London to Madrid in seven hours. By train

Well, not quite yet. But over the next 20 years, new rail networks will revolutionise travel to Europe's major cities.

Last Sunday, for the first time, a train ran from central London direct to the French Alps. Although this was only a trial run, the journey from Waterloo to Bourg St Maurice will enter the regular Eurostar schedules from early December, to coincide with the start of the next skiing season.

Passengers leaving London just before 8am will be in Bourg St Maurice by 5pm local time, after an uninterrupted journey of only eight hours. With return fares starting from pounds 199, the trip will certainly be competitive with equivalent flights.

It is easy to forget how far rail travel has come on in the last 20 years. While the speed of air travel has remained static, high-speed European trains have slashed journey times.

In 1980, a trip to the French Alps from London would normally have involved an eight-hour trip to Paris by train and boat, followed by a tiresome trek across the French capital to the Gare de Lyon, followed by another gruelling seven or eight hours to the mountains. As for countries such as Spain, scheduled train services felt more like crossing continents than countries, with journey times from Barcelona to Granada running to an absurd 18 hours. Rail seemed like a dying means of transport.

But things have changed. The renaissance of European rail travel began in 1981, with the introduction of TGV services from Paris to Lyons. Today a network of fast trains is spreading across western Europe.

Forthcoming developments for British travellers include the much delayed arrival of straight-through services from Scotland and the north of England to the Continent. "We are not yet setting a date," says Roger Harrison of Eurostar, "but Eurostar is definitely committed to running trains from Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester to Paris some time this summer, cutting journey times between the French and Scottish capitals to eight hours."

When the high-speed line into central London (St Pancras) is finally completed in 2003, allowing TGV-style speeds into the UK for the first time, a further half hour will be chopped off all channel tunnel services.

Before this, though - certainly by the end of the century - it is expected that Eurostar will commence direct services from London to Amsterdam, cutting the journey time there to around five hours.

Within France, part of the programmed extension of the high-speed track network includes the completion of the Paris to Marseilles line. "When the TGV track is in place, allowing trains to run at their maximum speed, you will be able to get from London to the Mediterranean by train in just six hours, or five and a half after 2003," says Peter Mills of French Railways. "That project is concrete and has been approved by the French government."

Another concrete development is the approval of the TGV-Est, the high- speed line from Paris to Strasbourg, aimed at cutting the journey time to eastern France to two hours. This will also slash times to Germany: Paris to Berlin for example will take just six and a half hours. Already, trains are running from Paris to Turin in just over five hours. Spain and Germany already have their own high-speed trains, though technical problems will delay a seamless tying together of the various national networks for a decade or two.

When the networks are finally connected, however, at speeds of between 300 and 350 km per hour - say, 20 years from now - European trains will be a fantastic pleasure. Barcelona and Madrid will be six or seven hours away from London, Rome perhaps 10, and Munich and Berlin about seven or eight.

Looking into the more distant future - if one dare postulate a world with TGV tracks extending into Russia and Asia - it is possible to foresee trains linking London with destinations such as Moscow or Istanbul in around 15 hours. The age of the train is definitely back.