What is the longest train trip you have experienced?

PeppermintPatty said:
The longest train trip I did was only a few hours. The only reason I took it was due to being a maid of honour at my friends wedding. To be brutally honest, I hated it. It wasn’t crowded but many people tried talking to me and I really wasn’t feeling well. I was putting myself through school during the day and working nights. This trip put me over the edge and I got the sickest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I never get migraine headaches but I got one for three days.
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That is terrible.
Did you develop an aversion to train travel after that experience?
 
Radrook said:
I was stuck in a train heading for Miami Florida for 24 hours. The constant rattle of wheels on rails and sudden train movement made sleep impossible for me. To make matters worse, passengers in adjacent cubicles were smoking cigarettes like chimneys and it was all wafting into mine via the ventilation system.

I spent the entire 24 hour trip coughing since I am allergic to cigarette smoke, Ironically, I had assumed that the private cubicle that I was paying extra for, would protect me from smokers in the regular train passenger areas.
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Have you avoided train travel since that experience.?
 

Bretrick said:
Have you avoided train travel since that experience.?
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Not entirely. I will still take short trips lasting a few hours if I need to. Its the extremely long ones that I will not repeat. True, strict laws against smoking have reduced the chances of a repeat. However, my inability to get any sleep in that cubicle convinced me that paying extra isn't worth it. So yes, If I can avoid being stuck on a train for that long I would definitely avoid it.
 
As a child, my family always went on holidays by train. Three destinations only - Sydney to the Queensland border, Sydney to Melbourne and Sydney to a small town in the west of NSW called Ivanhoe. We would travel on a steam train overnight and Mum insisted that we had a sleeper berth. I think she believed that the only proper way to sleep was lying down in a bed. The steam trains stopped at every town along the route to deliver bags of mail.

The next morning the steam engine would be replaced by a diesel one and the diesel fumes would make me feel sick. At the NSW Victoria border town of Albury we changed trains because of a difference in the rail gauges. We left the steam train and walked the length of the station to find our seats for the remainder of the journey. Albury station at that time was the longest in Australia, possibly the world.

Later, when I was a university student, I took a solo trip to Ivanhoe to visit relatives. This was the first time I had ever travelled alone and unchaperoned. My relatives arranged an extension of the holiday to Broken Hill, a major mining town close to the border with South Australia. I had studied geology that year and was very interested in rocks and minerals. I stayed in one of the town hotels, but being a minor (21 was the age of majority then) I could not enter the bar. The owners of the hotel were kind enough to grant me access to their living room where I was allowed to play records to amuse myself. I thought all my christmasses had come at once.

The return trip to Sydney was the longest rail journey that I had ever taken. My Ivanhoe relatives did not book me a sleeper berth so overnight I watched people enter and leave the train. At one stage the only other person in the compartment was a teenage boy. Mum would probably not have approved but what the eye doesn't see does not cause too much worry.

How long was this journey? In miles I don't remember, but I was able to read two novels in the train. One was George Orwell's 1984 and the other was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was a 24 hour long train ride.
 
Lewkat said:
Frankfurt, Germany to Paris, France.
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This jogged my memory. Hubby and I did the reverse journey, Paris to Frankfurt. The scenery was amazing and I spent most of the time looking out the window.

Another long train trip was Beijing to Xian. An overnight journey but enough time in the morning to see the Chinese countryside. Every square foot of ground was being used to grow food.
 
Another reason I was unable to sleep in that infernal enclosure was because the train kept making sudden, high velocity, hairpin turns. Such turns would suddenly roll me against the wall repeatedly both at the start of the turn, and away from the wall, as the infernal train was rapidly emerging from the turn. For a time, this back and forth torture seemed to go on for hours. All the while, the cacophonous clatter of metal wheels on metal tracks would reach a screeching crescendo.
 
Warrigal said:
As a child, my family always went on holidays by train. Three destinations only - Sydney to the Queensland border, Sydney to Melbourne and Sydney to a small town in the west of NSW called Ivanhoe. We would travel on a steam train overnight and Mum insisted that we had a sleeper berth. I think she believed that the only proper way to sleep was lying down in a bed. The steam trains stopped at every town along the route to deliver bags of mail.

The next morning the steam engine would be replaced by a diesel one and the diesel fumes would make me feel sick. At the NSW Victoria border town of Albury we changed trains because of a difference in the rail gauges. We left the steam train and walked the length of the station to find our seats for the remainder of the journey. Albury station at that time was the longest in Australia, possibly the world.

Later, when I was a university student, I took a solo trip to Ivanhoe to visit relatives. This was the first time I had ever travelled alone and unchaperoned. My relatives arranged an extension of the holiday to Broken Hill, a major mining town close to the border with South Australia. I had studied geology that year and was very interested in rocks and minerals. I stayed in one of the town hotels, but being a minor (21 was the age of majority then) I could not enter the bar. The owners of the hotel were kind enough to grant me access to their living room where I was allowed to play records to amuse myself. I thought all my christmasses had come at once.

The return trip to Sydney was the longest rail journey that I had ever taken. My Ivanhoe relatives did not book me a sleeper berth so overnight I watched people enter and leave the train. At one stage the only other person in the compartment was a teenage boy. Mum would probably not have approved but what the eye doesn't see does not cause too much worry.

How long was this journey? In miles I don't remember, but I was able to read two novels in the train. One was George Orwell's 1984 and the other was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was a 24 hour long train ride.
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Good memories there. :)
 
Pinky & Peppermint Patty, I should explain to fellow Canadians. I simplified my post, above by describing the trip as being from Vancouver to Nova Scotia. Actually, I bought one of those open-ended Via Rail tickets to pursue a project.

I started in Edmonton, travelled to Toronto and worked there a few days. Then I proceeded to Halifax, worked there a few days. Travelled to Montreal, worked there. Took Amtrak down to New York City, Then finally returned back north and trained all the way west to Vancouver. So all in all, in the space of a couple of weeks I rode a lot of rail in a meandering path.
 
Rode the train lots when I was younger. Most trips were only a few hours.

The longest trip was in NZ, from Auckland to Wellington. I forget how many hours. It was late arriving at the destination. There was narration of the highlights along the way. The sound quality was poor and out of sync. Beautiful scenery. It made my decision to never take the train across Canada. I’ve been by car so I’m not limiting myself.
 
Jules said:
Rode the train lots when I was younger. Most trips were only a few hours.

The longest trip was in NZ, from Auckland to Wellington. I forget how many hours. It was late arriving at the destination. There was narration of the highlights along the way. The sound quality was poor and out of sync. Beautiful scenery. It made my decision to never take the train across Canada. I’ve been by car so I’m not limiting mysel
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I can understand how that trip put you off. My experience with Via Rail, cross Canada, was completely satisfying. I was impressed with V.R. then, and so when I got into Europe from the start I was comfortable with train travel there.
 
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Mr. Wilford's Snowpiercer, 1001 cars long, has been continuously circling the Earth for 7 years and cannot stop.

Snowpiercer is set in 2026, seven years after the world becomes a frozen wasteland due to ecocide, and follows the remnants of humanity who have taken shelter on a perpetually moving luxury train.
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Snowpiercer route.gif
 
Rode "Thomas the Train" around St. Louis. It was a waste of time mostly.
Maybe 20 mph with passengers. The Elevated in Chicago too.

Many ride the Amtrac train to St. Louis / Chicago every day.

Rode a train around Disneyland and one around Beardstown also Great Americas.
They were for fun goers in the parks.
 
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Warrigal said:
As a child, my family always went on holidays by train. Three destinations only - Sydney to the Queensland border, Sydney to Melbourne and Sydney to a small town in the west of NSW called Ivanhoe. We would travel on a steam train overnight and Mum insisted that we had a sleeper berth. I think she believed that the only proper way to sleep was lying down in a bed. The steam trains stopped at every town along the route to deliver bags of mail.

The next morning the steam engine would be replaced by a diesel one and the diesel fumes would make me feel sick. At the NSW Victoria border town of Albury we changed trains because of a difference in the rail gauges. We left the steam train and walked the length of the station to find our seats for the remainder of the journey. Albury station at that time was the longest in Australia, possibly the world.

Later, when I was a university student, I took a solo trip to Ivanhoe to visit relatives. This was the first time I had ever travelled alone and unchaperoned. My relatives arranged an extension of the holiday to Broken Hill, a major mining town close to the border with South Australia. I had studied geology that year and was very interested in rocks and minerals. I stayed in one of the town hotels, but being a minor (21 was the age of majority then) I could not enter the bar. The owners of the hotel were kind enough to grant me access to their living room where I was allowed to play records to amuse myself. I thought all my christmasses had come at once.

The return trip to Sydney was the longest rail journey that I had ever taken. My Ivanhoe relatives did not book me a sleeper berth so overnight I watched people enter and leave the train. At one stage the only other person in the compartment was a teenage boy. Mum would probably not have approved but what the eye doesn't see does not cause too much worry.

How long was this journey? In miles I don't remember, but I was able to read two novels in the train. One was George Orwell's 1984 and the other was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was a 24 hour long train ride.
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Warrigal:

Your experience on the train trips from Sydney to Melbourne was similar to mine. This was 1954 and yes, we did have to change trains at Albury because of the difference gauges on the rail lines. We usually stopped at Albury about 12 o'clock at night. The canteen was open, so my poor father had to hurry to buy us a meat pie each. My sister and I had to share a card table to sleep on, parents couldn't afford to book a sleeper, but we loved it as it was a new adventure for us.
 
Bretrick said:
Do you have a sleeper cabin?
I remember a highlight going across the Nullabor, "Look, over yonder, a Tree" :LOL:
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We're currently stopped at Cook to take on fuel and water. There's numerous trees here some were brought in from the West and some from the East..
Otherwise there's sweet FA out there.
 

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