Indian trains Vs European (or other) trains?

I ask the following to help first-timers to India get a better idea of how travelling by train will be in India.

How did you think Indian trains compared with trains from other countries?

In particular.....

Comfort?
Cleanliness?
Toilet/bathroom?
Punctuality?
Speed?
Timings?
Quality of sleep?
Security? (actual, rather than perceived)
Friendliness of fellow passengers?
Train staff?
Stations?
Announcements?
Carriage activity?
General condition of train?
Overall experience?
Anything else you can think of?

Please indicate the class you’re talking about on both Indian trains and others.

We have criss crossed Europe using Eu-rail pass quite a few times. Since 2nd. class pass is not saleable for persons above 26 years we had always travelled in 1st. class.
In my opinion it is impossible to draw any parallel. First thing we had never reserved our seats except on some journyies where it was mandatory like the TGV etc. We found the 1st. class carriages almost empty on many routes. I checked the 2nd class compartments too, these werent empty but seats were invariably available. This factor alone helps in keeping the carriages & toilets clean.
The distances between cities & even countries are very small compared to what we have in India. Managing such vast & lengthy network is a great feat by itself. So European trains are definitely more punctual than the Indian ones in general.
No in speed we have no match for TGV.
Quality of sleep when compared our AC-2T is far better than the couchette. The comfort of an IA carriage is comparable.
We never bothered much about security except in some countries like Czechoslovakia & Poland. In India certain routes are security concerns. Except this it is pretty safe all over.
On the friendliness of fellow passengers India ranks much higher.
I have seen arrogant train staff in India as well as in Europe. I have seen very helpful ones here as well as there. I have seen a lot of corruption in India but these are going down due to computerisation etc. In Europe I have not witnessed any corruption.
About announcements I always wished that like airlines European stations should use English also.
Condition of the trains in Europe is much superior to what we have in general. The locomotives specially the modern ABB ones are excellent. The cog wheel train in Switzerland is a marvel. The Topo ride in northern Spain is very interesting.
Our overall experience in Europe on all the trips is very good indeed. We also had our memorable train journeys in India some of them incredible.
Now if you put in the cost factor & try to see which railway gives the best value for money it is INDIAN RAILWAYS!

Surprising that no one has written anything against this interesting thread.

I completely agree with jyotida. Had been to Europe & travel by train too.My experience is not much still I can say that it is absolutly immpossible to compare between IR & Europion Rly. In Comfort ,Cleanliness ,Toilet/bathroom , Punctuality ,Speed , Timings ,Carriage activity ,General condition /Maintenance of train Europion Rly is uncomparable to IR. Simply you cant compere between the two. Friendlyness of co-passengers is no doubt much more in India. For the best value for money IR zindabaad .

Give me an Indian train anyday.

I've just travelled from London to Penzance on the cheapest ticket I could get and it was a whopping £104.00. That's getting on for 8000 rps!

Sure it was cleaner and there was no hassle on the train like you get in Second Class Sleeper but no-one wanted to chat and it was deathly dull by comparison to most Indian train journeys.

Nothing beats the waving rythm of an Indian train (but it is a pain when you get sea sick somewhere inbetween Aurungabad and Hyderabad).

Indian trains tend to be more dusty than dirty which is fine. And after an overnight train in Europe in a wagon full of drunk and puking teenagers - give me an Indian wagon and toilet anytime.

And it is cheap and most of the time in time. And good laughs with the other passangers as well.

One of the reasons why we havent done much travelling in UK is the horribly expensive railway. We are not much busabout guys we love & feel comfortable travelling by train. Whether in India or Europe there is some thing romantic about train travel. Small stations, a lonely church in a lonely village, a bridge over a gurgling brook, the ravines of Chambal on a full moon night, winding down from Chur to Milan, the cotes on the route to Beunne, the Batasia loop, the mountains of Austria on the route from Vienna to Venice & so many simply wonderful.

Why specify "train travel"? Train IS travel, by definition!!
When I travel by car (very rarely!!), I have always the impression that I have never left, and I have remained at home, closed in that horrible metal box which insulate me from the rest of the world... while when on a train I am definitively running free in the outside world!!
Railway is the best way to travel, of course for long distances, and it makes a perfect pair with bicycling. My most memorable trips have been by train & bicycle, no doubt on this! I have been travelling across Ireland, Scotland, Austria, Germany and everywhere in Italy by train+bicycle... I whish I could do the same in India one day!
Maybe I am a little OT, but I cannot resist to provocations...
Bye! Gianni

ah!..cant beat the romance of the indian trains and the company!..there are so many summer vacation memories from childhood to youthhood; among which; many of going on the pandyan express from madras to madurai stands out...this one was one of the most gentle trains~. a night 'express' that took twelve hours to cover a distance of 400km....

i used to stare out the windows peering through the darkness watching the turns ..!..the dark green coaches with two yellow lines on the windows, ....the coconut and palm trees lining the horizons...and the smell of families and passengers bringing out the vadas, idlis, sambhars, variety of rices (especially the tamarind) for dinner!
they used to always say..the pandyan express sways you into sleep, and keeps you gently rocking all night...this was so true!....on contrast, the vaigai superfast was all jolts, some violent..used to cover the same distance as the pandyan in half the time...and for these tiny coaches..it felt hella unstable during the ride.....we used to run down the vestibules trying to maintain our balance...

the boat mail, quilon mail, pearl city, rockfort and the vaigai that was unique in its bright yellow green livery;..so many of them had names, colors and stories to go with!....all us kids used to debate and sometimes guess the train from the sounds of the horns..the engine toots!...they were our alarms in the morning and we used to know when they were running late....our ancestral house wasnt far from the train tracks....my innocent cousins would tell us tall stories and the drama of a superfast vaigai crossing!..

starting from madras egmore, the metre gauge system with the above trains was pretty vast, quaint and really clean..hats of to southern railway!.... not any more after the gauge conversion!!!.....now the trains look all the same...the romance for the most part is gone~.. a rant here about the neglect of it...now the railway minister usually concentrates on the bihar section of the country...the southern railway gets thrown bits and pieces...there were 3 trains between Bombay and Madras 40 years ago...and there are still only 3 trains in this section NOW!..and a single track at places....meanwhile there is always a new train announced every year to Patna or somewhere in UP...)
oh well!!!...trust our politicians to run something good to ground....

i love the TGV and took it from southern france to amsterdam changing in paris.. but it cant compare to the ambience of the indian train....the key difference for me was staring out of an open window (like in a 2S coach) and that i missed in some of the european and american trains...somehow this connected me with the environs and made it more enjoying, and lively!..

nothing also beats listening to pink floyd's 'wish you were here' sitting and leaning out in the doorsteps of a second class (2S) bogie on a long distance train in a rural landscape away from the dust and the crowd of the indian mega cities and towns.....(my latest was on the madras dadar express in late evening/nightfall)....Some of the other train music that go well with the train sounds and motions..for early mornings sunrises..are Hari Prasad Chaurasia (flute), Hindustani Raaga Expositions (aalaps) from various artists..., L Subramanium or L Shankars double violin for evenings, sunsets, nightfalls...)

i would however give the indian passenger kinda trains and the unreserved class a pass.. done it once and not doing it any more...

no post about the indian trains would be complete without the toilet mention...the squatting in the indian style loo in a superfast while doing your business and finishing with it.. must be experienced by all....! atleast once.....

Very well written greenchutney!

There's nothing much to write after reading jyotirmoy's post,sums up well for me, i've crisscrossed Europe by trains and i think if you equate it for your money's worth, it' surely IR!

I think i've been most comfortable while travelling in Italian trains, while kind of 'comfortably numb' in Swiss trains. Btw, IR is the world's largest employer and has 3rd largest rail network..

IndeGuru,
How right you are about the train journey in Italy. This is the only country in Europe where we could chat with the fellow travellers like we do here. The comfortably numb is just right about Swiss trains.
Language some times did create some problem. Last June I explained with sign language & words that we want return tickets for Kotna Hura at the booking window in Prague rly. station. While returning back to Prague the lady ticket checking staff began to say something which we could'nt understand. Luckily a student happen to hear that & we were told that the return ticket is actually an one way ticket. A small fine was levied.

( Dr F; what are you doing on the Penzance train? Get back here at once! Guess I'd better catch up with your blog....)

...That Penzance train. I used to catch the mail train that left Paddington around midnight, took several hours longer than any other train to get to Bodmin Road (now renamed Bodmin Parkway --- Why? ) in time for the bus to Padstow at about 8.30. It still had individual compartments, even when the other trains had the modern nasty open carriages. Holiday weekends it was packed; any other time you could usually have a whole seat to stretch out on.

I noticed yesterday that that journey (approx 280 miles) can now be done in 3.5 hours. The trains are sterile, nasty and unromantic. The fares have been, for years, so high that for two or more people hiring a car is cheaper. It looks as if it is more economical to fly! British trains.....

OTOH, the commute from my East London house to the city, 15 minutes on trains where I could invariably get a seat. Expensive yes, but an excellent service.

In my small, so far, experience of Indian trains the thing that gets me down is the speed --- or lack of it. Now I've done the 16-hour Chennai -> Trivandrum trip twice I feel, "done that; next time we'll fly". The trip up North to Delhi or Calcutta, if we do it, I don't think I could face on a train.

I am still amazed by the freedom to do all the things that are strictly forbidden, or even impossible, on British trains. Walk across the track? Only if you want to have half the railway police suddenly descend on you. Sit in an open door? What? Mind you: even where physically possible (commuter trains have remote-controlled doors; express train doors are locked when the train is moving) UK trains have doors that open outwards so opening them in motion could have dire consequences.

Very interesting comment, seen with the eyes of a native Italian! But I have to admit that, although Italian style of train travellers is very different from somewhere else in Europe, it is changing a lot - as everything else.
I still can chat sometimes when travelling by train, but my memories of 30 years ago (I'm 39) are very different, when a 5 hours rail trip with my family was a sort of "life experience", talking all the time with poeple just met, looking outside the windows, and sometimes eating our own food with the other passengers.
Nowadays the "airplane-like" train coaches (especially on long distances and high-speed trains) have changed the way to travel, and you can spend hours sitting in front of someone without exchanging a word... and the different layout of the coaches, without the old corridor besides the compartments, makes no more possible to stand up watching outside, or walking along the train (and meeting other passengers)...
I travel a lot on French trains, and, surely, they are much more aseptic too.
I cannot yet compare all this with Indian trains... I have still to make the experience, but with Indiamike I'm travelling already!!
Bye: Gianni

My favourite UK (well, European...) train: London to Paris. It just seems like magic to get off the train after just three hours ---in Paris!

My favourite (so far) Indian train: the MRTS* (probably got that wrong). Sitting on a wooden seat, looking out over Coastal Chennai towards the sea. Chennai Beach station to Mylapore (uhhh... Thirumailai?) in just a few minutes at Rs5. No glass in the windows, the doors don't close.

* Not so sure about Mass, it isn't that Rapid but it is a transport system