In conversation with the Man in Seat 61

Aboard the LNWR first-class dining car at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, I sat down with Mark Smith, the Man in Seat 61, to chat about his acclaimed website and his love for rail travel.

Harriet: Thank you so much for joining us. I think maybe we should start at the name The Man in Seat 61. Could you explain where that name comes from?

Mark: The name, yes. It's my favourite seat on the original Eurostar. I’d treat myself to first class if I was going somewhere special. London to Marrakesh via Paris, Madrid, Algeciras; or London to the Crimea via Berlin and Odessa. Nobody likes a seat that doesn't line up with the window — and this one does. Table for two, aisle on one side, window on the other, plenty of space. I hate staring at a seat back six inches from my nose. It ticks all the boxes. So when the website came along, the name was already there: The Man in Seat 61.

Harriet Matthews

Harriet: Can you tell us more about the website — where the idea came from?

Mark: It started the day I finished the novel I was reading on the train home. I went into WH Smith’s at Marylebone to find something else to read and found a “Teach Yourself HTML” magazine for £2.95 — probably the best £2.95 I've ever spent. I got a webpage online and thought I’d fill a huge gap: I found it easy and practical to take the train to places like Italy, Spain, Budapest, Istanbul — but it was hard to find anyone in the commercial world who could tell you how. So it started life as one page showing how to reach a dozen key European cities. It snowballed. That was 2001. I never imagined it would get a million visitors a month or become my full-time job in 2007.

Harriet: Where do you think your interest in train travel comes from?

Mark: Probably school trips and Interrail trips in the 80s. A trip to the south of France by boat train, Channel steamer, and an overnight couchette. Then a Russian school trip — steamer to Oslo and Stockholm, on to Leningrad, then trains to Moscow, and back to Berlin and London. These trips opened my eyes: the journey is part of the experience. You can move around, sleep in a bed, eat in a restaurant. Travel feels civilised. That’s what I love.

Harriet: You've just got back from a trip yourself. Can you talk a bit about it?

Mark: It began with a family chat about where to go. My daughter wanted Castle Bran in Romania and Prague; my son wanted Budapest and Istanbul; my wife wanted some beach time in southern Turkey. So I put together a trip that did all of those — 5,000 miles from London to Kusadasi and back. I did have a moment of “What have I done?” but everything worked perfectly. Trains all ran, minimal delays, and we saw a lot.

Harriet: You've travelled a lot by rail. Is there a “star” train journey for you?

Mark: The Caledonian Sleeper — London to Fort William — is pretty special. You go to sleep at 80 mph on an electrified six-track mainline and wake up at 30 mph on a twisting single track in the West Highlands, deer bounding away. I never tire of it. Other great routes include the Bernina Express in Switzerland and the rugged Belgrade–Montenegro line.

Harriet: Is there a station you think is particularly spectacular?

Mark: St Pancras, of course — the starting point for international journeys. A brilliant blend of classic architecture and modern function. We could do with a larger Eurostar departure lounge, but they’re working on it. Vienna Hauptbahnhof is an excellent modern station. Madrid Atocha with its tropical gardens is lovely. And I’d love to see trains return to Istanbul Sirkeci — a beautiful station currently replaced by Halkali, 12 miles out.

Harriet: What’s the best train dining experience?

Mark: Cruise trains like the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express have incredible dining — but you pay for it, and they’re not scheduled trains. For regular trains, Great Western’s Pullman Dining between London and Devon/Cornwall or South Wales is restaurant-standard — probably the best scheduled dining in Europe. I also had a wonderful dinner and breakfast in a Hungarian restaurant car on the Budapest–Brașov sleeper recently. Waking up with the sun over Transylvania and going for ham and eggs — that’s rail travel. You don’t get that on EasyJet.

Harriet: Any tips or hacks for train travel?

Mark: Train travel differs in every country, which is part of the challenge and part of the reward. But for Europe, the key website — besides Seat61 and Byway — is bahn.de. Its timetable covers nearly all of Europe. It won’t sell you a ticket unless the trip involves Germany, but it will give you all the times you need.

Harriet: Anything new you're excited about — recent or upcoming?

Mark: The Baltic States are back on the map. Warsaw–Vilnius has launched as a coordinated service despite the gauge change: one fare, one ticket, integrated. Very successful — they’re doubling it. They’ve also coordinated Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn timetables, making train travel between the Baltic capitals possible again for the first time in years. There’s a new direct Paris–Berlin daytime train, and longer-distance direct services are returning. People want sustainable travel. There’s even a Copenhagen–Prague daytime train planned.

Harriet: If you could connect any two unconnected places by train, what would they be and why?

Mark: Greece. You can reach it via Italy and ferry, but in the 80s there were two direct Munich–Athens trains a day. Now there are none. I’d love Greece properly reconnected to the European rail network.

Harriet: Is there a train you’ve never taken but always wanted to?

Mark: You can never do them all! I almost took the world’s highest mainline railway — the sleeper from Beijing to Lhasa — but Tibet permit regulations changed shortly before we went. That remains unfinished business.

Harriet: Do you love other transport as much as trains? You mention boats on your site.

Mark: If anything, I like travelling by sea even more. Passenger ships have superb facilities — restaurants, cabins. I’ve crossed the Atlantic four times by ocean liner. I’ve arrived in New York more often by sea than by air. It’s the only way to cross — staggering around an ocean liner in a dinner jacket with a martini beats 35,000 feet any day.

HM: Excellent. Well, I think that’s as good a note as any to end on. Thank you, Mark!

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