How long is the flight in comparison? And have you factored in the airport time into that?

I was looking at taking the Eurostar from London to Amsterdam, and a friend was dismissing it as it took 4 hours where as the flight is ~45 mins. Except its not, the flight its self maybe 45 mins, but you have to get to heathrow (which is further away than St Pancreas) plus get there an hour early. Then we would have to deal with Schiphol and getting to the center of Amsterdam. To me the prospect of spending 4 hours sat down on the train and arriving directly in central Amsterdam, all the while with more space than a plane is much better than the prospect of 4 hours of that.

Now obviously that's a very niche case, and for most people it doesn't make as much sense, but I think people get scared off by the long train times but ignore the extra time needed around the flight.

I don't know, but my city airport is small, so it's pretty much arriving and boarding. Now barajas is another history but I doub't ill be there for much more than 30 mins.

It also depends on train stations being accidentally close to where you depart/arrive. Most people don't live closer to a large train station then to an airport, I'd think.

Large train stations are far more common than large airports in Europe, so you got this the wrong way around.

How many of these train stations have been built after 1950? And what defines "large" in both cases?

The train station in my city has 80 million travellers per year compared to the airport which only has 27 million. And while I do not think many train stations have been built since the 1950s many have been expanded.

? I don't think so? Every large city has both a train station and a large airport.

Definitely not in Germany. There are lots of medium to large cities without an airport, but every one has a large-ish train station with decent connections.

Due to the nature of the two, train stations are usually in the center of cities, while airports have to be quite outside.

Also, in my experience there are usually more than one train station in larger cities but even smaller ones have them. While airports are only a few even at a country level.

I don't know what you mean by "large" then. In the context of this discussion, I meant train stations served by high speed rail and airports with regularly scheduled commercial service. The former vastly outnumbers the latter in continental Europe.

I dont think that's true at all. Train stations in Europe are far, far more common than Airports. You may have to change rather than a direct train, but chances are you can get around pretty easily.