Anyone used a good one? They mostly seem rubbish so far.

The Thomas Cook train timetable (book) used to be the bible. No idea if it is still published though.

I would let you have my copy but I think the train times will be a bit out of date, it being a 1990 copy.
🙂

The Thomas Cook train timetable (book)

I lived by that book for a summer in my youth. Happy days. *wistful*

IIRC the DeutschBahn site used to cover the whole EU
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?getstop=1&Z=&time=13:42&date=07.01.11&S=&searchMode=ADVANCED&timesel=depart&

EDIT – yep , just checked it can get me the 21 hour journey from my local station in Worcestershire to Ventmiglia on the Italian border 🙂

I lived by that book for a summer in my youth. Happy days. *wistful*

Me too – arrived in Germany two days after they won Italia 1990 and spent the summer bumming around Europe and the Greek Islands. IIRC the only time it let me down was on arriving back in the UK and the train from Leeds to Harrogate didn’t arrive and I spent the night in the station. (And of course that will have been a British Rail failing).

I had a similar problem in 94. Got back to blighty and promptly got stranded in Oxford because they decided to stop all the trains for some reason 🙄

Best thing about that book was being able to plot overnight trains out and back to some destination so you could get a free night’s sleep – just had to wake up at 2 in the morning in some random city, swap trains and then get back to sleep again ready to arrive in your original station, ready for the day!

Big saviour when hostels were full, or cash was low 🙂

being able to plot overnight trains out and back to some destination so you could get a free night’s sleep

Exactly what we did (and again in America when we did the East Coast Train Pass the year Di died).

Didn’t do hostels much though in ‘Eup’ as we took a tent 🙂

Seat 61 can be pretty helpful.

http://www.seat61.com/

+1 for seat61, very very good resource!