The answer would be high speed night trains. London - Rome takes a bit over 15h by train today. However that includes waiting for connections and a lot of stops on stations. So a direct train would be siginificantly faster probably more like 12-13h. That would mean you could go into a train station in London at 20:00 and end up in Rome at 8:00 for example.
Stockholm - Barcelona is a much longer journey. 2250km instead of 1400km for Rome - London. So a very long nigh train or a connection in Hamburg or Paris. with a night train going from there to Barcelona or Stockholm respectivly.
as much as I love trains (I’m on one while typing this) I can’t get myself to spend 170€ for a 21 hour train, even if part of it is spent sleeping, when a 2 hour flight could do the same for 50€.
I don’t know if it’s just cheaper or if there’s massive subsidies like other comments were saying, but for now it’s highly unpractical and uneconomical
The answer would be high speed night trains. London - Rome takes a bit over 15h by train today. However that includes waiting for connections and a lot of stops on stations. So a direct train would be siginificantly faster probably more like 12-13h. That would mean you could go into a train station in London at 20:00 and end up in Rome at 8:00 for example.
Stockholm - Barcelona is a much longer journey. 2250km instead of 1400km for Rome - London. So a very long nigh train or a connection in Hamburg or Paris. with a night train going from there to Barcelona or Stockholm respectivly.
as much as I love trains (I’m on one while typing this) I can’t get myself to spend 170€ for a 21 hour train, even if part of it is spent sleeping, when a 2 hour flight could do the same for 50€.
I don’t know if it’s just cheaper or if there’s massive subsidies like other comments were saying, but for now it’s highly unpractical and uneconomical