Talk:Portugal to Singapore by train

Tweak to page name?

To make the scope of the article clearer, I suggest changing the title to "Portugal to Singapore by train". The itinerary would look very different if it was by plane or boat. Gizza ^(roam) 00:04, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Right. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

• Support per the reasons given by Gizza. If I may suggest, we could name this article Overland travel between Portugal and Singapore if we also want to include travelling by road or bus. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:09, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

"Portugal to Singapore by train" +1. I think this article is more about the novelty of making the longest uninterrupted train travel in the world (i.e., without leaving the rail network except only negligibly short sections), with its ends defined as accordingly. "Overland travel between Portugal and Singapore" may entail many different routes, taking in, for example, the Hippie Trail, and could even be considered a "personal itinerary". Vidimian (talk) 08:03, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

• Support moving to Portugal to Singapore by train. —Granger (talk · contribs) 08:34, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
• Support The dog2 (talk) 00:52, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Done —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:18, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Algarve-Madrid

The itinerary now says:

"Even leaving very early, it is not possible to reach Madrid from the Algarve in one day. A stop in Lisbon is thus required."

But Lisbon says it has sleeper trains from Madrid. Isn't it possible to take one and avoid staying overnight in Lisbon? –LPfi (talk) 13:09, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

The same article says there is also a train from a French town on the Spanish border. I'm not sure how well the connections are scheduled in the other direction, though. @Gpalombi: any thoughts? Vidimian (talk) 14:03, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

The journey from Tunes to Lagos and onwards to Lisbon is just 1 hr + 3–4 hr, so you should be able to get to Madrid as early as needed for the sleeper (leaving Tunes in early afternoon you arrive in Lisbon in early evening). According to rail.cc the sleeper train leaves Santa Apolónia at 21:25 and arrives in Chamartín at 08:40, but I cannot find the train at the primary Portuguese, Spanish or German railway sites. I won't do any more searching now. –LPfi (talk) 14:55, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I added the French route to Get in, but we should point to some official site where you indeed can find the services and book tickets for them. –LPfi (talk) 14:58, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

According to https://www.heraldo.es/noticias/economia/2022/09/16/alta-velocidad-madrid-lisboa-queda-aire-hasta-2030-1600030.html and https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/madrid-to-lisbon-by-train.htm, the sleeper train was suspended in March 2020 due to Covid and it looks like it won't run ever again.  New fast lines are under construction in both Spain and Portugal, and maybe there will be a Madrid-Lisbon direct link in the next years. In the meantime, it seems like the three trains option is the only one. As other have mentioned, unfortunately there is no night-train option displayed in any company's website. Probably Lisbon should be updated as well. Gpalombi (talk) 14:20, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Sad. I reworded the mentions in Lisbon and Madrid. –LPfi (talk) 14:24, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Article in 'Itineraries' about longest continuous train journey?

Swept in from the pub

The recent opening of a new railway section between Laos and China will give the theoretical opportunity for the longest continuous train journey on Earth, starting in Portugal and ending in Singapore. Maybe it could be worth it to create an article about it? Gpalombi (talk) 16:35, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Go ahead and start an itinerary article if you like! Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:01, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Nit: the stations for services to Thailand and China in Vientiane are different, and there's no rail connection between the two, so it's not quite continuous! Jpatokal (talk) 23:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

That said, a new high-speed railway line from Bangkok to Nong Khai is now under construction, and there is a plan for a new bridge to connect Nong Khai to Vientiane, so a continuous connection is not too far a way. Negotiations are probably complicated given that it will require a trilateral agreement between China, Laos and Thailand, but progress is being made. The dog2 (talk) 15:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Even before the connection is realised, an itinerary on getting from Portugal to Singapore by rail is useful – it's certainly thrilling for rail fans. A need to travel between two stations in one city on the route spoils it for Guinness, but not as an itinerary. –LPfi (talk) 12:21, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, it's not as though there's a single train that does the entire Portugal to Laos stretch in one fluid journey, and then there's an annoying little break in Vientiane. There'd be lots of changes of trains and waiting in central stations and at borders, probably a few metro connections as well.

The bigger problem at the moment is the journey goes through countries that are increasingly difficult to visit - most obviously Russia and China.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:33, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

That said, China has reopened to international students (and before just COVID, China was the third most popular destination for international students after the US and UK, perhaps surprisingly ahead of Australia and Canada) and business travellers (who hold a valid APEC business travel card), so let's hope the reopening for tourism is not too far away. As of now freight trains do cross the China-Laos border regularly, but let's hope we will have passenger trains doing the same soon too.

Speaking of Vientiane, there is no metro system, so you will have to travel between the two railway stations on the opposite sides of town by taxi. Laos is a very poor country, and there's no way they would have been able to afford the new railway without China financing it. And even the very short rail connection to Thailand was financed by Australia. The dog2 (talk) 15:50, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, that was Jani's nit-pick point. But you'd need to use the metro to get between the termini in Moscow and possibly several times in Europe, depending on the route taken.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Could be a very interesting itinerary, provided that the borders will open and all trains part of the route start running again some day. A travel Youtuber made the longest possible rail trip from Portugal to Vietnam in 2019. --Ypsilon (talk) 16:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

The longest railway journey

I suggest some changes that might make this page helpful to more travellers.

First the title: it’s “the longest railway journey”, as that is the real objective, not to travel between Portugal and Singapore. Changes in the network might alter those end points, in which case the page would evolve.

By my own definition a continuous journey does not yet reach Singapore, but the reader will have his own idea, and we need some explanation of what “continuous” might mean. What about transport between city terminuses? What about overnight stops? What about sight-seeing?

There may be a few folk out there who aspire to make this single continuous journey; please let me never share a railway carriage with one. More realistic and pleasant is a series of linked sections done on separate trips – that means you can begin this journey right now, or have already done chunks of it, even though rail links between west Europe and Russia are broken for the foreseeable future. In any case, the transport hubs along the way merit a couple of lines about why you might stop over. Grahamsands (talk) 14:09, 11 March 2024 (UTC)