Since Fodors does not have a Train forum, I am posting it here and letting the mods take over.
(Enjoy, tomfuller)

https://www.onet.pl/styl-zycia/noizz...hddc4,3796b4dc

Man in seat 61, who posts on the Europe forum, was one of those who planned it out.

Here is a story on it in English:
https://www.euronews.com/travel/2021...w-much-does-it

Plenty of other news sites have carried it too.

We just have to wait for Covid to end, before it can actually happen.

Lots of new overnight train connections coming in Europe too, which in many ways is more exciting and realistic.
Pal would have loved all of this too.

Back in 2004 I did Scotland to Saigon by rail, all forward motion by rail, although I did take some detours. I had wanted to route through Central Asia, but I couldn't guarantee the trains and took the Trans-Mongolian route instead. Back then, before everything went on the web, I planned the whole trip with paper timetables: Thomas Cook put out one book for the UK and Europe and an "Overseas" one for the rest of the world (you can still buy a European one from a new company: https://www.europeanrailtimetable.eu/ ).

I recently calculated that (pre-Covid) you could do my trip in two weeks, if you timed the start right and didn't get held up at the Vietnamese border, but you'd spend nearly every night on a train. I took seven months, and figured forward motion came in at 17,000 miles. I did a big detour round western Europe, used the full 28 days on my Russian visa, and spent seven weeks in China. I posted reports to my website (this was before I found Fodors, and before blogs) but I ran out of writing energy part way across China. You can find the reports and the full itinerary here:

Rails Around the World 2004 -- Wilhelm's Words

The opening up of the Laos railway means you could finish your trip Thursday! It sounds like quite an adventure.
The sort of thing Michael Portillo would flog to the BBC and get paid to do.

It is tempting, hetismij2! The line through the mountains from Kunming to Vietnam was out when I was traveling, and I had to go south from Nanning instead. However, I am good bit older, and definitely more decrepit these days. I am so glad I took early retirement and traveled when I was in good (or at least better) shape. Carpe diem!

Or Michael Palin get asked to do. I have never been good at self-promotion, and would have had to travel a lot faster with a camera crew in tow. I did once consider trying for the Amazing Race (US reality TV) with an ex-step-daughter as partner, but am definitely too decrepit for that now.

Thursday, sounds like you made the right decision to retire early and do that amazing train ride. So many nations. Carpe diem indeed!
Btw, I could be wrong but if memory serves, The Amazing Race only ever accepted submissions from folks with minimal travel experience. Part of the soft script was to pose participants as being 'out of their league' overseas, then seeing how each pair dealt with that ongoing tension.

I am done. the train lovers

cdnyul: This is a fascinating thread, thanks for posting. (I've heard about thursdaysd"s epic trip but I think this is the first time I've seen the whole itinerary -- going to sit down with a pot of tea this afternoon and read the whole thing)

But I have a suggestion -- surprisingly (at least IMO) your thread has already had 134 views on the general Travel Tips board. But over on the Europe and Asia forums it would get tons more readership/response. Maybe you could flag the thread and ask the moderators to move the thread to one of those two boards and post a link on the other one. I've seen 'clone' threads like that before -- like maybe Gardyloo's RTW TR??

Just an idea . . .

I went ahead and posted links on the Asia and Europe boards.

wow, trains AND travel!

This is just marvelous. What an adventure!

I so wanted to do a similar trip, but life and circumstances got in the way - ain't that the case? Still, it gets the imagination going, doesn't it?

I've been in the possession of this enamel pin for 25 years or so, since my sweetie got it for me from the Alaska Railroad souvenir office in Anchorage on a business trip.



It's hard to read, but it's from the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel & Railroad Group, one of the various incarnations over the years of a group of people, in the US, Canada, Russia and now China, who would like to build a rail tunnel under the Bering Strait in order to connect the Eurasian and North American railway networks. The basic architecture of the completed system would look something like this:



Obviously there are huge barriers to such a project - financial, political, environmental, social... but it's still fun to imagine. Although it would be mainly for freight (it could hugely reduce the time and cost of transpacific ocean transport) wouldn't it be amazing to stand at St. Pancras and hear the announcement that the train on Platform 2 is the Chicago Limited, calling at Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Yakutsk, Nome, Fairbanks and Edmonton...

Bering Strait crossing - Wikipedia

That would be super cool, Gardyloo! It took a long, long time to get the Channel Tunnel, and now there is that long bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden, so there is hope.

I am wondering if I will ever do the Trans-Siberian (as opposed to the Trans-Mongolian) in winter. I did cross the US by train, and come back across Canada, in 2012:

https://mytimetotravel.wordpress.com...shore-limited/