Title shared on HN left me somewhat disappointed. The actual time appears to be "Where can you go by train in 8h?", though that's somewhat less clear. It only seems to include central stations of larger cities, though I was hoping for a list of shortest travel times between stations in Europe, as more of a thought/data experiment. Or put another way; which two train stations in Europe have the least distance between them?
Anyway, the shared feature is neat, but seems to be somewhat iffy once you get out of the bigger cities. If a route has 2 or more connections, it seems to struggle to show them. While true to its message, I still feel the restriction of 8 hours misses sleeper trains, where travel time is less essential compared to daytime trains.
It's cute for discoverability, but for a specific train search, I would definitely defer to bahn.de, which basically includes all train stations in Europe.
> I was hoping for a list of shortest travel times between stations in Europe, as more of a thought/data experiment. Or put another way; which two train stations in Europe have the least distance between them?
That would not be very interesting. I live close to a train station that's less than 5 minutes (by train) away from the nearest other train station. The other train station is the city hub with many connections to other cities. There is nothing interesting about this connection, it simply replaces a 20 minute bike or bus ride. There are many such connections.
I assume if you only observe the data in isolation. But compiling that data would provide an image of where the density of stations are higher. Again, we can assume that's probably around the bigger cities, but until we actual lay out the data, we are just assuming. Maybe it'll prove the data right, but maybe it will reveal something we didn't expect. Testing the obvious sometimes lead to unobvious observations.
> I was hoping for a list of shortest travel times between stations in Europe, as more of a thought/data experiment. Or put another way; which two train stations in Europe have the least distance between them?
I just took a sleeper train last night from Helsinki to the arctic circle and they had non-reclining seats with no light dimming. Got around an hours nap between 6am and 7am this morning. Took around 14 hours to go 1000km. Very much regret not paying for a proper cabin…
To counter that, the best sleeper train I ever took was from Beijing to Shanghai, and it felt like I'd travelled to the future (this was in 2008).
Second best might be Portland, OR to Sacramento, though I might have liked it if had been more like travelling to the past (I miss proper dining cars).
European ones have been cheap, cheerful, and uncomfortable, but this was 15 years ago for trips like Florence to Prague, IIRC.
The Zephyr route from San Francisco to Chicago still has a proper dining cart, viewing cart, and is 52 hours long. Surprisingly comfortable and the only way you can access the Ruby Canyon in Colorado outside of a kayak.
6 hours is too short for any special trains (i.e. #001/2 is Moscow - St.Petersburg 8 hour night train) so you can expect that at any route, also attendants have to wake up passengers by a rule.
Added: GP is probably talking about a train that didn't cross a border.
Anyway, the shared feature is neat, but seems to be somewhat iffy once you get out of the bigger cities. If a route has 2 or more connections, it seems to struggle to show them. While true to its message, I still feel the restriction of 8 hours misses sleeper trains, where travel time is less essential compared to daytime trains.
It's cute for discoverability, but for a specific train search, I would definitely defer to bahn.de, which basically includes all train stations in Europe.