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Your first experience of foreign train travel

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(Inspired by the recent History and Nostalgia thread on people's first memories of train travel)

What was your first experience of train travel in a country other than the one where you grew up? If you know of any earlier journeys that you were too young to remember you can mention both those and what you actually remember; and if the country where you grew up wasn't the UK, perhaps you could say where it was so we know what you would have been comparing things with.

In my case, although I remember briefly going on board a stationary train at Calais Maritime in 1977 when I was 6 (I was struck by having to climb up steps from the unfamiliarly low platform), the first time I actually went anywhere on a non-UK train was in 1989, from Schleswig to Hamburg (Altona) on a diesel-hauled semi-fast train. The journey included a surprise highlight in the shape of the Rendsburger Hochbrücke, of whose existence I had previously been unaware.
 
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Spamcan81

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1968. School trip to Switzerland - Boulogne to Zermatt. SNCF to Basle, SBB to Berne, BLS to Brig and finally BVZ to Zermatt. A great trip for a train mad 15 year old.
 

Taunton

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I guess it was breaking away from a family holiday one day in Killarney, Ireland, and taking the CIE train to Cork and back. Does Ireland count?

Despite a couple of continental trips, with train to Dover, there was no train travel on the other side. So, I realise, my first foreign train trip was another day away during a family hols when still at school, visiting relations, from North Vancouver, BC, Canada, on the PGE up to Lillooet and back, three Budd Cars. It's about 5 hours each way, a lengthy and none too speedy journey, on hard leather seats with zero refreshments.
 

farci

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In approx 1967 I made my first non-GB train excursion. I travelled Harwich-Esbjerg by DFDS Winston Churchill possessing a one week DSB rail pass for the whole of Denmark. It cost £10. Determined to get my money’s worth I travelled from Fredrikshavn in the north down to Flensburg in Germany across to Helsingør within sight of Sweden. It sealed my ongoing relationship with a great country
 

Struner

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[…]
In my case, although I remember briefly going on board a stationary train at Calais Maritime in 1977 when I was 6 (I was struck by having to climb up steps from the unfamiliarly low platform), the first time I actually went anywhere on a non-UK train was in 1989, from Schleswig to Hamburg (Altona) on a diesel-hauled semi-fast train. The journey included a surprise highlight in the shape of the Rendsburger Hochbrücke, of whose existence I had previously been unaware.
Yes, the Rendsburger Hochbrücke, I have passed it on the Kiel Canal.
How did you get to Schleswig though?
 

jamesontheroad

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These are all lovely memories, thanks for sharing.

When I was 12, around 1994, my folks bought us Swiss rail passes. We flew from Cambridge to Amsterdam Schiphol on one of the dinky little Dornier 228 turboprops operated by Suckling Airways, which was still a family-owned operation at the time. This was also my first commercial experience of commercial aviation!

We flew on the 0700 flight, and travelled from Amsterdam to Bex, near Geneva, by train. I think we stopped en route in Basel on the first night, so the first day must have been a pretty magnificent journey down through Germany. I remember toilets with straight pipes down onto the tracks, and I remember (because of my walkman headphones) unintentionally saying the name of “Bonn” station far too loudly to my dad in our six person compartment, and disturbing a German businessman opposite. Strange how these little insignifiant moments of emotion stick with you.

We tooled around Switzerland for about a week. I remember seeing one of the McDonalds onboard restaurants, as well as lots of stunning scenery.

I’m very privileged to have had parents who took me on slightly more adventurous trips like this - no sun and sand or ski trips for us, but off beer trips where the journey was part of the experience.
 

Ianno87

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Family Holiday in Benelmadena in 1993. Train ride to Torremolinos and back, followed by a ride to Malaga and bacl.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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In 1972 we had a long weekend in Estoril (Portugal).
The hotel photos didn't show the handy electric commuter line alongside which ran along the coast from Lisbon to Cascais.
I was surprised the EMUs were made by GEC - refurbished versions were still in service on the line when I revisited recently after 43 years.
We also got another local DMU from Lisbon out to Sintra on another line.
Total cost of the trip - £24 each, Court Line from Luton.
In 2015 I finally joined up the rail routes I had taken over the years, to complete London-Cascais (via Paris, Bordeaux, Irun, Madrid, Salamanca, Medina del Campo, Santiago de Compostela, Vigo, Porto and Lisbon).

The first foreign train I actually saw was in 1966 in what is now Montenegro, on the line from Bar to Titograd (now Podgorica).
This was then an isolated branch line, before the spectacular extension to Titovo Užice/Belgrade was built through the mountains.
Here's the proof (dreadful photo).

1966B-49.jpg
 
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gordonthemoron

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German Exchange 1975, Ostend to Wolfratshausen (near Munich), overnight train from Ostend to Munich. Travel agent had messed up the booking and we didn;t have the couchettes we ordered, or any reservations at all AFAIR, no sleep whatsoever. Day time return trip via Rhine Valley was nice. Saw a Lockheed Starfighter flying over Bavaria
 

yoyothehobo

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I think the first I did was from Frejus to Monaco with my family in France, nothing too exciting.

Done Lyon->Barcelona and Modane->Milan since which were both really interesting, scenic trip on TGVs.

Melbourne to Yass on an XPT in Australia wasnt quite up there in most exciting railway trips though.

My favourite has to be in Japan though, from the madness of Tokyo, the speed of the Shinkansen from Kyoto-Tokyo-Hokkaido, and then a diesel train from Hakkodate to Sapporo (which I will always remember because I saw some bear cubs out the window)
 

trentside

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As far as I’m aware my first rail journey abroad was from Gramat to Figeac in Occitanie, France. This would have been in 1999/2000 I believe. Couldn’t tell you the rolling stock type but I remember it seeming quite old and dilapidated. That could be memory playing a trick on me though.
 

Buggleskelly

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In 2012 during one of my Canadian holidays, I used the SkyTrain service to get around Vancouver and the surrounding areas. Although SkyTrain is classed as light rail similar to the DLR, I hope it counts.
 

hexagon789

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Paris RER A, 2008. I remember boarding a train at Nation despite my protesting that it was going down the wrong branch of the line because the lights on the indicator board said so. Sure enough after Vincennes the train went the wrong way for us and we had to double-back!
 

Dunfanaghy Rd

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As a child my mother and I lived in Co. Donegal. (My father was in Korea.) I have a vague memory of looking out of a train towards Belfast Lough and seeing an aircraft carrier. Also, my mother told me that on a journey back staying with cousins in Belfast we went by Great Northern to Strabane, CDJR to Letterkenny, and Lough Swilly bus to Port-na-Blagh. I wish I could remember that, but I was only about 3!
Pat
 

d9009alycidon

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My first ever overseas trip was a School trip to Rome in Easter 1971, I was 15 at the time and when I heard that it was to be train all the way there and back me and another couple of train mad friends wanted to go. First stage was overnight sleeper from Glasgow to London, a break in London including a tour of The Palace of Westminster (and a quick trip to Kings X). Then it was Victoria to Folkstone Harbour (slight delay due to a work to rule by SR guards) ferry to Calais then overnight SNCF Couchette to Basel. Change at Basel into Swiss day stock for the run over the St Gotthard line (the highlight of the trip) then on through the relatively boring stretch through Northern Italy via Milan, still some Italian steam locos to be seen at work here. Finally got into Rome about 10pm that evening.
The journey home was far more fraught, we left Rome at 10am and the train was heavily delayed and we got into Milan too late to make our scheduled connection. Then followed a long wait in Milan, with no food as the station restaurant staff were on strike and made the wait more unbearable as they staged a protest in the station concourse, banging pots continuously. A carraige was finally arranged for us that took us through Switzerland overnight (no couchette though) then through France getting to Calais about Lunchtime. Having had no food for nearly 24 hours we were quickly seated in the galley of the ferry tucking into a hearty meal. Unfortunately for a good few the meal didn't stay down, as there was a gale blowing in the Channel and it was a rough crossing. I disobeyed instructions and stayed on deck so wasn't affected by the motion below decks but got pretty wet! Return to Glasgow was uneventful, Dover to Victoria, Euston to Glasgow again by sleeper.
 

nlogax

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For heavy rail it'd be either a Metroliner between Phila. 30th St and NY Penn or a NJ Transit service between Lindenwold and Atlantic City, both during the late 90s. As a newcomer to US mass transit I was always struck by how damned utilitarian US trains were. Lots of shiny metalwork, acres of hard plastic or sticky vinyl seats (think your dad's old Cortina on a hot day), nothing 'refined' about the experience at all. Even Budd's Amfleet cars with all the legroom and big comfy seats still looked like they'd been built in a shed.

In time I came to appreciate them an awful lot, and I still manage to get some decent mileage at times. There's something very robust about US stock and infrastructure. It doesn't tend to grind to a halt in what the UK would call 'extreme weather' - the tracks seem appropriately stressed for both hot and cold (how...?) and Pennsy knitting looks almost hurricane-proof. A win for function over form and I keep going back to it.
 

Beebman

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In May 1975 I went with my parents on a Wallace Arnold 'Five Capitals' coach tour which gave free sightseeing time in each city. My Dad and I mostly used the time to do some local train riding while my Mum did 'normal touristy stuff' with some other people on the tour. The first capital visited was Brussels. We spent some time taking photos at Midi station before taking a train through the tunnels to Nord which was my first-ever taste of foreign rail travel. I still have a photo of myself beside the loco at Nord which was 5920.

In Amsterdam we had time for a quick out-and-back to Den Haag HS on 'Hondekop' units while in Bonn we did a return trip to Köln Hbf (behind 110s both ways as I recall) mainly in the hope of seeing some steam but all we saw was one Dampflok on the far side of a freight yard and it wasn't possible to identify it. After that it was on to Luxembourg where a late arrival gave no opportunities for local train travel, and then finally we visited Paris where the three of us all did more 'normal' sightseeing with only the Metro being used (but there was still plenty of Sprague stock in use).
 

Calthrop

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My first time abroad -- and concurrently first experience of foreign train travel -- was in summer 1963, when I was not quite 15. It was a school trip, duration a little over a week if I recall correctly; to the Netherlands. Per my recollection, I basically had no input as to destination, or indeed on whether I wanted to go at all: school plus those in loco parentis mandated "it shall be", and that was that. I was less than ecstatic about the prospect; because in the early '60s, for a railway enthusiast such as I was -- besotted above all else with steam, and with narrow-gauge and minor railways -- the most boring holiday destination in the whole of continental Europe (micro-nations aside) had to be the Netherlands. Steam there, had finished some years before; passenger services within-country were essentially modern emu, or its diesel equivalent on lesser routes.

The expedition was not totally without an up-side for me: the country itself and its people, I definitely liked, and have done ever since; and our travellings-around such as they were (we stayed in Scheveningen, the "seaside" part of The Hague -- our itinerary was confined to the western heart of the country, between The Hook and the Ijsselmeer enclosing dam) were mostly by rail -- comprising a fair few journeys; "modern emus, aren't ya sick of 'em?" -- but it was rail travel. And this Dutch visit gave me my first experience of urban trams -- over the first decade-and-a-half of my life, there had been urban tram systems in Britain in an ever-decreasing number of cities, but my life's occasions had taken me to none of those. We had a number of Dutch tram rides in the process of doing the trip's programme of educational-type "normal" stuff; including a return trip The Hague -- Delft: something short of 10 km., accomplished on the "interurban" tram route which back then anyway, linked the two. It's just the greater degree of rail interest -- for one of my tastes, at any rate -- which there would have been essentially anywhere else on the Continent, which I found galling then; and still, a little, nearly sixty years after.
 

hexagon789

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About 1966/7. Piraeus to Athens and back on some sort of metro type units?

That line was sort of the predecessor to the current metro, iirc that line is now part of one of the modern metro lines. I believe that even into the 1980s the ISAP had old wooden-bodied stock
 

duesselmartin

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The earliest I remember was around 1986, an FS over night service from Roma Termini to Milano Centrale. A seat compartment with pullout seats. Three of us slept, the fourth used the emergency seat outside, taking turns.
Since I am not from the UK and its partially European, my first UK journey was in 1996 Dublin Connolly to Belfast Central with NIR stock and a class 111 in front.

Best wishes from Duisburg, Germany.
Martin
 

Calthrop

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In approx 1967 I made my first non-GB train excursion. I travelled Harwich-Esbjerg by DFDS Winston Churchill possessing a one week DSB rail pass for the whole of Denmark. It cost £10. Determined to get my money’s worth I travelled from Fredrikshavn in the north down to Flensburg in Germany across to Helsingør within sight of Sweden. It sealed my ongoing relationship with a great country

DSB rail pass, as you mention: did it by any chance, also give you travel on Denmark's standard-gauge private railways? These constitute for me, the most fascinating part of the Danish rail scene -- quite a respectable number of them still active, including with passenger service, today; I'd think that as at the late 1960s, there'd have been rather more.
 

Richard Scott

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Was asked to go on a school trip to Germany just after I'd started work. The staff member organising wanted to do a trip down the Rhein but weather wasn't most appealing so suggested the train. We took 140824 from Bingen to Boppard.
Do remember going away to France with family in 1983 and staying in St Lo next to station. Trains kept waking us up so definitely diesel powered but no idea what classes they were.
 

TheSeeker

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1984, I was ten years old - My father sang in Porthcawl Male Voice choir which was twinned with the Stuttgart Post Choir. He had been on tour with the choir to West Germany the year before and we were invited back as a family to stay with the friends he had made. We took the train from Bridgend to Paddington. Then Victoria to Dover where we got the jetfoil to Ostende. Ostende to Koln. German border guards checked our passports on the train. Then Koln to Stuttgart down the Rhine. I had a little 110 camera and took a couple of rolls of film but cannot find the pictures. There was and still is a fantastic toy shop called Spielwaren in Stuttgart. My dad took me there and he bought a Wilesco stationary steam engine.
 

tony6499

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1982 for a football match. Brighton to London to Harwich, overnight boat to the Hook but no cabins just a floor to sit on. Train from Hook to Rotterdam and then onto Eindhoven for the game. Return the same way but on the day boat where I sat chatting to Bobby Robson for while .
First of many excursions and should have been on my way for another trip today but for this damn virus
 
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