Europeans would swap planes for trains... if they could

Yeah, no shit... Just go to your nearest station 5 minutes before departure instead of wasting hours in security checks and at gates sounds terrific.
The last time I booked an internaional ICE from northern Germany to Bruxelles, the return connection and its follow up connection were cancelled. Best connection to get back would have been a Eurostar but tickets weren't transferable and the guy at the station wouldn't even sell me one. Had to take three short distance trains just to cross the border back to Germany, ended up about five hours late.
National trains are often a mess already but with international connections you're just lost. Booking night trains would be awesome, go to bed in Hamburg and wake up in Barcelona sounds like a dream. Instead, they all go to Vienna, which is nice to go there but isn't helpful for European connectivity as a whole.
- National rail can be (at least) perfectly decent, which it is in the Netherlands. Too bad the EU wants to have it be fucked up by ‘competition’: the European Commission just now sued the Dutch state for giving the consession for the main part of the railway network to the national rail company NS.
  
  Competition is good, but railroads are a natural monopoly - there are very few points in the world that can justify more than one set of tracks between them. Airplanes can share an airport because if someone else blocks a runway everyone else can take a different one and thus there can be competition. However if train operator B blocks a track (possibly by running a slow train) everyone else can't get through.
  I'm all for competition, but you have to own your own tracks.
  
  Dutch have good national trains but are also part of the reason for poor trains on European level. The Dutch have built next to nothing high speed tracks, NS also don't invest in night trains.
- And waiting 5 hours for the Deutsche Bahn to arrive. I don't really care for the prices but German trains are a nightmare to travel with
  
  Kinda agree. Good when smooth, but when bad it’s bad.
  I once booked a train months in advance. Got there and the train got cancelled. No notice just not there. I waited in queue for 30 mins. Person told me catch the next one in 1 hour.
  I did. The conductor on the train came along and threaten to throw us off as it was not the correct ticket. There was just no rational option.
  Otherwise I love the train.
- Yeah, no shit… Just go to your nearest station 5 minutes before departure instead of wasting hours in security checks and at gates sounds terrific.
  I just wish some rail companies (DB 🤡) wouldn't fuck this up with pricing structures copied from air travel that make tickets bought on the day of travel usually prohibitively expensive.
  
  Yeah for real, I once had to pay close to 180€ for a second class ticket from Berlin to Cologne without a seat reservation since I had to buy it only a few hours in advance.
- Night trains (the sleeper trains, not the ones where you have to sit and they go at night) sound great in theory but, after having taken one once, I'm not sure whether I'd enjoy it as a regular means of transportation.
  I don't think it would scale and thus would always be pretty expensive.
  I had to push my heavy luggage up high into a compartment above the beds, and navigate in very tight quarters, which works fine if you're young and have no back problems, but older folks might struggle.
  I traveled in a 2-bed compartment with my partner, not sure whether I'd enjoy a cramped 6-bed compartment.
  I'd much rather have a good connection in the morning and enough space on the train to use the trip as a work day (remote worker privilege, for sure) or reading day, and arrive in the evening, or, if the distance is very long, have affordable accommodation at the major train stations (not overpriced hostels with a club in the courtyard, which happened to me in Paris once).
  So all in all, I feel like the sleeper train thing seems more of a touristy event-thing than a regular mode of transportation, at least if other options are available ...
  
  I agree that if you travel with a lot of luggage the sleeper trains can be a bit cramped and there should be probably some sort of check in luggage for long distance trips.
  Otherwise the compartments seem fine? I definitly prefer them over some cheap and noisy hotel right at the train station.
- Barcelona in particular is a bit more difficult than the rest of Europe since we have a different rail standard in Spain.
  But also Barcelona in particular is very close to the french border. So making one connection there doesn't sound too bad.
  
  The high speed trains use standard gauge, not iberian, even in Iberia.
- I think that's because ÖBB/Austrian Railways is the only operator that's still investing in night trains
- Let's hope trains will remain (mostly) security check-free.
  
  Sorry to disappoint you ... in Barcelona-Sants, you have to go through one ... not the body-scan thing yet, but you have to pass your luggage through a scanner, there's a line, and you definitely have to bring some time, be there 20 min before at least ...
- Where are these airports with hours of security checks? I've never taken more than 15 minutes.
  
  Big airports in the US often need you to arrive that far beforehand. The security line itself is often half an hour, then there is the other lines to check your baggage (if any) - these are generally quick, but still a line. From the door to your gate can often take most of an hour, but not all of the time is in security.
  Though I live in a tiny city, the security line is rarely long and there are only a few gates so I can get to my gate in less than half an hour most of the time. However I still arrive an hour in advance because at peak times the line will get long.
  
  It really depends. I've been to airports where it took me less than 10 minutes from the entry door to the gate. I've also been in security lines that took hours because of whatever. Unfortunately, the conditions usually state that you have to take this into account and should be at the airport at least 2 hours early, so that's what I do to not miss my plane without being able to request a refund or something.

Trains are so much better in so many ways. The only mode of transport that can compete for me is boats.

I would think most Americans that have ever been on a decent high speed train would as well. Such a better experience than the life-sucking horror of modern air travel.

Trains are still extremely expensive when compared to flights to the same destinations. Unfortunately...
- For the simple reason that planes are subsidised.
- Even driving alone in my car is usually cheaper for the "usual" 6-12h drive distance. Let alone with passengers or if I pickup a blablacar. I'd love to do more train but it needs to be subsidized more for the prices to become reasonable, and that I can book shortly before my trips because in my branch it's impossible for me to schedule the tickets so far ahead. I still have to deal with equipment to move around but that can be dealt with through rentals on location.
- And multiply those costs for a family. Trains receive more subsidies per km in Europe but cost far more for the distance. I say this as someone who prefers trains. They’re just not that efficient compared to planes. There are solid use cases like local commuter trains and for shipping. For longer journeys, planes are a clear winner for time and cost.
  
  Yes true but the range of how far train can be preferable above plane can be expanded if network better run on a European level and some big strategic investments (not that different from what France did in the 80's and 90's) on quite a few very often travelled routes. Amsterdam-Berlin is an easy example, but there are many like that. Currently on many routes the plane>train is like ~300 km, while on many that could become 600-700km with either high speed tracks or more sleeper train options or better connections. On some big routes the train>plane is up to 700-800 km already.
  
  planes are a clear winner for time and cost.
  Artificially so.
  
  Do planes have to pay tax on their fuel yet? Asking for a friend....

Not as long as those planes are too cheap.
- I would rather see trains getting cheaper than planes getting more expensive though
  
  Tax the planes to subsidize trains, I guess.
  
  I wish it was like that here in the Netherlands. Instead we get flights that stay more or less the same price due to heavy subsidies and constant bickering about the trains. They've already announced another 10% price hike on trains for the coming year, after already raising it by 5-10% every single year for the past few years. It's insane. Add to that the extra inconvenience of having to cross borders with mediocre connections and I can understand that people don't take the train.
- Maxbe we should start requiring to pay tax on aviation fuel for starters? First step on fuel sold in the EU, then for fuel used to reach the EU…
- Planes are not too cheap. Trains are too expensive.
  Only raising prices is neoliberal ideology. We need to lower prices on the things that are too expensive. Something being "too cheap" due to subsidies is a secondary concern.
- Thats the "if they could" part...

Not only the reliability is an issue, all too often, traveling a longer distance by high speed train costs a small fortune compared to a flight of the same distance.

Same with Americans. We have no decent rail here.
- Most places in the US you can simplify that to "We have no rail here."

smiles in Swiss

Years of defunding and neglect led to this.

Trains are fucking rad, duh

DB’s a fkn mess. Prices go up, reliability goes into the toilet. And there’s not a single thing anyone can do about it aside from finding another way. I want trains to be awesome. They are far from it, post-pandemic.
- FlixTrain in Germany is much cheaper. Reliability is still the issue but at least I feel like I get what I pay for, contrary to DB