It's crap.

At least, in my opinion --- I live in Switzerland now, so my standards are... different. But, basically, overpriced, unreliable, dirty, and slow. The only places where the train system actually works well is the south-east of England, where it's horribly expensive. I used to live in Reading; a peak time day return into London, which is maybe half an hour a way, costs about £40.

Bear in mind that I know perfectly well that Britain's rail network is amazing compared to, say, America or eastern Europe. But the local perception of it is that it's bad. (Not helped by several rounds of botched privatisation, too.)

Incidentally, I'd love to know how to get from Ireland to Great Britain by train. Do they float?

There's a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, you can buy a valid ticket from any British station.

http://traintimes.org.uk/Birmingham/DCL/

You're correct that this is people's perception, but they probably haven't wandered into a typical German city station and found there's a two hour wait for the next train to another city, or that the only cheap option is a very slow local train.

Having recently visited the UK for a couple of months, I don't really understand why the people there hold their rail system in such low regard. Every time I compared prices between rail and coach, there was almost always a rail ticket that cost about the same as the bus and got me to my destination faster, even at the last minute. The trains were also very slick and clean, and often had outlets and working Wi-Fi. Better than many places in mainland Europe!

Because the majority of train journeys in the UK are commutes into metro areas at peak time rather than intercity journeys. They tend to be overcrowded with variable reliability due to the fact the networks are at capacity, and are not cheap.

> I live in Switzerland now

How did you get into Switzerland? I've been considering / researching the possibility for a while, but it seems like a very long process to legally enter the country. Did you find it that way? Any recommendations?

[I looked for a personal email, but there isn't one listed on your profile.]

If you're an EU citizen, you can settle just outside of Switzerland and commute across the border. It's very common. Anyway, it can't be that hard as a quarter of the Swiss population are foreign residents[0]

0:http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/having-a-say_can---and-should---...

Is it so much harder for UK citizens? For (most) Schengen people it is really simple.

Schengen is irrelevant here, British people have the same rights as every other EU citizen (i.e. go, then register as a citizen which is just a formality).

But the person asking is American, which is presumably very different.

I cheated --- I have a work sponsored visa, I'm afraid.

What aspects of the train system did you find only work well in the south-east?

Curious because I regularly take trains all over the UK and have generally found the ones in the south-east and south in general to be the worst, as well as the most expensive, which seems reflected in customer satisfaction surveys at least – http://www.which.co.uk/home-and-garden/leisure/reviews-ns/be...

That's really not a fair comparison.

Virgin Trains, running only long-distance intercity journeys, is compared to London Overground, which runs trains within London every 4-6 minutes for commuters. I'd also guess the average Which? reader is much more likely to rely on a train for work if they live in the south east.

If we compare local services, the south east is much better: much more frequent service, newer trains, generally staffed stations, better value fares within London.

If we compare long-distance services, the trains often start or end in the south east anyway.

Thanks ! As for your question, if you can understand french, you should watch this https://vimeo.com/47189915#t=125s

Rail and sail tickets for Ireland to UK. Did it once. It was ok but I doubt I'd do it again.

Virgin trains are great. Liverpool to London in under 2.5hrs.

As a French who lives in London, my limited experience (London - Brighton mostly) is that they're fine, reliable, and cheaper than the French TGV (which is generally awesome and uncomparably faster, but ridiculously expensive)

I have a feeling the question might be linked to some common myths about the UK being spread by the French left for ages (evil privatized Thatcherite trains crashing into each other, third-world healthcare with people dying in droves in hospital corridors, etc). Right ? :)

What standard(s) are you asking about here? Other modes of transport? Our rail system from 20 years ago? Similar services in other European nations? I’d say our rail system is probably significantly better than it was 20 years ago. For some journeys I would almost always choose rail travel while for others I would hardly even consider it, usually as a result of cost or timing — how direct a route you can choose and the convenience of the connections makes a huge difference in our system.

As for comparisons with our European neighbours, there was some interesting discussion a week or so ago about how international rail within Europe works (or, sometimes, does not work yet). I added some comments there about a recent experience travelling between the UK and the Netherlands by train:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9631874

The short version is that international rail travel within continental Europe (well, Schengen really) seems to be much less hassle than travelling to or from the UK by train.

Overpriced. Overcrowded. Unclean. Cramped. Occasionally unreliable. We don't have any high speed rail apart from the link to Paris, but our standard intercity trains have connected most major cities at 200kph since the 1970's which is faster than conventional rail in Europe. TGV style High speed lines are a real pain to build in the UK because of the high population density of the countryside coupled with the extensive and laborious public consultations required. We don't have Alps but we do have quite a lot hills between the main cities. Once the route has taken account of all these concerns there are often not many parts where the trains will go at full speed. This is why the new HS2 route will only save 15mins off the time from London to Birmingham.

>Unclean.

Unclean compared to what? I wouldn't say that the trains or stations are particularly unclean on the whole.

Compared to Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland. Spain. E.g. Once travelling Copenhagen to London. The train from Copenhagen to the airport is spotless. The train from Stanstead to London is dirty and full of litter. There was a pile of rubbish on that train which was waist height; burger boxes, bits of foods, drinks cartons. I was embarrassed to be British. Also nobody cleans the crevices on British trains there's always black grime in there and the toilets often malfunction and stink out the carriage.

I've been using the trains in Britain for a couple of decades and I've never seen anything that bad. Sounds like you were unlucky.

I'm French, I was in St Pancras / Margate / Brighton last summer and they have new lines, one of them called The Javelin, it's extremely fast, on time, reliable, so I'd say they've made tremendous progress.

Expensive (London to Manchester 80 pounds, composed to 15 by coach), mostly always delayed and not getting any better apart from the two or so lines Virgin runs which are super nice (but which are very expensive).

France's trains seem futuristic in comparison.

Germany's are super puctural and great value.

Germany's nationalised rail company, DB, who now own Arriva, are servicing some of UK's lines, I see now. The private UK system is helping to fund the puplic German system, heh.

Apart from all the Arriva-branded services, several train operators in the UK belong to Arriva (CrossCountry, Chiltern, and Grand Central Railway). Also, on the freight side of the railway business, DB own EWS (which is now called "DB Schenker Rail (UK)"). Since DB is fully state-owned, parts of Britain's railway system are state-owned again, but by the German rather than the British state :D

But to defend rail travel in the UK, advance tickets are much cheaper (I don't think I ever paid more than £25 between London and Leicester, maybe £15 on average, but then I didn't use the peak trains), but do require planning ahead. If you're lucky you can even snag a first class advance ticket for less than £3 more than standard, which is quite nice (tea! biscuits! juice!). Railcards are also quite affordable (certainly more so than DB's BahnCard) and amortise rather quickly, even more so when considering that you can have the Railcard discount applied to your Oyster Card. All in all, I was quite positively surprised given all the negative things I heard beforehand.

You can get london to manchester for £15 by train. You just need to book in advance. The fare structure is bizarrely complex and it's hard to knkw how much a journey is goin to cost until you get actually buy a ticket.

http://imgur.com/79PAXiq

It's expensive, terrible, and frequently overcrowded, but at least it's not as outdated as it used to be.

If you avoid commuting long distances it isn't too bad in most places. Just because you can commute a long way doesn't mean you should.

Having travelled by train in other European countries, I'd say it is actually very good. It connects more places than most countries, buying tickets is easy, trains are frequent.

The downside is that is it is phenomenally expensive. Far more than any other country. Yeay privatisation?

It's very expensive, but services are amazingly frequent compared to on the continent, with multiple trains per hour been major cities. There's little compassion from the Staff of there's a problem, since everything's privatised.

French here : monopolistic, state-run services don't bring you any more compassion from the staff if there's a problem. Quite the contrary !

Well, we love our heritage steam railways.