wooldrid.ge
Working with technology at https://raileasy.co.uk & volunteer moderator at RailUK. Personal account, all views my own. Also on Mastodon @[email protected]
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Lovely little custom message on the screens too advising on arrival info….
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I'm sure the political situation will have changed (hopefully for the better) by then - but if it was introduced today you wonder whether German police would want to be involved in juxtaposed controls at St P should Eurostar services start serving Koln... not feasible to recheck a full 16 car train!
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Argh, always miss your events by a day haha... (and then events conspired against me in Brussels). Enjoy your weekend away from the project :)
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Aachen is one of the more ‘sensible’ crossings IME. They pick up border police at Aachen, who check the train whilst moving and drop them at an unadvertised stop between there and Cologne. Saying that, I’ve not been checked once in recent months, though they always walk through.
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Liverpool-Belfast? I had a mixed experience when I did that crossing (slept fine when actually onboard, just the 'ground' experience at both ends was less than ideal sadly, foot passengers feel much more of an afterthought than the Harwich-Hook of Holland route)
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For sure - there's also bizarre cases that really need ironing out where Groupsave is priced by GTR for Bedford/Luton/Luton Airport to London so isn't valid on EMR, even though EMR run their own GroupSave scheme for the tickets they price (Wellingborough northward) on the same route.
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I don't know about LNER (I'd normally look but my laptop battery is on 12% and I'm sat somewhere without a charger :D ) but the Groupsave scheme on my local TOC (GTR) is 33%.
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Yup, exactly that! Plus it's productive time, so if you can work on the train there and back for example, it's more than covered the difference.
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Oh yes - I mean it'd never realistically happen, we're working with an existing model and can't rip it down now politically apart from anything else, but that's what I'd do if we did ever get a chance to reset the fares system entirely (particularly if buses came back into public ownership too)
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(cont'd) ... they split the country into zones, charge per zone travelled through, and influence demand by offering 'Orange' (advance) fares only on quieter services. No domestic ticket includes a seat except First, can guarantee one until they sell out for a nominal fee regardless of ticket type.
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It's a good question - LNER says it's achieving in its aims, but a part of that is revenue generation, not entirely demand management. Personally I think the zonal system used here in Denmark does it better than the UK approach... (cont'd in next post)
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For what it's worth, I think LNER *generally* get the dynamic pricing points about right at the lower tiers - but they then disproportionately increase (at too high a rate) as the allocations for those are taken.
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(cont'd) ...so long as there's a time-of-day appropriate cap for those who need to travel at short notice/with flexibility, or have a discount not applicable to advance tickets - on the understanding a seat isn't guaranteed. My issue with LNER's approach is the complete removal of the off-peak cap.
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To add my 2p - I have no problem with dynamic pricing for people who can plan where (as with LNER) trains are often at capacity and it's difficult to add more into the timetable due to (in this case) paths on the line concerned... (cont'd in next post)
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Wonder how it got that mixed up! (Incidentally the real ‘Bored’ referred to here has some good skits in if you’ve not seen it! youtube.com/playlist?lis... )
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Absolutely!
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My reading list is already way too long sadly at the moment - but sure someone on #booksky can take you up on this?!
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Clive Myrie is doing a cracking job of filling here, he's trying his hardest to come up with things to talk about that haven't been mentioned since the white smoke, no doubt panicking internally and wishing the new Pope to hurry up whilst outwardly controlled and calm.
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It's nuts. The fact the Polizei enforced some semblance of the stupid rail border checks for all of about a week before it went back to 'random checks, perhaps slightly more frequent than before', and now 'basically back to where we were before, just needlessly lengthened journeys' speaks volumes.
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There is indeed - but it would need upgrading, IIRC the linespeed on that section is something like 15mph as it’s not intended for passenger traffic.
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I think there’s passive provision for that at Dock Jct to be fair if an operator was in a place to fund its implementation as part of a wider upgrade to support it. Still makes zero sense as a project though I agree.
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Agree with all of that. Plus, the Eurostar to EMR change at St Pancras is so easy (and vv - you’d still need the security controls at Wixams so no gain there) it’d be a waste of resource. You can get from a Eurostar train to half hourly all day EMR services at St P in under 15min comfortably
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Ah, thanks - I’ll try that next time! To be fair despite the lying awake for an hour at stupid o’clock I feel OK relatively speaking…. Wonder how well that’ll hold up through the day though. Any tips for eastbound (redeye flight)? That’s the one that properly kills….
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Seems to be a design flaw with the seat itself rather than any issue with maintenance too - the degredation is pretty consistent across LNER/GWR/TPE in my experience; they've all become steadily more like sitting on bare metal, at least in Standard.
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Agree with these, with the exception of the main Stockholm -> Malmo mainline and anything run by Oresundstag; in part due to political pressure to keep connections to Denmark working well (Swedes don't like flying to Copenhagen), these are pretty reliable and SJ/Snall bookable a couple of months out
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Not sure there’s any now at external Schengen borders - only one I can think potentially would ordinarily have onboard checks is Poland/Hungary - Ukraine but I suspect even if it would normally be onboard there’ll be land based border checks currently?
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Yup - to be fair if they can come to an agreement with NS International/SNCB for through ticketing on a ECD with a guaranteed connection Spain-bound that wouldn’t be the end of the world.
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And - considering you’re working to limited hardware constraints - what a great game it is too! Love that the culture there appears to be equally excellent.
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Looks rather smart! Surprised no e-gates for UK entry controls but other than that, impressive! Look forward to trying it out.
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I’m not sure what the answer is other than ‘persuade the MOD that it can open more than one weekend each summer’ but it’s become a victim of its own success I feel, I spent a large percentage of my visit stood in various queues.
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Blasphemy! It has to be exactly 3.5 minutes, single squeeze before extracting teabag and adding milk.
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Don’t worry at all! My brother lives in Ohio, it’s just as bad the other way….
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Excellent, thanks for confirming! All sorted, should be a good discussion....
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I don't live in the States - but what a great idea! There's something really special about receiving a physical postcard nowadays.
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Hoping to make this! Trying to work out if the 21:23 Eurostar would be feasible after the talk... as it turns out it's on my way home (currently in Amsterdam) but I've got to be back in the UK for first thing Wednesday so putting a lot of faith in a single (cross-border!) train running...
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I suspect even most Interrailers would choose an overnight boat over a significantly longer train journey, unless they've got places en-route they also want to visit! I know I also sleep much better on boats than trains; a sleeper train can often mean I need time catching up on sleep on arrival.
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Vastly underrated trains! SE did a great job with specifying the refurbishment of them too...
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Very much the crux of it! Certain international routes are just geographically more sensible by boat than rail, regardless of how much modernisation happens with the rail network (which is still, entirely separately, a Good Thing of course).