"It takes" + infinitive vs. present participle

Is it grammatically correct to say "It took me five hours travelling to the US"?

Most people would say "It took me five hours to travel to the US." I wonder if the infinitive is always the only option, or if a present participle is possible as well.

Solution 1:

The It in the sentence here is the dummy subject it inserted by Extraposition.
That means the clause in question is a subject complement that's been displaced.

• Travelling to the US took me five hours.
• To travel to the US took me five hours.

Notice that without extraposition the infinitive subject seems awkward, but the gerund sounds fine. That's why most of the complements that are extraposed are infinitives, not gerunds. But it's perfectly OK to extrapose gerunds if you want to -- it's just that there's not much need.

Solution 2:

I cannot define the rules, but the first statement implies "[doing something] took five hours [whilst you were] travelling to the US". If you want to use "travelling " you should say "Travelling to the US took me five hours".

i.e. "It took me five hours to [do something]" or "[doing something] took me five hours".