‘125 Hours – Europe’s Longest Train Journey: From the Arctic to the Atlantic’

125 hours. 23 trains. 10 railway companies. 6,203 kilometres. From Finnish Lapland to the Algarve. Independent railway commentator and European cross-border rail connections expert Jon Worth has completed the longest train journey in the European Union. His record-breaking journey exposed both the extraordinary reach of Europe‘s railway network and just how fragile it can be.

It began in Kemijärvi, northern Finland, and ended in Lagos, southern Portugal. Between the two were overnight trains, high-speed services, regional railways, multiple border crossings and a seemingly endless succession of connections. Worth travelled with an Interrail pass, crossing much of Europe without taking a plane.

The journey was originally planned to take 100 hours and nine minutes. It did not. Disruptions along the way pushed the journey beyond its original timetable, with Worth finally reaching Lagos on Saturday 12 September. The final record time was 125 hours and 31 minutes.

From Lapland to the Algarve

Worth departed Kemijärvi on Monday 7 September 2026 on VR train 274, reaching Kemi at 22:27. After a night in Kemi, he continued north-east on the following morning on VR’s IC 401 to Haparanda.

The original itinerary had called for the journey to continue immediately through Sweden. Instead, Worth spent another night in Haparanda before setting off on Wednesday morning on Norrtåg services towards Umeå.

From Umeå Östra, he continued south to Sundsvall before taking an SJ X2 service to Stockholm. The final Swedish stage was the overnight SJ train from Stockholm to Malmö.

The next morning brought the first major international stretch. An Øresundståg service took Worth from Malmö to Copenhagen in Denmark, followed by the international EuroCity service to Hamburg.

From Hamburg, the route headed south through Germany rather than west towards France. Worth took ICE services via Mannheim and Karlsruhe, continuing across Switzerland‘s border to Basel. From Basel, SBB-CFF-FFS trains carried him through Renens VD (Vaud) to Geneva, where he spent the night.

The following morning, the journey entered its final major phase. A TER service took Worth from Geneva to Lyon, followed by a series of French TGVs through Valence and Perpignan to Barcelona.

From Barcelona, Iryo took him to Madrid. There, he changed to a Renfe service from Madrid Atocha Cercanías to Badajoz, arriving late on Friday 11 September.

After a night in Badajoz, the final day was entirely in Portugal. A CP regional train took Worth from Badajoz to Entroncamento, followed by an Intercidades service to Lisbon Oriente. From Lisbon he continued south to Tunes before taking the final CP regional train to Lagos.

The last train, CP R 5914, departed Tunes at 20:23 and reached Lagos at 21:17 on Saturday 12 September.

A journey vulnerable to disruption

The record attempt was designed to demonstrate both what is possible with Europe’s railway network and what can go wrong when travelling across multiple national systems.

The original timetable left little room for disruption. Problems along the route meant that the carefully constructed schedule could not be maintained, turning what had been planned as a journey of just over 100 hours into a 125-hour-31-minute record run.

There were also several potential disruptions that fortunately did not derail the journey. Worth said a World War II bomb discovered at a building site in Hamburg could have caused major problems, while he narrowly avoided the effects of a small earthquake in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The experience highlighted what Worth sees as one of the fundamental weaknesses of Europe’s railway network: in many places, routes are dependent on a single railway line or train, leaving passengers with few alternatives when something goes wrong.

Despite the problems, Worth also came away impressed by the people working on the railways. He said the “vast majority of railway staff are amazing” and had helped him throughout the journey.

In Sweden, the experience went considerably further: the CEO of Norrtåg invited Worth into the driver’s cab for an hour.

Why Interrail was crucial

For Worth, the flexibility of Interrail was one of the key reasons the journey remained manageable when the timetable started falling apart.

His advice to anyone contemplating a similarly complicated European rail trip is straightforward: use Interrail.

The pass allows passengers to board regional trains without having to buy a new ticket for every journey, making it easier to adapt when connections are missed.

“With Interrail, you can get on regional trains almost anywhere, at any time,” Worth told The European Correspondent.

Even high-speed trains requiring reservations are relatively easy to incorporate into an Interrail itinerary, he said. Reservations generally cost between €5 and €20, and reservations that are no longer needed can be cancelled.

Using ordinary point-to-point tickets for a journey involving so many trains and operators would have been “a nightmare”, Worth said.

It would also have cost more. His Interrail pass cost €387, while he estimated that buying regular tickets for the same journey would have cost at least €563.

Europe still has a cross-border rail problem

The record attempt also exposed the practical difficulties of moving between Europe’s different railway systems.

The problem is not simply the absence of tracks. Europe’s railway network can physically take passengers across enormous distances, but the systems operating those tracks do not always work together smoothly.

Different operators use different ticketing systems and information platforms, while data is not consistently shared between railway companies. The lack of a flexible, uniform ticketing system makes complicated international journeys considerably harder to plan.

Worth’s record attempt was therefore an extreme example of a problem faced by ordinary international rail passengers: the more borders and operators involved, the more complicated the journey becomes.

The European Commission has proposed measures intended to improve the situation. Its Passenger Package, presented in May, consists of three pieces of legislation aimed at making cross-border train journeys easier to plan and book.

The journey on film

The record attempt has also been documented in a 54-minute-23-second documentary, ‘125 Hours – Europe’s Longest Train Journey: From the Arctic to the Atlantic‘, made for the leading YouTube channel Simply Railway by Thibault Constant of Nox night trains.

The film follows Worth’s record run and provides an extended visual account of the journey across Europe. It is arguably the best-produced video on the Simply Railway channel to date.

At the time of writing, however, the video is unlisted on YouTube. It is publicly accessible through its direct link, but does not appear in the channel’s normal video listings and cannot be found simply by browsing the channel.

An impressive journey, but not one I want to repeat

The Longest Train Journey in the European Union is an inspired adventure and an impressive demonstration of what is possible by train in Europe.

But I must admit that I am not inspired to try it myself. The amount of planning required is enormous. With so many trains and connections, there are simply too many opportunities for something to go wrong, as Worth’s own experience demonstrated. And even when everything works, travelling for more than five days across Europe looks exhausting.

That, perhaps, is the most telling part of the whole adventure. Europe has a railway network capable of taking a passenger from Finnish Lapland to southern Portugal. Getting there, however, still requires an extraordinary amount of planning, flexibility and patience.

Worth’s live blog documented the journey in detail, with live train tracking and photographs from each stage. The published timetable lists all 23 services, from the first VR train out of Kemijärvi to the final CP regional service into Lagos.

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