One of an occasional series

The aspects of rail travel that make it a vastly more pleasant experience than airlines begin before you board.

In one of her columns, Benét Wilson, our Aviation Queen, described her vision of the perfect airport, so I tweeted a question out to the IBIT family: “What would your ideal airport look like?”

The first answer I got back was immediate and to the point: “A train station.”

Anybody who thinks the traveling public’s displeasure with air travel these days doesn’t run deep just isn’t paying attention. But the comment made me think back to the travel I’ve been doing, mostly in Europe, for the last decade.

I’ll go with train stations, too.

This has nothing to do with wistful nostalgia for a bygone era. Not only does rail travel seem a lot more efficient, but the whole experience is just a lot more intimate and reaffirming to your spirit, in ways that air travel hasn’t been in many years.

When you walk into one of Paris’ seven inter-city train stations, you’re met by vaulted ceilings and a panorama of platforms just a few steps from the station entrance. Indeed, it seems to be that way with many stations throughout Europe.

I’ve yet to hit a train station that required a series of lengthy moving sidewalks to get you swiftly and comfortably to a waiting train.

The other thing you don’t see in European stations is lots of places for waiting passengers to sit. It took awhile for me to realize that this was not a design flaw. Most people know to just show up a few minutes before their train departs, board and go.

No need to show up hours in advance to check luggage and go through aggravating security checks, just to twiddle your thumbs in an overcrowded and mostly uncomfortable departure lounge. No need to wait in another line at the gate for your turn to board. In fact, there is no gate. The First Class and Coach passengers all walk down the platform at the same time, and everyone boards at once.

There’s something refreshingly egalitarian about that.

When you look around at the crowd gathered beneath the big board that shows each train, its platform and its scheduled boarding time, you realize you’re surrounded by fellow travelers and tourists. The locals already know the routine. They’ve got it down.

In reality, these are more than just train stations. They are transportation hubs. In Europe, they are often connected to a subway line. Exit the subway train, walk a short distance or take an escalator up, and you’re on the platform. If you’ve timed it right, your train is already there, waiting for you.

The classic European train station has an upper level from which you can scan all the platforms at once, watch the trains come and go. In most cases, there will be shops and restaurants up there, as well.

The eateries these days are often of the sadly familiar fast-food variety, but there are some notable exceptions, especially in Paris.

In the Gare de Lyon station, you’ll find a resto called Le Train Bleu, The Blue Train. It’s more than a hundred years old, having opened two years before the Wright Brothers flew. People go to the station just to have dinner here. Take a look and you’ll know why.

While Paris rail stations are an elegant, if efficent, tribute to a bygone era, Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof may well represent the future for the modern railroad station.

Basically, it’s a huge glass house of trains, with a couple of levels of retail and food outlets above, and rail lines that literally criss-cross underneath. Easy to find your train, comfortable in most any weather, and holding enough retail therapy and and dining options to make it a destination in itself.

Think I’m weird waxing wistfully about train stations? Then check out the handful of grand railroad terminals that have survived right here in the United States.

Visitors go to New York’s Grand Central Terminal to do their grocery shopping before taking the subway home, or just to have their pictures taken under “The Clock.” Government workers and travelers alike share lunch tables in the food courts of Washington DC’s beautifully restored Union Station. Couples hold weddings and filmmakers make movies at Los Angeles Union Station, an art deco masterwork listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

And nearly a half-century after failing to protect it from the wrecking ball, New Yorkers are still bemoaning the loss of the original Penn Station.

The British took exactly the opposite approach with their St. Pancras International station in London.

When the public objected to plans to raze the old Victorian-era rail station, they gutted, modernized and refurbished the hell out of it instead. The 800-million pound price tag drew howls of protests — until folks saw the results.

It’s now a gleaming terminal or multiple rail lines, buses and the London Underground subway system. It also is the terminus for its new High Speed 1 and the Eurostar, aka the Chunnel Train. and like the world’s other great train stations, people go there just to be there.

And when was the last time you heard that said about an airport?

Text and images buy G. Gross unless otherwise noted

• Share