I am from Italy that geographically is not very easy to connect to the rest of Europe because of the Alps.
Still, below a thousand kms train beats flight 100% of the time!
I travel a lot throughput Europe to meet my special other who travels a lot due to her job.
I used to fly to meet her but , pandemic aside, I discovered that traveling by train was a much better option, mainly because you're on the ground and everything works almost like you're not moving at all.
internet connection is hit and miss of course, but compared to the very tight seats on a plane with no internet at all, it seems like a moving office.
Truth is I rarely work on a train, I mainly read, but having the option and the opportunity to book a solitary seat it's such a luxury that I gladly pay the extra money.
Other benefits include: no baggage limit, no early show up routine for no reason, no security or "show your face" checks, no packed up load-in load-out lines, being able to walk away if you need to (a phone call, for example) or because you simply need to stretch a little bit, but my favourite one is night trains where you book a bunk bed, sleep and wake up at the destination. A friend of mine calls it teleportation, you are not traveling between two places, you are waking up in a new place, far from the starting point, without even noticing it.
Trains are a great way to move, especially now that they are so fast.
They aren't cheap in general, that's true, but it's worth it, especially if you compare train fares with low cost offers that are undoubtedly cheaper, but don't even include a real baggage or the option to chose your seat for free (had to pay 6 euros for a seat just two days ago flying from Barcelona)
You were the local shopping stimulus all along.
(It's a song called United Breaks Guitars that you may remember from over a decade ago).
Even when you do have to pay in the US it is typically very generous. Larger size and weight allowance, and you won’t get dinged for being even a few kilos over. And the bottom tier of frequent flyer programs (which is usually trivial to get and keep) waives all these fees anyway. I can’t remember the last time I paid for luggage allowance outside of a trip to or through Europe.
I can't remember the last airliner that I was on that didn't have WiFi. Is WiFi uncommon in Europe?
However this is coming soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Aviation_Network
It's pretty rare, and when they do have it it is incredibly expensive, limited or both. On trains they basically always have it and it's free.
(with the caveat that it's been 2+ years since I was on a plane so I don't know how things have changed)
That depend on the quality of the rail and train. I have had nice experience in Germany, but here in Sweden it is the opposite. The side-to-side movement triggers motion sickness that is only compare to really rough ocean trips, and while the noise is lower than on a plane it is also less regular and higher pitch so it can be quite hard to ignore.
The problems stems from rails and trains here being 30-50 years old and long history of poor maintenance. To make matters worse, almost no lines has redundant tracks so if there is a problem (which there often is because to the issue of maintenance), the train get replace with busses. Night trains in particular tend to have a rather terrible experience with trains that are by now around 50-70 years old. Because of the motion sickness, the handful times I tried it has resulted in me basically being sick for a full day afterward. This doesn't occur if I take a plane or drive.
I don't know if they still do that but it is certainly something that could be instituted if governments wanted it.
2004 Madrid Train Bombings: