WHY YOU SHOULD DITCH THE SHORT-HAUL FLIGHT FOR AN OVERNIGHT TRAIN

As I boarded the Caledonian Sleeper with my family at Edinburgh Waverly on a cool Scottish summer night, it was difficult not to get caught up in the romantic quality of this eight-hour journey to London. The train's midnight teal exterior reflected the hue of the sky, and coupled with the vintage-y copperplate gothic font emblazoned on it, the scene felt spliced from the celluloid of a Wes Anderson film. That a kindly bellhop from The Balmoral, our hotel adjacent to the station, loaded our valises off a trolley cart did little to rein in these trappings.

And yet, by all measures, sticking my wife, Tiffan, and three-year-old daughter, Odella, on the top bunk while I climbed into a claustrophobic twin bed beneath is an insane proposition. Some might deem it a divorce wish. And though I’m typically the first to celebrate the soporific effect of a train’s gentle rocking, the suck-it-in narrowness of our compartment was giving more coffin than cradle. In fact, the train is fairly modest and it’s a far cry from Belmond's Royal Scotsman. (Next time. Next life!)

Still, while easyJet can get you from Edinburgh to London in an hour flat for $25 a pop, I would wholeheartedly advocate for this adventurous snail-paced travel option—never mind my bruised forehead and ego, lasting crick in my neck be damned.

Train travel, you see, allows for more organic and immediate integration into a city—without commuting in from the exurban airport. By going overnight, you don’t lose a day Ubering out to the airfield and then shuttling back into your destination’s city center—it’s an efficient method of getting someplace while you’d otherwise be sleeping instead of burning an afternoon on short-haul travel. You also spare yourself the indignities of airport security lines, and in minimizing your pre-departure arrival, you maximize your time in the city: before hopping on our charming, if flawed, little choo-choo, we enjoyed a full day at the National Museum of Scotland, a memorable brunch at Gleaneagles Townhouse, a stroll through Princes Street Gardens, an evening visit to Camera Obscura and World of Illusions, and a civilized local dinner (not at airport prices). Despite the fact that my wife bumped her head on the ceiling when sitting up and the mediocre Lorne sausages and weak tea-bagged coffee come morning, the togetherness our little family experience proved more memorable than the logical budget option.

Truth be told, I’ve always been a train enthusiast. An erstwhile fear of flying in my teens necessitated some wildly impractical itineraries for study-abroad experiences that took me from London to St. Petersburg and New York to Guadalajara (the final stretch I completed by bus). I grew to enjoy writing reflective, if treacly, entries in a Moleskin or just zoning out while gazing at the passing countryside, imagining the lives lived in this or that orange-roofed house.

It’s immersive—going through, not over.

As a younger man, I welcomed serendipitous encounters with fast friends: a gregarious group of Swiss guys on a gap year crammed in a sitting compartment with a two-meter-tall gentleman opposite me named Wolfgang (whose knee prints are still impressed upon mine two decades later). Another memorable railroad companion: a gorgeous woman in Helsinki with jet-black hair and a bear-like dog who invited me upon departure to stay with her instead of a hostel before catching the last leg of my trip to Russia (I naively declined). Now in my late 30s, I enjoy the quietude of train travel and the way time seems to stand still even in motion. It’s a bit of a freeze frame. A way of cheating the incessant ticking of time, especially when traveling overnight to avoid squandering a day of precious PTO in transit. Waking up in a new city relatively rested (massive cowlick inevitable) without much effort or doing in the journey allows for a seamless continuation of the adventure.

But in these formative voyages, like the time I mistakenly added spirulina to a smoothie a decade ago, I was accidentally ahead of the trend.

Train travel has surged in popularity, with no signs of slowing down. The global number of train travelers has risen from 850 million people in 2019 to more than 967 million in 2023, almost a 14% uptick, per Statista. That total is expected to reach 1.1 billion come 2028. In the EU in particular, passenger rail travel rose 50% from 2021 to 2022, per Eurostat. Efficiency is not the end-all, be-all. Amid eco-conscious travelers’ flight-shaming, eschewing air travel and its enormous carbon footprint for train travel has grown all the more in popularity.

Some railcar warriors just appreciate the simple charms of this mode of travel. For instance, Sandra Mayernik and her husband are retiree nomads who, since selling everything they owned last spring, have become acolytes of train travel, recently journeying from Lisbon to Faro on Comboios de Portugal, from Seville to Barcelona on TGV Renfe, and from Barcelona to Paris on TGV SNCF.

“For us, it’s not just getting from point A to B,” Mayernik tells Condé Nast Traveler. “It's about the experience. Traveling by train allows us to see the countryside, rather than just flying overhead. Our flexible schedule and budget allow us to prioritize the journey itself, not just the destination.”

When it comes to air travel, she doesn’t enjoy waiting in airport security lines or jockeying for space to place her carry-ons. It’s a paradigm shift.

“Once aboard the train, it’s a chance to truly unwind,” she says, touting the extra leg-room compared to most airplanes and the porousness of the train, allowing passengers to move between cars without the confines of an aluminum tube flying through the air. “As the landscape unfolds, we have the opportunity to relax, watch the scenery, and enjoy a leisurely lunch together."

Two summers ago Alicia Cintron, an American consultant based in Mexico City, opted to take a train solo from Barcelona Sants to Dijon Ville, France via SNCF instead of flying, despite the $175 price tag and eleven-hour journey (including a two-hour stop-over in Lyon).

“Train travel is more relaxed, more free, more humane,” she says. She didn’t have to worry about bringing her liquids on board and showed up just half-an-hour before departure. There was another clear advantage: “I wanted to see the French countryside.”

That provided Cintron with the perfect blood-pressure lowering backdrop to decompress after five busy weeks in Paris, a hectic day in Barcelona, and a week-long Mediterranean cruise with her family.

“I wanted to slow things down, even if just for a few hours,” she says. “And I wanted to be alone in my thoughts and back on my laptop. I tried catching up on the work I ignored while on holiday but that was a pipe dream. I spent most of the ride staring out the window, watching the world go by, and reflecting on life, work, family, everything. The picturesque countryside was relaxing and helped me reset and refocus. I remember the sky being so big and blue; the earth was green and mostly flat in this part of France.”

Norm Bour and his wife have embraced train travel since became full-time nomads in their mid-60s in 2019—whether on overnight train from Luxor to Cairo or Rome to Ancona. “From zipping along between Barcelona and Madrid at 300 kph, to slower trains that took us from Budapest, Hungary to Brasov, Romania—which took 15 hours over just 400 or so miles—the Iron Horse has become a device that I employ whenever possible,” Bour says.

“The relaxing views that pass before me cause me to imagine,” he says. “I sometimes ask myself, ‘How many people have seen this exact same view over the decades? Why did they take this particular journey? Were they alone? On vacation? Or maybe secret agents rendezvousing with their associates at the end of the line!’”

For my own part, once our fair Caledonian Sleeper pulled into London Euston at 7 a.m., we were a seven-minute cab-ride from our hotel, One Aldwych, in the beating heart of Covent Garden. Had we had fewer bags, we could have easily walked. But the efficiency was pronounced. There was no waiting at the luggage carousel. No expensive taxi on traffic-snarled highways or time-consuming Tube trip on the Piccadilly Line from Heathrow. There’s something so comforting about bookending the train journey with hotels that are essentially a stone’s throw from each station, the train threading a through-line between them. Having left Edinburgh at 11 p.m., we hadn’t lost any non-sleep time in our location change upon arriving here at the top of the morning in London. After resting and freshening up, we were immediately ready to start our day with a walk to the Tate Modern to maximize our time in London.

Logistical wins aside, my daughter’s giddy joy around the adventure—reading bedtime stories by flashlight in the top bunk—made the cramped discomfort of this tip all worth it. In other words: want to travel right? Make the wrong decision. It’s a true instance where the journey is as important as the destination.