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PARIS - Journeying by rail from country to country used to be part of Europe's folklore, but not of the kind that tourist authorities like to put in their brochures.
The "boat train" from London hauled its way to Dover, where a ferry, complete with greasy cafeteria and
smoky bar, chugged over to Calais.
From there, another train proceeded at leisurely pace to Paris, arriving some 10 hours after you left London.
Trips to Rome, Madrid or Berlin required even greater stamina. These would be all-night affairs that involved several lengthy changes of train or station, and were sustained by lukewarm coffee and a curly sandwich in the fluorescent glare of a station buffet.
You shared a crammed compartment with guitar-strumming students, glum immigrants and beer-guzzling soldiers, who like you did not have the money to go by plane.
But grim tales of this kind are now swiftly becoming part of oral history, for Europe's railway system is heading into a golden age last experienced a century ago.
Last month, France opened up a ¬4.5 billion ($8 billion) eastern stretch of track for its Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV), the world's fastest wheeled train, which on April 3 reached 574.8 km/h on a test run.
Cruising at 320 km/h, the TGV has slashed travel time from Paris to Strasbourg, the easternmost French city, from four hours to just two hours, 20 minutes.
Using Germany's own express network, the TGV and its German counterpart, the ICE, have cut the Paris-Frankfurt time to three hours 45 minutes, compared to six hours, 15 minutes before, and Paris-Munich from eight and a half hours to six hours.
Over the past five years, investment has poured into the railway sector. Today, there are 4700km of specially-built high-speed track in operation in Europe, carrying 10 million people.
By 2010, this will rise to 6000km, with a goal of 25 million passengers.
Until now, most of the track has been concentrated in France, where the TGV began in 1981, and in Germany.
Its tentacles are now spreading towards Spain's tip with Africa, to southern Italy, eastwards into Poland and northwards into Scandinavia.
Switzerland this year opened a 34.6km railway tunnel, the world's third largest, under a $20 billion initiative to ease rail transit across the Alps, the great barrier between north and south Europe.
By year's end, Britain will be fully integrated into the continental high-speed system, making Paris just two hours, 20 minutes away and Brussels less than two hours.
Next year, Brussels will have high-speed links to Cologne and Amsterdam.
In addition to building high-speed track, many countries are upgrading existing trunk routes to let expresses travel at up to 250 km/h.
State train operators, once taciturn or apologetic, are now aggressive about marketing their high-speed services.
Indeed, air travel, which used to win in the glamour and speed stakes, is now rubbished as full of stress and delay.
Smart reservation systems, quiet air-conditioned carriages, buffet cars, trolley services, power points for laptops, mobile phones or MP3 players all are part of rail's new image of comfort and relaxation.
Another argument in environmentally-sensitive Europe is that trains are green, because their carbon emissions, for medium-distance travel, are as little as a tenth (per passenger) of those of aeroplanes.
"We want the rail network to create fresh competition, using its own advantages, of city-to-city transport, comfort, high reliability and respect for the environment," said French rail chief Guillaume Pepy.
Last week, seven high-speed operators unveiled a $60 million scheme to dovetail schedules and set up an airline-style loyalty card and internet site where, with a couple of clicks, passengers can buy a single ticket for travelling from London in the west, to Vienna in the east or Marseille in the south and Amsterdam in the north. The alliance is called Railteam.
The airlines, grousing that the rail subsidies are unfair, have had to slash fares or axe services on once hugely profitable European routes.
But they have also been helped by huge demand and by launching routes between provincial cities where trains are not competition.
That may change, though, when new track and the liberalisation of railway services across the European Union by 2010 complete the train's image makeover.
Pepy, for one, believes railways will be such a desirable business that airlines will set up their own train subsidiaries to get a slice of the action.
