Decided to sign up with a group that would start the pilgrimage from Leon to Santiago via the “French Way”.  Leon is ~330 km east of Santiago and the group was organized by an agency based in Dublin, Ireland.  However, there are no convenient direct flights from Madrid to Leon (also ~330 km north of Madrid).  The only available commercial flight to Leon takes you to a zig zag route travelling 600 km east of Madrid to Barcelona before you hop on to another plane that will take you 770 km west to Leon.  After 17 hrs of flight from Houston to Madrid, there is no way this will be an option for me.  I looked at other nearby towns where direct flights were available but later found out that the closest town to Leon with direct flights from Madrid is Asturias (Oviedo Airport) with a distance of 120 km further north from Leon and will take more than an hour by taxi/shuttle to return back.  This too was a back breaking option for me.  … so the solution, “Take the Euro Rail directly from Madrid to Leon”.  This is a 2 hr hour Euro Rail car ride on plush comfortable seating from Madrid directly to Leon.  The only thing I have to worry about was to find the complimentary train shuttle that will take me from Madrid airport to the Chamartin Railway station.  Well … I gave myself some sufficient time of approximately 6 hrs from my expected arrival to Madrid at 8:30 am to the train departure at 2:40 pm.  I could have taken the earlier train departure at 11:40 am with a 3 hour window but this would have given me a lot of stress since I am not so certain how long it takes for me to go through Spanish customs and immigration as well as finding my way around the Madrid Barajas airport to the train terminal for the shuttle ride to the Chamartin railway station.