Swedish Railways' X2000 Express train - BEST VALUE in Europe?

Hello and welcome to another video. I'm Paul Lucas and today I am in the lovely city of Gothenburg

It's a fantastic spring morning and today I'm off on a high-speed train to Stockholm

I'm traveling with SJ in first class. Let's go check it out. Enjoy the video

Gothenburg Central Station is the oldest station in Sweden still in use, having been constructed in 1858

There are 16 platforms serving 27 million passengers per year, and all sorts of trains stop here, from local to regional to long-distance intercity services

If you're here for a while, you might want to make use of the station locker facility

where you can leave your luggage for up to four hours at a time. I arrived around an hour before my train was due to leave

and made use of the SJ Lounge, accessible through my first-class ticket

The lounge is small and nicely furnished, and had free Wi-Fi. It was a decent place to wait for an hour for my train

As well as the open and airy main lounge, there's also a side room, which is a lot more cosy

Local and national Swedish newspapers are provided, and there's an opportunity to grab a coffee or a soft drink here too

There's also a reasonable selection of cold food. I quite like these automatic dispensers

which are a lot more environmentally friendly than just opening a can and throwing it away

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the lounge, and it's certainly at least on a par, if not superior, to many of the first-class lounges we have in Britain

Today's train is formed of an X2000 train set. This is the workhorse of the Swedish high-speed railway network

These trains were introduced in 1990 and have an interesting feature. This wedge at the front of the train is designed to help clear snow from the line

Rail travel in Sweden has been heavily encouraged on environmental grounds by the government for quite some years now

The main line between Gothenburg and Stockholm is electrified, and these trains also tilt when going round corners

Trains that tilt can take corners faster, and that's important on this route, which has a number of bends in it

Although our train has been at the platform for some half an hour, it's not actually unlocked until about five minutes before departure

You can only travel on these trains if you have a seat reservation. Fortunately, the carriages and the seats are very clearly signed

We would like to welcome you to Issy Fastrail 430 found to Sk Katern and Stockholm Central On board this train on your essay tickets for books are valid There are two carriages of first class on this train arranged in a 1 configuration as you see here

There are also substantial overhead racks, which will take most sizes of carry-on baggage

As we leave Gothenburg Central Station, let's take a quick look at the route that today's train will cover

The train takes just over three hours to travel the 460 kilometres between Gothenburg and Stockholm

There are also intermediate stops at Skövde and Katrinholm. By way of comparison, it takes around five hours to drive this route, and that includes taking some toll roads in Sweden

Of course, you can fly between Gothenburg and Stockholm. There are many flights per day, but this is a little bit more expensive, far more environmentally damaging

and of course you need to factor in the fact that you need to get to and from the airport at each end of the journey

To me, it's clear that the train is easily the best value option of the three

and of course there's fantastic scenery from as soon as you leave Gothenburg. Talking of value, let's have a look at how you get tickets for this particular service

You need to go to sj.se and select the English language option, unless you understand Swedish of course

The lowest prices in advance are 365 Swedish krona, that's about £30 or €35

Of course that price is for a completely fixed and inflexible ticket, and it's what I paid for this journey

The best thing about the booking engine is the fact that you can select your seats off a detailed plan

showing where the windows are and which direction the train travels. Seats 6, 12 and number 10, as shown here, all have excellent window views as you can see

The legroom on these trains is very generous in first class and I had absolutely no problems

stretching out. There's also a generous storage pocket at the back of the seat which holds this MacBook

Air and a cup holder and coat hook. There's also a blind which can be pulled down here which extends all the way down the

window in case the sun becomes a problem. There's also a large and very sturdy fold down table, perfect to work from

Of course there's no point having your laptop on the train unless you can actually power

it, and there's a good power socket located just down to the side of the seat

The small console by the side of the seat here houses an inoperable entertainment function but also controls the reading light above the top of your seat There also free wi on board these trains I was able to get connected with no problem and thought the speed was pretty good I was able to get some work done and stay connected

with social media, both Twitter and Instagram. I do recommend that you follow me on these platforms

especially Instagram, where I live blog all of my trips in real time using the stories function

just like this. At the end of the first class carriage is a much larger storage facility for larger suitcases

There's also a small self-serve bar featuring tea, coffee, water, oranges and some little

chocolate and coconut snacks. So far so good and for £30 this is outstanding value

We haven't even got to the meal on board yet. I've always strongly advocated trains as a way of getting around and this particular

high speed train in Sweden is no exception. The views are utterly fantastic and not something that you would see from 30,000 feet up in an aeroplane

After about an hour, the train makes its first stop here at Skovda station in central Sweden

Shortly after departure from here, lunch is served, a substantial cold meal and more than what I was expecting giving the fare paid

Even though I confess I'm not a huge fan of Swedish cuisine, all of the food was absolutely superb and tasted like it was freshly prepared that morning

For most of the journey, the train averages over 100 miles an hour, and this is because of the tilting mechanism I spoke about earlier

Here, you can see it in action on a sharp left turn. I don't know how much the Swedish government subsidises rail travel in this country, but I have to say I was massively impressed by the service

There's even a Lindor chocolate offered after the meal. In case you're more on a budget, for around a third less you can travel in second class

This is arranged in a 2 plus 2 configuration, as you can see here

and there's also a shop where you can buy food and drink during the journey. Even though second class doesn't come with the bells and whistles that my first class fair does

it still looks like a very reasonable and civilised way to travel. However, I think for around about a third more, you're better off paying the first class fare

as long as you can take advantage of buying in advance, when the savings will be most noticeable

I also visited the toilet during the journey and I have to say it was absolutely spotless Well done SJ Our final stop is at Katrinholm On departure from this wonderful little station

it's about an hour into Stockholm. Arrival into Stockholm was at 1.32pm

bang on time. I was extremely impressed with SJ Swedish Railways. This is one of the best and most

efficient high-speed train services I've ever used anywhere. I also thought the fare of 365 crowns was

outstanding value for the product that I received. I think that if you have to make a journey between

Gothenburg and Stockholm you must do it by train. It's an outstanding way to travel

For those of you already subscribed to my channel you probably know what I was doing in Stockholm

I was waiting for the Arctic Circle Sleeper Train, one of the best train journeys you can do anywhere in the world

and certainly one of the most spectacular on my channel. I released a video to that journey about two weeks ago, and the link can be found in the description text below

That train is one of the trains that everyone has to do at some point in their lifetime

and I really recommend watching the video and finding out more about it. Spoiler alert, that journey was also really cheap and well within the budget of anyone that wants to go and do it for themselves

And that's it for another video, I'll wrap things up here, I'm now in Stockholm

Central Station. Let me know what you thought of the video and of SJ service

in the comment section below but until next time I will see you around