UKC

If I go on to the French rail(SNCF) web site I can find out about train travel from almost anywhere in France to London.

Yet, when I go on to a UK rail enquiry site and put in, say, Chester to Paris It doesn't want to know. Why are British rail enquiry web sites so stupid?

In reply to nonymouse:

Because the policy of fragmentation was stupid.

In reply to nonymouse:

The eurostar website will let you put in domestic UK stations in the from box

http://www.eurostar.com/

In reply to nonymouse:

because rail travel simply isn't taken seriously here...better, in an era of climate change, to make rail travl as difficult and expensive as possible, thus encoruaging more of us to fly to short haul destinations that we should be traveling to by overland means

On a more positive and constructive note, Seat 61 is a good way of finding through trains from the UK to continental Europe!

http://www.seat61.com/

In reply to nonymouse:

The only cross-channel rail traffic now is by Eurostar, the other crossings involve change of carrier, and are not simple as the previous systems (train and ferry, or train and hovercraft no longer exist). I think it's the growth of cheap flights that has knocked it all on the head... London or Newcastle/Marseille by plane is now so much cheaper than train that very few are interested.

I had a neighbour who absolutely refused to take the tunnel for some reason and tried to find a way of crossing from Paris to Maidstone as she had always done and found it far more expensive than Eurostar, involving taxis at Calais and Dover, IIRC. Times change! Most people prefer 2h45 Paris/London to 7 hours!

In reply to nonymouse: Even more annoying is the fact that bargain seats are released at different times on different networks. This makes it very difficult to get good fares on all sectors of a route that uses British Rail (or similar), Eurostar and continental services.

In reply to nonymouse:
The German railway site www.bahn.de is probably the best for getting train times for journeys within the UK and I've just checked that I can get from work (near Glasgow) to Paris in 9hrs 23mins.
Sometimes the uk is so mickey mouse.

In reply to MG:

for belgium, you book from (e.g.) leeds and then the ticket between Leeds and London, the Eurostar bit, and all the travel within belgium, is included in the one ticket at one price. Nice and straightforward!

In reply to md@r:
And I can get from work to Vladivostok in 206hrs29mins (~9 days) so I reckon www.bahn.de is the place to go. There is a quirk - you usually have to enter your age to get the connections - otherwise it can't work out if you get a pensioner discount.