Germany calling #5

Telegrammed by Lord Tee Hee
The German ICEs are impressive machines, but one thing seems to have been overlooked - smoke detectors in the toilets.

Then again this was probably a wise move as the damn things would be going off every five minutes as smokers have a less than crafty fag in them.

Every ICE I've been on during the trip has stunk of cigarette smoke. The crew can hardly claim to be oblivious to the problem, but I haven't seen anyone reprimanded or even warning announcements made..

What a contrast to British railways where staff are much more proactive and smoking passengers generally more considerate.

Whilst UK passengers may be more considerate the TOCs certainly aren't. Smokers are banished to the outside of stations and not even afforded shelters. What a fine way to treat paying customers.

Germany calling #3

Telegrammed by Lord Tee Hee
Well, DB certainly do things well - including delays.

They don't mess about with a mere 10-15 minutes, they go the whole hog.

I'm looking up at the indicator board at Karlsruhe at the moment and my train to Rastatt is 60 minutes late - as is the next one! IC2270 to Stralsund is 50mins down and so is ICE 508 to Koln.

Still, its better than yesterday, when one of the ICEs to Switzerland was 75 late...

Germany calling #2

Telegrammed by Lord Tee Hee
Having spent the past two days whizzing around the Karlsruhe tram/train network I can only wonder at the honesty of the Germans.

I haven't had my pass checked once in over 20 trips.

So, either the country is so scrupulously law-abiding that no one fare evades, or KVV see it as such a small problem that it's not worth employing anyone for revenue protection.

I wonder how this will translate to our own tram/train experiment?

Germany calling #1

Telegrammed by Lord Tee Hee (yesterday)..
Following on from The Velopodist's comments re Germany...

Am on an ICE 3 between Brussels and Frankfurt which is now 25 mins late due to engineering work East of Aachen causing SLW (single line working).

Still, the bar is nice and it's very interesting to listen to the crew being able to inform people what platform their revised connections will leave from.

Despite my train being 25 down near Aachen it still made Frankfurt on time.

Now, what's that about our TOCs padding the timetable?

UPDATE: This just in from the Velopodist...

Lord Tee Hee's comments highlight how infuriatingly variable the German railways are.

He will have reached Frankfurt on time not because of serious timetable padding but because on the Neubaustrecke between Cologne and Frankfurt ICE3s are allowed to go at 330kph instead of 300kph when running late.

So it's pretty hard for them to be late enough not to make up a lot of time doing that.

The trouble is these magnificent trains spend so much of their time trundling over old, twisty, slow infrastructure...