Not much to elaborate on this question, it is quite simply a case of asking you the reader which European country has the best railways? Criteria could include it's efficiency of services, the maintenance of it's infrastructure, it's rolling stock, and the services themselves including ease of access, buying a ticket, value for money, punctuality, connectivity with other transport options, and the quality of customer service such as on-board catering and staff attitudes and behaviour. It might be easy to say that the British network doesn't particularly excel in any of these areas, and to an extent that is true, but I think to the UK's credit we have started picking up on the rolling stock side of things. I cannot think of many trains running on the network that are over 20 years old, especially in the south, and some major cities have good levels of connectivity. Notable examples for me include London, Liverpool and Newcastle where you can easily find taxi ranks or bus terminals outside major terminus stations.
I haven't travelled a lot on Italy's rail network, but I did experience a similar kind of delay that you might in Britain, which kind of gave me some perspective seeing as a lot of people might find it easy to compare the flaws of the UK network to those on the continent when they might also do things worse than we do. I can't quite say which European country has the best railways, but based on what I know about a lot of them as well as hearing the experiences of other people, it seems that Switzerland and quite possibly even the Czech Republic tend to perform the best in most areas. Switzerland in particular is known for it's density, punctuality and integration with other transport networks, and even if it may be somewhat expensive at first there are several travel passes that make it more affordable to travellers.
However, I can't quite be so confident in giving an answer, so I want to hear your ones. For anyone whose travelled on different European networks, which ones do you find to be the best? If you know anyone who has travelled on them, which ones did they find to be the best? I'm very interested to hear some of the opinions here and look forward to reading your posts.
That is difficult question to just pick one. Different countries do different things better. There are some countries railways which are excellent at some things but very poor at other things.
If we are including Northern Ireland as a country than i would say Northern Ireland wins easily. It is very hard to find another railway network in any country that even comes close to being as good as them. Translink Northern Ireland Railways is a perfect example of how to run a railway. Nice clean modern reliable trains. Delays and cancellations are very rare. I visit Northern Ireland every year and i do not think i have ever seen any delays or cancellations. Everything runs smoothly. Amazing integration between trains and buses with railway stations and bus stations located right next to each other. Bus tickets are valid on trains and train tickets are valid on buses in the evening. Everything is well maintained. Customer service is excellent and staff are very helpful. Tickets are very cheap compared to the mainland. None of this penalty fares and prosecutions for innocent mistakes and no TVMs either. You simply buy your ticket from a ticket office or from the Guard onboard the train. They make ticketing very simple and fair. It helps that Translink is just one company that runs all public transport and infrastructure. They operate the trains and buses and coaches. They maintain the tracks and infrastructure and carry out engineering works. So having one company that does everything rather than splitting it up in to hundreds of companies certainly helps. So i would say Northern Ireland easily wins if we are including that as a country.
Ireland is decent too but nowhere near as good as Northern Ireland though. Their branch lines frequency is very poor and last trains of the day are too early. But the fares are certainly better value than ours.
Otherwise my vote would go to Russia for the best in Europe i think. Their railways are certainly better than any other mainland European railway. Their network is incredibly reliable. In all my visits to Russia over the decades i do not think i have ever had a delayed or cancelled train. Even the very extensive Elektrichka suburban train networks in Moscow and St Petersburg and other cities run perfectly. The fares are very cheap. Huge investment in new trains in the last decade. Overall it just seems like a very well run railway. Belarus is similarly very good too and has improved a lot recently.
Luxembourg is very good too and is definitely one of the best ones. This is easily the best railway within the EU/EFTA/EEA area. It is a simple network that runs very well. It seems to be reliable and most trains run frequently. Best of all it is free of charge.
Estonia wins by far when it comes to accessibility. Estonia is the only country in Europe (and probably even the only country in the world) to have a 100% step free railway. Every station is fully step free from street to platform and every platform is full level with the trains meaning wheelchair users can simply wheel straight on with no ramps or assistance from staff required. So when it comes to accessibility Estonia easily wins. But the frequency of their trains outside of the Tallinn suburban area is very poor.
Latvia and Lithuania are very good too in terms of having a nice simple and reliable network with cheap fares. But again frequency outside of Riga and Vilnius is very poor. So the frequency is not great.
Austria, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, are all good in terms of having very extensive networks with railways serving almost everywhere. Frequency is mostly good too. But these railways do also have their downsides such as Germany having very poor reliability especially on long distance trains and Switzerland having very high fares. The networks are also rather confusing these days with hundreds of private companies and every line being operated by a different company.
Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, are quite decent too with fairly extensive networks. But again they have their downsides. Sweden in particular probably has the most passenger unfriendly network in all of Europe and they seem to go out of their way to make it impossible to buy tickets. No ticket offices or ticket machines or onboard sales meaning you are forced to buy from a nearby supermarket or convenience shop.
France and Italy are decent on the main high speed and intercity and suburban services. But on rural lines the frequency can be very poor. They both also have very complicating ticketing with France making you stamp your tickets before boarding and Italy often making you buy tickets from a nearby shop when travelling from smaller stations and branch lines.
Eastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Estonia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia) varies greatly with some countries (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro) operating very few trains these days and others (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia) having very extensive networks. But the one thing that unites all of these countries is cheap good value fares. The fares in all these countries are still very cheap and excellent value.
This might not be a popular opinion but the UK is still rather good too. We are not as good as back in British Rail days and our railways have a lot of problems but there are a lot of things that we do better than other European countries. Most of our rural branch lines run far more frequently than in the mainland. Our trains run far later in to the evening. For example in the South East the last trains of the day from London to all over the Home Counties are at around 00:00 to 01:00 in the morning where as in the mainland last trains of the day are often as early as 20:00 in the evening. We have no compulsory reservations. You can buy one ticket between any two stations in the country. Our tickets are a lot more integrated as we have Any Permitted tickets allowing you to use any operator which is something that many other countries do not have.
Greece is quite poor with so many closed lines and only a few major mainlines and suburban networks still in operation.
Portugal is decent and a lot better than the Spanish railways but again the frequency is rather poor on the branch lines.
Spain is probably the worst. They run their entire operation like an airline. Security checks before boarding. No timetables published. Awful frequency outside of urban areas or major routes. Other than high speed there are almost no services outside of cities. They really have a severe lack of local regional trains.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, are great when it comes to having cheap fares. But otherwise the railways are awful with old trains that are falling apart. These countries have invested in newer trains for some of their intercity long distance routes but the regional branch lines have been completely neglected. The branch lines also have very poor frequencies.
Within the European Union and particularly Western Europe i find that the railways have been constantly going downhill every year. If you go back say fourty years to the 80s everything was so much better. I remember travelling around in the 80s and most of the European railways were a lot better compared to today. Even in the 00s it was better. These days reliability is so poor (with Germany being a good example) and prices are getting more expensive and more and more lines are being closed or the frequency is being reduced.
In the past every country in Europe had one railway company that ran all trains and all infrastructure but now the EU has forced privatisation i think this has made it a lot worse with multiple private companies (and far worse integration than the UK) and seperate companies running trains and infrastructure and signalling and tons of open access operators and you end up with a million different companies.
