In a recent announcement by Andrew Adonis (Transport Secretary) it was reavealed that the government will be funding electrification of two rail lines, London to Swansea and Liverpool to Manchester, at an estimated cost of £1bn. Electrification is estimated to make trains 30% more efficient to run, which means they are cheaper to run and produce less CO2.

What surprised me about the announcement was his mention of their estimate that the project will take 40 years to pay for itself. To me its a breath of fresh air for a government to be thinking about the long term future in this way, and commiting to investment that will pay off in the long term rather than only thinking as far as the next election.

The message to UK holidaymakers is clear: your only option is to fly.

When it comes to booking a holiday (summer or winter) the websites of most package operators are just not geared up to offer anything but flights. After a huge amount of scouring the net I found a couple of operators (Thomson and Crystal) offering ski holidays to the Alps by train, but their availability is far from obvious. To find them you have to start your booking as if you’re flying and select St Pancras as your “Departure Airport”. When it comes to summer holidays the number of rail packages appears to be zero.
Most people probably don’t even consider that there might be alternatives, but then I guess I’m not most people. While looking into doing 2 different trips recently I discovered that in both cases there were realistic alternatives in terms of convenience, but they were not necessarily sensibly priced or particularly easy to find or book.

Here are the two trips I looked into:
1 - Snowboarding holiday - Anywhere with snow
Alps by train last week of January: Train/accomodation/lift pass £550
Apls by train February half term: Train/accommodation/lift pass around £1,000
Going in January the price is actually pretty good, but unfortunately Rail Europe have cancelled their London to the Alps direct sleeper train this year, which leaves you with Eurostar who do have an overnight service but its seat only (no sleeper)

2 - Long stag weekend - Barcelona
Flight: £100
Train: £260 (inc sleeper)
This is a pretty good example of a destination that is fairly easy to get to by train from the UK (Eurostar London to Paris, Sleeper Paris to Barcelona) but the price difference means that for most people the decision to fly is a no brainer.