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We are told we have the worst financial prospects by the IMF.

And then we find we are also missing the train as well:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-federal-railways-judged--very-punctual--in-2022/48247710?view=canonical (https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-federal-railways-judged--very-punctual--in-2022/48247710?view=canonical)

Did we ever have such punctuality in this country, or does one have to go back to Grouping, or before

We run far more trains on our network. I would suggest that Swiss Railways statistics would be far nearer ours if they ran such a service

Agreed, not comparable.
 
Switzerland 11,000 trains per day over 3,300 network miles
Great Britain 22,500 trains per day over 9,900 network miles

So Switzerland runs a far more intensive service on its track mileage than Great Britain.

Switzerland does more with less and is far more punctual.

The thing that struck me in Switzerland (last November) was a gentler schedule and modern electric trains. I don't recall any staff issues.

I seem to recall that they had some years of delay in the introduction of Bombardier EMUs, so they at least share some of our problems  :)

Not necessarily an indication of the intensity of the service, Jaymac.

It is surely the mileage of all train journeys undertaken,  not just the number of trains, that gives the intensity of use.

I would guess they have a predominance of medium intensity short or medium distance services. There would be much less of the service intensity of the kind generated by (for example) London area rush hour crowding of services, as I think the entire population of the country might be less than Greater London and its associated commuter are, or the problems of fitting slower stopping services into and around long distance faster services.

Just checked. Switzerland's population is 8.7m.
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Perhaps we need more railway mileage - cue resumption of never ending restatement of opposing views on HS2 on this forum....

Yes, the "gentler schedule" struck me too. It's much easier to be punctual if you have three or four minute dwells timetabled at lots of stations.

On my recent trip to Switzerland, our return trip from Zermatt to Kandersteg had a 5 minute change at Brig and we were advised that was 'plenty of time'. We arrived at Brig some 7 minutes late, just to see our connection leave for Kandersteg, running 2 minutes late!

It did, however, give us the opportunity of enjoying one of the advantages of the Swiss railways and that is 'to get from A to B, if there are multiple routes, it does not matter which one you take'. So, instead of waiting nearly two hours for the next direct train 'over the top' to Kandersteg, we were able to enjoy the longer trip via Visp and Spiez (270 degrees around the circle as opposed to 90 via the direct route).