On Jul 23, 2:39*pm, Roland Perry wrote:

In message
,
at 05:22:21 on Fri, 23 Jul 2010, Mizter T remarked:

London to Edinburgh by train is *already* faster than going by plane,
once you take into account travel time to/from airports and pointless
hanging around.

Even GNER could barely make a case for London-Newcastle being as
fast by train.

What?

GNER did a "race" from London to Newcastle (centre to centre
presumably), and the person who went by train (rather than air)
won, but only just. GNER then said how wonderful the train was,
but I thought it proved the opposite - despite train being my
first choice for such a trip.

OK. I'm a little surprised by that - quickest KX to Newcastle train is
2hrs 44mins, but almost all the others are in the 2hrs 50 to 3hrs 20
time bracket (most being close to 3 hrs).

I can't be bothered to research the alternative timings for flying,
but of course from central London one needs to get to Heathrow (for BA
flights), Gatwick (for Flybe) or Stansted (for easyJet - this route
however is ending on 31 October, so sez wikipedia). From Newcastle
airport it's about a 25 minute Metro journey to the centre of the
City, with trains every 12 minutes.

If the flyer was allowed to use taxis, then they could perhaps have
used a taxi to get into the centre of Newcastle maybe a bit quicker
(traffic dependent of course), and it might've possibly helped in
London, e.g. to get to Paddington, Victoria or Liverpool St for the
respective airport expresses.

The EC intercity service is also very regular - it's basically half-
hourly, which is of course very attractive in and of itself - none of
the airlines will offer a frequency of service anything near that.