I'm all for long distance train journeys! I've travelled across parts of eastern europe by train, the whole length of Sweden, and also one infamous journey to siberia. Yes they take lots longer, and often cost more but they're so much more relaxing, and I love watching whole countries go past looking out of the train window! :)

One day it's my plan to get all the way to Japan WITHOUT flying. It'll take weeks (assuming I stop off at all the exciting places along the way) but it'll be one big adventure. :)

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Now that's some challenge... I presume there exist boats that can take you the last leg...

I do want to do the whole overland thing to the Orient some time. Maybe not quite as far as Japan, but at least China.

Yes, a train journey is a worthwhile thing in itself. One should take such opportunities when they present themselves.

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I've mainly said train because we're currently considering a Rome trip using train (however, slightly more selfish reasons, not so much cutting down Carbon Footprint than Ben not being the happiest bunny when flying...), which isn't as complicated as yours, but imagine the books you could get through....

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Books are a good thing of train journeys. Yes, I'd missed that point. To read makes us speak the English good.

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Train sounds awesome, and you'll get to see a lot of new places.

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Mostly old places, as I've been to/through most of the places in question on my previous travels. Though not Bucharest, which is on the fastest route. But still, yes, trains are awesome. I am more and more convinced by this proposition.

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I like trains much better than planes - the whole process of flying is so soulless, from the airport onwards. I'd much rather take the train, assuming I could afford it.

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Yes, this is very true, the soullessness - whereas with trains the whole journey can implant itself in the memory more, there's more of a feeling of actually having travelled, rather than getting into a metal box in one place and getting out of it in another.

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I've voted for train, since the price difference is small and you sound as if you secretly want to go by train, which I agree is a better way to travel if speed is not of the essence.

However, I have some doubts about the carbon accounting. I wish there was some sort of reliable carbon calculator which would tell you how much carbon is actually emitted by the flight from London to Sofia and how much by all those trains. I've seen the point made, and I think I believe it, that the carbon expensive thing is really travelling long distances, rather than travelling by plane as such.

Planes emit more carbon per mile than trains, as a general rule, but high speed trains (such as those used on international routes) have a higher carbon cost per mile (for obvious reasons). I also imagine that there are quite a few more miles in the train route than the plane route. I suspect that the train still comes out slightly better, but not much.

Of course, just looking at the fuel consumption is wrong, because both the aeroplane and the train have embedded carbon and also carbon costs for their employees, supplies, etc. I'm not sure how incidental carbon usage should be treated. For instance, you're probably going to drink quite a lot of coffee during this 53 hour train journey, which has a carbon cost. Is that a cost of the journey or not? It's a carbon cost of existing, but should the cost of existing be allocated to whatever activity you happen to be doing at the time, or should it just be treated as a base cost?

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Good questions.

According to these sources (various others seem to show similar things), the train is much better than the plane, and that's accounting for the route the trains actually take. Admittedly some of these studies are commissioned by train companies, though not all. I'm not sure if they include manufacture costs - but these would be spread over a very large number of journeys, so are probably a small portion of the total. Incidental costs are interesting - how many employees are involved in taking people from A to B by different routes, and how much CO2 do they emit in travelling to work and in the course of their activities? I suspect trains fare pretty well compared to planes on that, as the process of plane travel is so darned complicated and involves so many different stages. However I would be wary of counting this too much as 1) there is the question of marginal cost - the airports, stations etc. would be operating with or without my journey. Of course in the long term enough extra passengers means more stations/terminals, etc., but the number of extra passengers it would need to change those 'fixed' carbon costs would be much larger than to affect total fuel consumption or even the number of trains/planes built. And 2), in the long run these employees would be engaged in other activities so their travel-to-work emissions can't necessarily be treated as additional.

In any case, the fuel consumption advantage of trains is so overwhelming I doubt the other stuff would amount to much.

Apparently a large proportion of the fuel consumption of aircraft is in take-off and landing (easy to believe), so to some extent it is air travel per se that is the problem.

As for coffee, I would be drinking large amounts of coffee whether or not I was on a train. It is certainly true that when I am not at home I spend more on coffee, sandwiches, etc., which probably increases my carbon footprint, but that doesn't affect the train vs plane comparison, as if I were not in transit on a train, I would be at my away-from-home destination following the plane journey, so it's fairly even.

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Those stats show there's very little difference between driving and flying, and yet when I suggest flying up to scotland I will hear far more "planes are carbon-evil" than I would hear 'cars are carbon-evil' if I said I was driving.

Trains appear to be about twice as good. Which is worth noting, but it is not orders of magnitude better, as the green squad try to sell it to be. It means that a choice of flying to half-as-many-places, or continuing to holiday at the same rate by train is carbon neutral - but the latter option seems to be far more environmentally-acceptable than the former.

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I vote train. Buy more trains, keep me employed. On a less self-serving note, I believe that rail travelllers pay for the infrastructure they use to a greater extent than air travellers.
I would like to see a proper carbon footprint comparison rail v air though, taking into account carbon footprint of all the staff involved, cost of rail track properly apportioned per journey etc, which might divert me from the above belief.

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Heh, fairly well decided on train, with the revised plans.

Yes, would be an interesting study.

Not sure the staff involved need to be taken into account as such - they have their own carbon footprint, which includes the things they spend on, their travel to work, etc. One could argue that, were it not for their employment on the trains/planes they wouldn't have the salary to spend to get so much of a footprint, but it's not clear what the counter-factual is - if they weren't working in their existing job, what would they be doing? So it probably doesn't make sense to count that.

Of course you do need to count the carbon cost of activities they carry out in the course of their job. Which may include for some of them passenger travel by train/plane which starts making the formula recursive, though should be still fairly easy! Or maybe that's getting too detailed.

Fairly confident it would still come out way in favour of trains.

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I wasn't thinking so much of staff carbon footprint, as of the carbon footprint of producing hundreds of miles of steel, replacing it when it wears out etc.

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