More travels ... more looking at how others do it ...

[whole diary]

[grahame]

"I'm on a train" - well - not I AM but this picture was taken beside a train a few minutes ago.  A perfect opportunity to see how other places "do" rail and this being the Coffee Shop ...

[grahame]

Palermo to Agrigento and back today .. a two hour ride.  Now the rail map doesn't have a "this is pretty" green shadow on this one, but it was lovely.  There's a pattern in the hour and paths for trains every hour but some never run and others only run on certain days of the week.  Turns off the main line along the north coast about 30 minutes out from Palermo and cuts across the island to Agrigento which is a couple of miles inland, high on a hill. Along the way, modernisation under way.

[grahame]

My train from Palermo goes from the end of my street - a two minute walk from the old alley we're staying in but good that I checked it yesterday because it's underground and not obvious.  I'm headed for Trapani but the train I pick up is the local service to the airport - a half hourly shuttle that calls at perhaps ten "Palermo" stations as it starts from central and doubles back on itself though the back of the city.

The hotel reception told me that for Trapani I had to get on the train from Central - a good job I knew different, for these days the line through Palermo is mostly modernised and electric passenger trains only, with a connection to the diesel train to Trapani at Pirianeto.  The airport train runs several times an hour, the connecting train to Trapani just a handful of times a day - and being Sunday if I had missed the 09:30 I would have had to wait for the 18:35.

I was looking for a parallel in the the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) - "change at Ayr for Stranraer" I suppose, or at Ormskirk for Preston.  "Change at Craigendoran for the West Highlands" might be an option is anyone dare propose and instigate it, and I suspect eliminating diesel from Waterloo by having the Exeter service start at Basingstoke is a non-starter.

Anyway - a modern 3 car diesel unit was sitting in the side platform at Pirianeto; a handful of people got off but I think just me and another group transferred across. A train from the airport into Palermo called a few minutes later and we set off on time. The carriage to myself apart from the train manager; a lady joined me for a couple of stops and the to myself again as we passed across the neck from the north coast to the south. A train headed the other way passed at what I think was the first functioning loop, and a crew changes as we arrived on the other side.  More crew than passengers - this service as a single run cannot make economic sense.  But yet - quarter past eleven and we have picked p another load of passengers - I would guess between 10 and 15 - from what look like a substantial settlement; large town.  Still a pathetic number, but then this IS a Sunday, it IS Winter, it IS morning, and this IS Sicily. I'll see how numbers look on the rest of the run to Trapani, and indeed on the return (the train sits there for three hours) before I draw any conclusions.

Much of the remaining railway is our single track though mouldering facilities, with brief modern and soulless platforms.  Realistically, there's no longer any need here for the freight yards and water fillers for the departed steam engines, and modern trains can turn around in a few minutes so facilities for old trains aren't needed either.  With passenger numbers as they are, station facilities look to be almost entirely closed off, though station name boards and signs telling you not to cross the tracks are modern - as are signals at the very occasional passing loop. None of the old heritage signalling here that you'll see at Yeovil, nor the performance you'll see at Maiden Newton where trains pass on the single track and staff still use the old token machines.

Less than an hour to Trapani, and I'm going to post while I can.  Goodness knows if I will find too little or too much to do in my three hours there. And I will follow up with pictures and more thoughts later.

[grahame]

A few minutes more than I thought!

[froome]

I have never been to mainland Italy, but still have fond memories of a holiday I had in Sicily over forty years ago now. Your pictures certainly make me want to return, as I recognise that scenery. We stayed on the north coast east of Palermo, and travelled down to Agrigento, and further east almost to Catania, though not by train.

In a week's time I will be visiting mainland Italy for the first time, as we are having our first ever interrailing holiday, 15 days which will include staying in Padova and visiting Venice. We won't be going any further south than that, but I'm sure it will whet my appetite for further trips there.

[grahame]

Today to Taormina - and I was reminded of what I heard about Ilfracombe with the station so far up the hill that it was a hike up there and the seaside (unsurprisingly) at sea level.

Its the opposite at Taormina - the station is down more or less at sea level and it's a bit of a hike up to the town.











I never visited Ilfracombe by train - a regretted miss that can no longer be righted.  This evening I looked up the towns I am comparing and find that Ilfracombe station is 68 metres above the beach, and that Taormina village is at 208 metres above sea level - so three times the rise.  And the path at Taormina is a goat track, surely, compared to what must have been at Ilfracombe.  Get to the village, though, and you find a tourist trap complete with tour guides holding up your number flags, and talk in the street not in Italian but in American, and talking about what's back on the ship.  Relieved to head back down the hill and get the local train back to current home in Catania.

[grahame]

Observations from a train trip from Melksham to Sicily

So - here we are on day 13 of 14 of our trip from Melksham to Sicily and back by train. I'm starting to write this from my train no. 34 - Munich to Mannheim - out of a probable 38.  One rail replacement bus.  I took a couple of side trips on Sicily so my numbers are 9 higher than Lisa's. Longest time on a train - Milan to Palermo Central. Shortest - Palermo Central to Palermo Piazza Orleans.   Most unwelcoming accommodation - Frankfurt.  Most welcoming - a number to choose from; Palermo or Chur perhaps.

Headline / sub-head memories

* Universal timetable sheets
It seems from the smallest to the largest, a printed notice listing all train departures over 24 hours, which platform and which days of the week and more information on each.  Why don't we have such a notice at Melksham or Trowbridge or Dilton Marsh ...

* Open Stations
We travelled out via Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland to Italy. Back via Austria, Germany and (to come) France.  None of the stations has had ticket check barriers; there was something though not in operation in Milan and I know there will be in Paris.  Instead, tickets are checked on trains; makes huge sense, makes stations more friendly, and I suspect is pretty good at keeping unpaid travel down.

* Reservation and Q at Munich
Long distance trains that require reservation are a pain.  I don't mind the 5 or even 15 euro fee, but I do find the 40 euro that Eurostar charge to be akin to  a hidden supplementary fare. Happy / expect to pay a supplement for a sleeper - which as I recall was good value.
Reservations and optional even on long distance trains in Germany, and it's a pleasure.  We found seat, no problem, on our 4 trains in the country. But Germany to France today required reservations.  The App failed (referred us through 2 more sites ... ended up "Internal Error") so we went to the ticket / reservation office when we arrived in Munich yesterday.  Front desk and we were "triaged" - yes, this is the office you need - "here is a ticket and wait" in a room with limited seating, about a dozen positions for staff with perhaps 6 actually staffed, lots of people waiting.  The display board told us that our number would be over half an hour, so long indeed that we went across to the hotel, checked in, and I went back to get the reservation.  In fact it turned out that our number was issued at 16:36 and reservations at 17:47 ... and I had to remember that the long wait was not the fault of the guy who served me.   The fact that he was getting load of "reservation not possible" messages probably WAS his fault because he was looking at same-day reservations and not tomorrow ones, so could only offer me the late train.  Once he spotted his error, we got a good train.   

* Much more on time
Some trains do get held up, but there is much more of a feeling of "routinely on time" here.  I've come to the conclusion that's because schedules have much more generous recovery times in them - it's not uncommon to sit at a station for a few minutes to await a right-time departure.

* Extra carriage at Innsbruck
I know they used to strengthen trains in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) - still happens over here. They shunted an extra carriage onto the rear of the Verona to Munich train we joined at Innsbruck yesterday, and the seats were gratefully grabbed by joining passengers even before the connection process was completed.

* High Speed tunnels
High speed lines are excellent and getting you from "A" to "E" quickly - but so much of them is in tunnels, or on lines with high noise-reduction barriers that they can be mighty boring and with little to see. Getting very used to coming out of a tunnel, brief flash of countryside from perhaps high on a bridge over a valley, and diving into the dark again.  Sure, these lines are not intended to be pretty journeys.  When time allows, give me the older lines.

* Variable hotels
Headline says it.  We have been booking a few days ahead via booking.com with extreme closeness to the railway station being a major factor, to which we have added flat / lift/ just a few steps access during the trip. There is a whole series of posts possible on this - we have gone from the old to the ultra-modern, from the quirky to the boring, and from old buildings to recent builds. All have free guest wifi these days, all provided an ability to recharge devices. Some had hospitality trays, some not.  All (our choice) were en-suite.  A commonality was a feeling that rooms were designed to look good and not to be practical to use. You may have seen Lisa's picture of my head in the way of the TV a few days ago, and last night's was so low you had to sit up high in bed to see it.  Mirrors tend to be too high to do your hair and makeup, and loo roll holders too far from the loo to reach.  Last night's shower and loo was a glass enclosure which - shall we say, made the room decidedly revealing and would certainly help a new couple get to learn a great deal about each other very quickly.

* English almost everywhere
Lisa speaks some German, I speak some French - so we went to Italy! Gestured, similar words, and many people speaking enough English, together with gestures were a huge help. Some menus included English translations, others we could work them out, and there we a couple of "guess the dish" incidents.  The translate App on our phones - which we have got very used to making the best of with Ukrainian and Russian translation - was an occasional fallback for more complex issues.  Train announcements - even on local trains - seems to be in one or two local languages and followed up in English;  only TV sometimes in the hotels had very limit channels in English if any.

* Integrated Transport
It feels ... routine ... for trains to have displays telling you about ongoing train and bus connections, and where they leave from and if they are on time. And it seems routine for the busses, trolley buses and trams to all come together even at the smaller of wayside stations too.  I suspect that there are lessons to be learned for Warminster, Dilton Marsh, Westbury, Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon and Melksham in West Wilts. I'll make an exception for Avoncliff where connection provision would be - err - extraordinary.

* Step free access issues and climbing onto trains
What an incredible variety on the trains - from climbs up from low platforms or even no platforms to absolutely level access where the train extends a shelf - step free - out to the platforms and I swear that a spirit level would show it as flat.  Station lifts are prevalent though not universal and in places are out of service - much more being "radically modernised" that just bust.  In hotels and accommodation, that picture is slightly less rosy - three flight of stairs in Catania were a real issue, and you have to wonder at a few places where there were steps at the entrance ... up to the lift which then took you to upper floors.

* Local traffic is dominant
Catania, Palermo, Innsbruck, Milan, Konstanz, Bolzano ... all have thriving local networks with the local traffic far outweighing the longer distance traffic. No great surprise though I've not previously thought of Sicily as being a particularly big place with such relatively local networks around its two biggest cities and just a handful of daily trains between them.
International services are even sparser; I "guess" there is no great integration of the population across many national borders, even within the Schengen area.

Continuing ... on train 35 - the 11:40 Mannheim to Paris (Est), Sunday 17th March 2024.

* Sunday trains and clock-face
Sunday trains here abouts run to broadly the same timetable as the rest of the week, and it was notable how busy Munchen and Mannheim Stations both were this morning, even though the city of Munich seemed to be just waking up. I can't help feeling that our (UK) public transport should by now be pretty similar on Sundays to other day; I am aware what a big issue it was to gain our Sunday morning train at Melksham, then to have it run all year, then to have it continue to run after Covid.  But that said, there things were very different last Sunday in Sicily where the Sunday trains are very different to (and even thinner than) the rest of the week.
So many trains here are "clock-face" and I know that's the case in the UK too. But seeing it in practise on new lines makes it very clear just what a huge difference it makes if the trains are always at "xx minute after the hour" or there abouts.  Be it the local Catania to Paormina train, or the Brenner to Innsbruck one

* Freight
Noting the volume of freight ... though far less on Sicily, still some

* Police checks
In Italy especially, even in internal trains, police checks including checking of passengers ID from time to time. Also at some of the borders, even between Schengen countries.

* Cross Platform
An addition today - a plaudit for the connectivity between trains at Mannheim which shows what can be done.  A pair of northbound platforms and a pair of Southbound platforms.  The slower train pulls in first, the faster one pulls across the platform, drops off, picks up, continues and then the slower one also continues. Fascinating to watch and so much appreciated when compared to our experiences at some other places.  Today we arrived on the Munich to Dortmund train and left on the Frankfurt to Paris from which I am writing.

* Industrial Action
It seems an age ago that we had to change our plans and "skip" Germany a day early because of upcoming industrial action - an expensive change because the upmarket hotel we had booked for two nights in Frankfurt would not reduce our booking to one night (this was the hotel at which it seemed that even a smile from staff was a chargeable extra!).  Every cloud has a silver lining and the diversion we took changed our route, introduced to so a Swiss hotel where the staff and service were perhaps the best on the trip.   Then there was a warning of Italian industrial action causing delays and cancellations, but we were not effected. A reminder that staff / management issues at the expense of the customers are not unique to the UK.

All in all, a very interesting two weeks - lots to learn and thoughts of how things are done the same, and different, across Europe. This post is a rail forum one, so has a "bent" towards the rail passenger experience.

[Mark A]

Thanks for this long account in particular, it's a good and useful read and useful observations.

* Integrated Transport
It feels ... routine ... for trains to have displays telling you about ongoing train and bus connections, and where they leave from and if they are on time. And it seems routine for the busses, trolley buses and trams to all come together even at the smaller of wayside stations too.  I suspect that there are lessons to be learned for Warminster, Dilton Marsh, Westbury, Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon and Melksham in West Wilts. I'll make an exception for Avoncliff where connection provision would be - err - extraordinary.

This put me in mind of that trip from Devizes to Bath a couple of years ago, intermodal, with a reasonably effortless and somewhat extraordinary late night change at Avoncliff - from the boat to a train, via the pub.

Mark

[froome]

Avoncliff is, of course, an excellent place to make an intermodal connection from train to cycle or walk along the Kennet and Avon canal, except that... the only access is up a long, steep flight of steps.

[grahame]

Avoncliff is, of course, an excellent place to make an intermodal connection from train to cycle or walk along the Kennet and Avon canal, except that... the only access is up a long, steep flight of steps.

And when you have climbed the stairs and want to set off for Bath along the towpath, you have to cross the aqueduct on the east side, loop back on the road that goes under it up to the other side of the canal, and re-cross the aqueduct on the west side.