[elthor89]

It is there but I wish there was a more comprehensive network of high speed rail in Europe.

Going from Amsterdam to Spain the plane seems to win on price and travel time.

One thing that isn’t infrastructure but could easily be improved is buying international train tickets. So often I see that one needs to call or you can only book one month ahead.

Surely we could have solved that by now..

[ATsch]

It is absolutely possible, however government leaders have stubbornly blocked it: https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/european-governmen...

[emn13]

Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications and routing systems are incompatible and safety critical too.

As a result, such a trip would take a long time, even if high-speed rail is a possibility for part of the trip; it's not possible for a simple train to go even most of the way; you'll need to change trains multiple times not just due to logistical issues, but simply to be on a train that can even use the rail you need to traverse.

If we can't fix that (and that's a really hard and expensive problem), we're never going to get a fast connection from the netherlands to spain.

And I'm sure you can find even worse scenarios (say, tack on denmark and germany to that route for 2 more technologically incompatible systems!). Baltic states still use a soviet-derived system, and much of eastern Europe a yet different one.

[aarroyoc]

There's no gauge change. Spain high-speed tracks already use the international one (older tracks still use Iberian gauge). There are already high-speed trains that go to France without stopping at the border.

[pilsetnieks]

> Baltic states still use a soviet-derived system

Rail Baltica [1] (already being constructed) is using European gauge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica

[andbberger]

incredible almost everything you said is wrong!

> Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications and routing systems are incompatible and safety critical too.

none of this is nearly as problematic as you seem to think it is. modern powertrains traverse various electrification schemes without difficulty. signaling systems are trending towards ETCS, trains that traverse incompatible signaling systems (eg the eurostar) simply carry a set of onboard signaling equipment for each standard. gauge changes are the most challenging technical limitation in your list, but are a solved problem. spanish talgo's regularly change gauges at speed [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiH4kt14yGw

[dmitriid]

Flying from Stockholm to Copenhagen (or even Malmö or Gothenburg) is often a better alternative to trains. Thankfully there's now an express train to Gothenburg, but that's about it.

[DominikPeters]

I agree that ticketing is terrible. But note that you can take the train from Amsterdam to Barcelona or even Madrid or Sevilla using essentially only high-speed lines (the only segments that aren't high-speed are Amsterdam to Lille and Avignon to Perpignan). So at least on those routes, one can't really complain about the comprehensiveness of European HSR. Amsterdam to Barcelona can be done in 12h17 with two changes, giving an average speed of 100km/h (measuring straight-line distance!).