Train Travel With Children or a Baby

In many ways, I find train travel far preferable to traveling by plane or by car, especially when traveling in Europe.  Even cities that are far apart are connected by a relatively short rail trip.  In the United States, traveling by train isn’t quite as easy, with major cities being farther apart, trains being slower, and small cities not being accessible by train.  Even so, you may find that traveling by rail could make your next adventure easier.

With a young child, a car is by far the most restricting mode of transportation.  For their own safety, children must be strapped into a car seat.  This makes nursing next to impossible, and some children get tired of being constrained fairly quickly.

On a train (and to a lesser extent - an airplane), the child has some freedom of movement, can be carried around, nursed, and easily fed.  Trains have larger seats than airplanes, no middle seats, bigger aisles, and dining or lounge cars that one can go to at any time to get a change of scenery.  Some of the nicer European trains even have special rooms for young children.

Speaking of which, European trains are very rarely full, and most of the non-high-speed trains have compartments.  On many trains, you’ll find that your family can easily get a compartment to yourself.  This is ideal, since it allows children to run around and play with small toys on the floor on on seats.

Train travel requires fewer security checks (if any), significantly shorter connection times, and you can arrive at the train station just minutes before the train arrives, and not worry about making it on time.  If you’re traveling to a large city, the train station is almost always right in the heart of the city, with all public transportation options available from there.

For covering huge distances, air travel is a necessity, but for short to medium trips, consider train travel.  You’ll be glad you did.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 4:10 am and is filed under Backpacking In Europe, Europe, Train Travel, Traveling With a Baby, Where To Sleep, travel with a baby. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.