piece can be a bit of a pain on a crowded train and going beyond that would be pretty inconvenient. I don't like checking luggage on planes for various reasons but the system is at least set up to accommodate it straightforwardly.
- hkmurakami 7y agoThanks. I’m in a situation where I might be doing this trip annually with a large amount of luggage so I wanted a local’s take.
- Graham24 7y agoIt takes 5 hours to go 100km? what route is that?
- Gibbon1 7y agoI took that train a long while ago. Walked to the train with our luggage. Got on. Sat in wide seats for 4.5 hours and then got off in London and walked to our hotel. If when California finishes it's high speed rail line all they need to do for it to be a success is keep the TSA far far away from it.
- pjc50 7y agoI'd be quite happy to take the train if it wasn't routinely twice as expensive. Even allowing for the absurd cost of parking at Edinburgh airport.
- mFixman 7y agoThat line became incredibly cheap since LNER took over from Virgin. I've taken several next-day return trips from London to Edinburgh for less than £100 return.