The alternative way to get to Europe

For the eco-sensitive traveller there really is no excuse now for not taking the more environmentally friendly route through Europe.

Just a few months ago the first step on any journey beyond Paris was to the home page of a budget airline's website. But a series of crucial connections have driven the Continent's rail networks into direct competition with flights.

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Stealthily yet effectively, 21st-century Europe has acquired superrailways that are lacing across the Continent.

These dramatic structures carry sleek trains which are reducing journey times and displacing air links. "High Speed One", the link from London St Pancras to the Channel tunnel, is a relatively minor component of an increasingly magnificent machine. The current luminary of the high-speed pack is Spain, where the £6bn annual investment is paying off. Earlier this month the high-speed link between Madrid and Barcelona was completed, reducing the journey time to two-and-a-half hours. The current flight schedules, a flight every 10 minutes or so, may not last for long.

The new east-west spine of western Europe is the TGV Est line running from Paris towards the Rhine – and carrying Europe's fastest trains, cruising at 200mph. Passengers can access wi-fi internet while travelling from the French capital to Frankfurt in under four hours, commonly recognised as the journey length for which most travellers prefer trains to planes.

Although the stretch around Strasbourg involves a slow, single-track crossing of the river, travellers soon find themselves plugged into the German InterCityExpress network, with hourly trains from Frankfurt to Munich at speeds of up to 186mph.

Even the Alps no longer comprise a barrier: the newly opened, 22-mile Lotschberg "base tunnel" – cutting through the mountains at low altitude – has sliced an hour off the time of Basle-Milan trains. They now take barely four hours.

Work is continuing apace elsewhere in Europe: the high-speed line running the length of Italy, from Milan via Rome to Naples, is finally nearing completion. Further east, a "Rail Baltica" line is planned that will connect Warsaw with Riga and Tallinn.

Oil-rich Russia should have 150mph trains between Moscow and St Petersburg by next year, and there is even talk of building a "bullet-train" line to parallel the Trans-Siberian to the Pacific. That may be some years off, but in western and central Europe, the new age of the train has already arrived.

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