France: Any journey shorter than 4 hours by train should not be allowed to be taken by plane.
Me, after using French railways for a couple of weeks: They’re running plane services for distances of only 100km?
I’m honestly shocked at how functionally useless French railways are. “Welcome to our interchange. Please wait 2 hours surrounded by screaming kids and chain smokers for your connection. No you can’t have a fucking coffee”
Dear the UK, you have it better than you could possibly believe.
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geekylou :transgender_flag:
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Apparently it doesn't takem much longer to get to that town from Paris!
Sarah Brown
in reply to geekylou :transgender_flag: • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ So my recent experience is Brittany, which has a couple of mainlines and a bunch of feeder lines. The feeder lines just ... do not link up with the mainline services. In Portugal, which also has this sort of arrangement on a massively shrunk network, the trains on feeders are timetabled to meet connections,. and the connections will be held if necessary. In the UK, connections are typically not held, but are frequent enough that it doesn't matter.
In France, neither of these appear to be true. You are left at a railway station and the next mainline train doesn't even stop there, despite it being an interchange with hundreds of people waiting on the platform. When one finally does stop, it's utterly rammed.
Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •this is common everywhere in the provinces including in the UK to be honest, with a plethora of issues relating to trying to maintain two centuries old infrastructure, deferred maintenance, line closures, antiquated signalling systems and so on.
London has a good network but get beyond London and things rapidly change in my experience. Same here in Germany.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ I can't agree. The UK, even in places as remote as North Wales, actually tries to timetable branch line shuttles to connect to mainline services in less than ninety minutes.
In France, it doesn't even seem to occur to them that this is a thing they can do.
Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •have a chat with a railway worker and also a signalman or two in the area in which you are staying to find out what is behind the rail timings, you might be surprised.
Things in rail get EXTREMELY complicated as rail signals are absolutely unlike road signals. I still remember the conversation I had with a signalman on the Chiltern Line which ran over LU metals between Amersham and Harrow, which made timing services for interchange at both Amersham and Harrow between Met and Chiltern trains anything from challenging to impossible, simply down to things like communication between two competing companies and incompatible signaling systems with completely different theories behind them. To this day DB Regio are still operating the same trains introduced by BR, no doubt in part due to requirements for operating over Met metals!
Obviously I don’t know exactly the situation in Brittany but I don’t doubt that enabling trunk services to meet every branch station service will not be possible simply from a temporal perspective, and holding trains at the platform can
... show morehave a chat with a railway worker and also a signalman or two in the area in which you are staying to find out what is behind the rail timings, you might be surprised.
Things in rail get EXTREMELY complicated as rail signals are absolutely unlike road signals. I still remember the conversation I had with a signalman on the Chiltern Line which ran over LU metals between Amersham and Harrow, which made timing services for interchange at both Amersham and Harrow between Met and Chiltern trains anything from challenging to impossible, simply down to things like communication between two competing companies and incompatible signaling systems with completely different theories behind them. To this day DB Regio are still operating the same trains introduced by BR, no doubt in part due to requirements for operating over Met metals!
Obviously I don’t know exactly the situation in Brittany but I don’t doubt that enabling trunk services to meet every branch station service will not be possible simply from a temporal perspective, and holding trains at the platform can have devastating knock on effects for the whole line, connecting branch lines and all other services for the rest of the day because paths will be lost along with the need to maintain block spacing, assuming the use of absolute block signaling. It was the maths behind this that did for Northern Rail in the UK a few years ago. In short, it was mathematically impossible to keep the timetable AND maintain paths and spacing.
And at this point my brain starts to melt when I think back to those conversations had with railwaymen and signalmen all those years ago 😮
Sarah Brown
in reply to Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ These were very clearly not lines short of slots. The branches were literal shuttles where they had pretty much total freedom of scheduling. Train goes from one end to the other. Has dedicated platform at the mainline station. Massive amounts of dwell time. There is literally nothing else on the line.
They weren’t even trying.
Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ Closest equivalent I can think of in the UK that I’m familiar with is the Dengie Peninsula shuttle. Literally the only scheduling issue is that the train coming the other way needs to be in the passing loop to go past.
I’m fully aware of all the issues that you highlight. This wasn’t that. Connections just aren’t a thing, and it seemed systemic too. Get to the terminus of one of these branches and there’s a taxi rank. There are no taxis in it. Ever. There’s a piece of A4 with the numbers of a few minicab companies. The shuttle comes in 4 times a day. The idea that the people getting off it might want a taxi to the next town over, or a bus (because, surprise surprise, the buses do not attempt to link up with train times either), appears to be utterly alien.
Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •very strange to have trains, presumably quite full, coming in to a station and not have taxis waiting to fight for passengers! They sure as hell do here to the extent that the local road to the airport often has more taxis in it than rush hour traffic!
As for timetabling to meet mainline services, with four return services a Dayana assuming not crossing any other lines via points, timing should not be much of an issue. However, we ARE talking about France 🇫🇷…
Sarah Brown
in reply to Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ • •MJ Ray
Unknown parent • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to MJ Ray • •Adam
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •MJ Ray
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •