I’ve visited my native England a few times by train from the Netherlands and it’s a breeze, but a bit dear if you don’t plan it a thousand years in advance. A few months ago I took the sleeper to Vienna and back and it was very good indeed, better than the Caledonian Sleeper I might daresay. I have a medium-long and fairly good anecdote about getting the train to a village in Germany last winter if anyone’s interested. I went to see Lightning Bolt in Paris a few years ago and that went swimmingly too. I’d like to go to Spain or Portugal at some point but it’s something like 13 hours by train. Oh, and when I lived in the UK, I was working at a train station, so I’d use my staff discount to go quite far afield: I took the train from Liverpool to Lille once with my bike and cycled up to Amsterdam; I took the train once to Luxembourg, then Trier, then Bonn to visit a friend, with a little detour to the bit where Luxembourg, France, and Germany meet (Schengen). It’s a nice way to spend a day if you just bring a book or something.