Yup
Down There
Down Under
Back Over That-a-Way
Somewhere to the East
...and back the other way
K'Town Germany to Paris. Felt like Superman - faster than a speeding bullet.
I've travelled on trains extensively in Austria,Germany,France,Switzerland,Sweden,Denmark,Hungary,The Netherlands,Belgium and Luxembourg. I've ridden the Swedish SJ X2000,Several different "flavors" of the SNCF TGV,The NS/SNCB/SNCF Thalys,The German ICE 1,2,3 and 4 as well as many steam powered museum trains. When working in Europe,I spend my weekends riding trains and attending train shows which are large,very popular and well attended. Here's some pix of the Frankfurt,Germany Main Station which I make many connections while travelling by train.
Attachments
@richs09 posted:lessee - UK: London underground; Heathrow - London express; regional trains London - Bath, London - Salisbury; Eurostar* London - Paris
Continent: Thalys*: Paris - Antwerp; TGV*: Paris - Bordeaux; Deutsche Bahn: Luxembourg City - Koln; ICE*: Koln - Bremen - Berlin; Norwegian regional: Oslo - Flam; Italo*: Rome - Venice; Trenitalia*: Venice - Florence; Italo: Florence - Rome; DB (long ago) Salzburg - Copenhagen ("night train - back when the Germans insisted on smoking on the train - aargh")
Bucket List: ICE or TGV Paris to Berlin; Berlin to Milan (high speed rail - all DB?); TGV: Milan to Paris (inspired by the man in seat 61 -- website: seat61.com -- a great train travel website, especially for Europe); also something trans-Canada - Vancouver to Ottawa on VIA, or is it CN??
* high speed trains
This topic brings back great memories (I was on military leave from the NYC and thus officially a railroad man)
1962 - First trip to Europe, Icelandic AL to Luxembourg, on the way to spend a week in Paris with my future (and still now) wife, via Switzerland on a Swiss Holiday ticket. First night in Basel, then Zurich, Arth-Goldau and Lucerne. Lucerne to Interlaken on my first combination rack/adhesion railway. Side trip to Kleine-Scheidegg, but didn't ride the Jungfrau Bahn which would have been three hours of looking at fog.
Interlaken to Brigg on the Loetschberg line - a cab ride on one of the most spectacular rides down a mountain slope in Europe. Managed to talk my way into the cab as a fellow railroader using my awful high school German. The a round trip to Zermatt and view of the Matterhorn, another combination rack/adhesion RR.
Next a language /culture shock. To Lausanne, where I had booked a Wagon-Lits berth to Paris. I'd been traveling in German speaking Schweiz and arriving about noon, found myself in French speaking Suisse - totally disorienting, didn't know a word of French. So hooped on a train to Bern and had a pleasant four hours back in German speaking Schweiz. A beautiful city with two interurban lines to Worb Dorf leaving from terminals a few hundred yards apart, leaving berne in opposite directions. (i was also a traction fa as much as a railfan).
Then back to Lausanne and sleeper to Paris.
Most notable for a railfan in Paris in 1962 was steam powered suburban service. I made a side trip to Poissy behind a 2-8-2 tank locomotive.
Enough for now. I'll continue later with my next trip to Pris which included a ride on the original Talgo train from Madrid to Hendaye (French border).
I've had the pleasure of riding quite a few Japanese trains while visiting in 2014 and 2016. I rode the Shinkansen between Tokyo and Kyoto, including stopping once at Atami (I hope they are able to recover from the recent landslide disaster, it was so sad as Atami is a beautiful city). I also rode Kyoto's metro, including the double decker cars, and the Tokyo subway as well as some private railways. A highlight was defiantly seeing some of the Odakyu Railways 7000 series Romance Car still in service (they are retired now), they are a very distinctive classic streamlined EMU. Next time I manage to visit Japan I really want to visit the new railway museum in Umekoji, Kyoto (it started out as a massive roundhouse full of steam locomotives, and then got even bigger), which I have missed the last two times I have gone thanks to it being on the opposite side of the city from the hostel we stayed at. There's also a Meji Museum, that recreates Japan from 1867-1912, that has some of the oldest operating steam locomotives in Japan, one American and one British built that I'd love to see.
@Conductor Earl posted:My wife and I rode around France a couple of times on the SNCF and the TGV. The interesting thing about the TGV is the lack of adequate luggage space. Everyone on the car piles their luggage in a small space at the end of the car, first come first serve. Great ride though and quick way to travel long distances. Some of the older stations are beautiful.
We rode the TGV to Nimes around 1990. Even going first class, it wasn't a great ride even with a sumptuous (and expensive) lunch served at our seats. Cramped seats and boring view on the HS part of the line. Day trip to Carcassone on a regular express train was a much more pleasant ride.
Best ride in France was Paris to Bayeux (Normandy beaches) in 2013. Ordinary fast intercity trains (most lines electrified) had a normal running speed of 200 kph (125 mph).
But that's not a legitimate comparison to the non-development of such lines in the US. Highway competition is nothing like our interstates, and France has the much higher population density necessary to support frequent HS service,
@colorado hirailer posted:Well, l certainly envy many of the posters on here, who have managed to "get out of the county". I have ridden behind steam from Skagway, Alaska into B.C. Canada, the Glacier Express around Switzerland, out of London to access Stonehenge (missed the return bus back to the station for London, and had a walk through the English countryside, which my girlfriend of the time did not enjoy, but we caught a bus back to the sation at a crossroads in the boonies (try that in this country), the tube around London, and a train up through Edinburgh to Inverness to rent a car and drive around Loch Ness. I have ridden the rack rail up from the floor of the fjord to catch the train from Bergen, Norway through Oslo and down through Denmark to Frankfurt. And have ridden the train up the canyon to access Machu Picchu in Peru. Also have ridden behind steam on the Welsh narrow gauge.
My train riding in Norway was all north opf the Arctic circle.
On a business trip beginning with a Monday morning meeting near Stockholm, I thought it a good weekend for some sightseeing. Having known for a long time about the scenic iron ore line from the Swedish mines near Kiruna to the Norwegian port of Narvik, I flew to Kiruna and took the train to Narvik. Overnight in Narvik with a hard time getting to sleep as it never gets close to dark at night in July.
Sunday am took the train back to Boden in Sweden and got on the sleeper to Stockholm for the most frightening sleeping car ride of my life. I had to get off early in the morning at Uppsala, about 45 minutes before Stockholm. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was daylight outside. My watch said 3:00 and I was sure it had stopped and I might miss my station. So I stayed awake until we came to the next station, where I could check the station clock and verify that it really was only 3:00 am and y watch was right on time. - That was only about 400 miles south of the Arctic circle.
Had the opposite experience in Helsinki on a consulting assignment the first week of January. Siting in a conference room at 9:30, we could look out the window at the sunrise.
@Erik the Newbie posted:Vestibule is inside (inside your ear, for instance, or just inside a building). Gangways are external to the body, so boats, trains, as a point of entry into the vessel. Any walk between cars is across a gangway. The "open gangway" in the photo you will see in, of all things, busses nowadays:
-> https://articulated-bus.com/in...ucts-category-1.html
ATG can provide custom solutions for your application, whether you require a complete gangway solution or a single component such as an articulated joint, platform, cable guide or centre hoop with bellows.
Almost every bus in the DC/Metro area nowadays is a newfangled articulated with enclosed gangways. :|
Gangway sounds European to me. In all my hundreds of rides in passenger trains in the 50's through 70's, I never heard that space called anything other than a vestibule.
Canadian border opens up for US citizens, but not without regulations.
On Monday August 9th., 2021 - Canada opened up its borders to Americans. Below are just some of the rules to cross into Canada.
• Must have proof in the past 72 hours of a Covid test before entering Canada. Canada will also take a second test at the border at their discretion.
• Must have a Passport or an Enhance Drivers License. I use my Michigan Enhanced Drivers License with the embedded passport.
• Must have proof of an approved Covid Vaccine.
• To speed up this process Canada has an App that you can use with a phone, to enter all the above information along with their entry questions.
Gary 🇺🇸🇨🇦
