Things UK railways get right compared to other countries

TravellingPhil said:

I lived in Columbus, Ohio from 2004 to 2006. One of the things I was looking forward to was using the train over there...

...except I never did. Despite being the 15th largest city in the US, Columbus hasn't had a passenger service since 1979. The nearest passenger station is over 200 miles away and the daily train, in each direction, stops in the middle of the night. If I remember, I think the Amtrak station was in a place called Alliance on the Capital Limited route.

Columbus doesn't even have light rail, a metro or streetcars, only buses. There have been many attempts to bring passenger rail and streetcars back to Columbus, but it's a very political topic there and each attempt has failed simply because of the ideology of whoever State Governor or City Mayor happens to be.

So there is one thing straight away we do better, we serve our largest cities with a regular train service.

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Ditto Colorado Springs, CO.
Strange place to say the least, a very quiet downtown with few shops but a fair few skyscrapers and quite a large population. The phrase 'there's no there there' would apply quite nicely.

Was only there to change buses, was actually staying in the far nicer Manitou Springs, CO a few miles out.

Quite near Denver (80 miles? Suffice to say, nearby Pikes Peak is visible from Denver Airport) but NO train service. Maybe more a Europe vs North America thing, but if it were over here there'd be a high frequency fast service between the two cities. As it is, even the bus service is flaky. I was lucky to be there during the lifetime of the 'FREX' which produced a high quality regular coach service, but sadly it was presumably not seen as cost effective though IIRC someone else might have started.

Granted people use air for journeys of any distance in the USA, but there seems to be a gap in the rail market for pairs of large cities in the same state or neighbouring states which are say 50-200 miles apart, with the exception of the Boston-New York-Washington corridor which is the only route to have European-style service. I'm sure such cities could benefit from a fast (not necessarily high speed) regular (hourly?) service.

Bletchleyite said:

Frequency, mostly clock face timetabling, walk up still possible, staffing levels?

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Depends where you are though; Germany, Austria and Switzerland seem to be very good at clock-face timetabling, perhaps better than here when it comes to connections.

On the other hand SNCF (which often have irregular timetabling, reminiscent of UK heritage DMU services in the 1980s) seem to be moving away from clock-face on some of their TGV routes; Paris Nice for instance (brought this up in another thread a couple of months ago). Also I'm sure circa 2012, the Paris Lyon was a regular 'every hour on the hour', now it's mostly xx59 but with some exceptions.

The UK has recently been good for clockface timetabling but the desire to have extremely high frequency services (e.g. Euston-Birmingham/Manchester and all those extra Thameslinks on the BML) has actually 'de-clockfaced' some routes compared to say 10 years ago. It was much easier to have a regular clockface service on say Stockport-MAN or Coventry-BHM when the London services were every 30 mins: they fitted in nicely with a regular 30 min local service.

There has been "clock-faced timetabling" in NL for quite a while now, & indeed since Spoorslag '70 it was a fully integrated timetable.
Surely @Spoorslag '70 will correct me if I am wrong.

nickw1 said:

Depends where you are though; Germany, Austria and Switzerland seem to be very good at clock-face timetabling, perhaps better than here when it comes to connections.

On the other hand SNCF (which often have irregular timetabling, reminiscent of UK heritage DMU services in the 1980s) seem to be moving away from clock-face on some of their TGV routes; Paris Nice for instance (brought this up in another thread a couple of months ago). Also I'm sure circa 2012, the Paris Lyon was a regular 'every hour on the hour', now it's mostly xx59 but with some exceptions.

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Yes, TGVs moved to a much more clockface pattern some time around 2011/12

The UK has recently been good for clockface timetabling but the desire to have extremely high frequency services (e.g. Euston-Birmingham/Manchester and all those extra Thameslinks on the BML) has actually 'de-clockfaced' some routes compared to say 10 years ago. It was much easier to have a regular clockface service on say Stockport-MAN or Coventry-BHM when the London services were every 30 mins: they fitted in nicely with a regular 30 min local service.

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It's the VT services that are clockface...everything else has to fit around it (although is usually consistent hour to hour)

But I beg to differ on the BML (and Sussex Metro) - the clockfacedness/regularity of the timetable is way more consitent now across the day than before May 2018.

ainsworth74 said:

Delay compensation in the UK seems to be light years ahead of the Continent (or at least DB). Last year a group of us were on a through ticket from London to Berlin and, due to the legendary unreliability of the ICE from Brussels to Cologne, we missed a connection so had to wait for the next one an hour later. That later service was itself delayed on route and in the end I think we must have been around ninety minutes later than booked.

The UK equivalent of the ticket we held would have been an Advance so under delay repay for that delay we'd have got 100% of the ticket back. Instead I think we got 25% back. Which is not to be sniffed at but one heck of a difference to getting a free trip!

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Also, most if not all UK train operators allow you to submit a delay repay claim online via their website (and some even repay you automatically if you booked via their website), whereas claiming compensation from most European rail operators (certainly DB and Czech Railways (České dráhy (ČD), for example) is more low-tech and cumbersome by comparison.

The ČD website appears to indicate that if you booked your ticket online you can forward your original booking confirmation to their dedicated e-ticket shop email address, but you then get an automatic reply to say you cannot submit compensation claims by email: you must print out and post them a claim form.

With DB, you either have to pick up a claim form from a station help desk and hand it in at the station where your journey finishes (which is obviously no use if your journey ends outside Germany), or print one off their website and post it to them.

I've had a reply by email from ČD but am still waiting to receive the payment from them. I'm still waiting to hear back from DB, but their claim form says you should receive payment within a month.

tasky said:

I would also agree with the people mentioning frequency, particularly for smaller rural stations - one train an hour is quite a poor service in many parts of the UK and makes a place feel like a backwater, but for many rural routes in other countries it is actually quite good. In Belgium some services that are branded as "S-Train" and billed as a sort of RER network are once every two hours, even to small towns or large villages.

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Most services in Belgium are at least hourly. Only pretty remote (by Belgian standards) lines get a two-hourly service. I don't know if any of these have S-train status, but if they do that's more an inappropriate use of that status than a typical example of the level of service.

tasky said:

I've also often been surprised by how infrequent German 'S-Bahn' networks are as well - two trains an hour is not uncommon at all in my experience.

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A half-hourly service is hardly infrequent!

tasky said:

Another thing I don't think has been mentioned yet is direct services to smaller towns, at least to London. Many countries on the continent rely much more heavily on passengers changing trains at hubs - you wouldn't get a situation like in the UK where a town like Newton Abbot (population 25,000) has a regular direct service to the capital nearly 200 miles away. This could be seen as a bad thing or a good thing - it slows down intercity services and changing trains isn't that bad - but some people probably like it.

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That may be true, although I'm sure you can find similar examples in other countries. However, the UK is different to most other European countries in that it's so dominated by its capital city, and the rail network reflects this (France is another similar example). In most other countries the population, industry and wealth are more evenly distributed, and there are a number of larger cities, so it's natural that the rail network is less centred and optimised towards one single place.

sheff1 said:

A typical journey for me ----- Day 1 Sheffield to Aberdeen; Day 2 Aberdeen to Inverness; Day 3 Inverness to Dundee; Day 4 Dundee to Edinburgh; Day 5 Edinburgh to Sheffield ----- costs £168.

Even if the single fares were half the Off Peak return (which of course they are not) the total would be ~ £210 (81 + 22 + 30 + 14 + 63). I stand by my view that the ability to break a journey over multiple days is something which GB does better.

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I accept this is an advantage for you, but it seems a fairly niche itinerary. Also, you're making a judgement based on two fares (or sets of fares) from the UK. Fares from the UK are not necessarily a good indicator of fares in other countries (not surprisingly).

Many countries use more distance based pricing, meaning that there's no significant saving from buying returns, or longer distance single tickets.

In Germany, you can also break a journey over multiple days and still get a competitively priced ticket. If you're planning a journey on the DB website, you can add up to two Zwischenhalte and specify a layover of up to 48 hours there while still getting a competitive price.

For example, I've just had a look at a journey in October: from Copenhagen (DK) to my hometown in the Netherlands, via Westerland(Sylt). If I'd book two separate tickets in 1st class, the available saver fares are € 49,90 (CPH-Westerland) + € 69,90 (Westerland-NL). A single ticket CPH -> NL via Westerland(Sylt) with a 42 hour layover costs € 69,90.

AlexNL said:

In Germany, you can also break a journey over multiple days and still get a competitively priced ticket. If you're planning a journey on the DB website, you can add up to two Zwischenhalte and specify a layover of up to 48 hours there while still getting a competitive price.

For example, I've just had a look at a journey in October: from Copenhagen (DK) to my hometown in the Netherlands, via Westerland(Sylt). If I'd book two separate tickets in 1st class, the available saver fares are € 49,90 (CPH-Westerland) + € 69,90 (Westerland-NL). A single ticket CPH -> NL via Westerland(Sylt) with a 42 hour layover costs € 69,90.

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That only applies to international Sparpreis tickets. Internal ones are only valid until 10am the next day, and Flexpreis 2 days.

yorkie said:

I know of bad practices occurring in:

• France - having to "compost" tickets

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I'm not sure that that's necessarily a bad idea, as it prevents you from reusing used but unmarked tickets that are still within their validity period. It only works if backed up by a proper regime of regular on-train checks, though.

See also the thread on how fare evasion is dealt with abroad at https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-dealt-with-abroad-compared-to-the-uk.177639/

paddington said:

My main gripe in Switzerland is that stations are often full of smokers who are impossible to avoid. I feel that there are fewer smokers in UK stations but this may be because a lot of them stay out of the way, the only place you encounter smokers is at the entrances. On UK station platforms if they dare to light up, smokers do tend to walk to one of the far ends, whereas they don't seem to care in Switzerland, I guess because it is probably not illegal.

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I thought Swiss Railways were meant to be introducing designated smoking areas on station platforms (as in Germany and the Netherlands) but didn't see any sign of it when I was in Zürich in July - it still seemed to be allowed almost everywhere on Zürich main station.

In the UK, smoking is banned everywhere on almost all station platforms (except that I believe that at least initially in Scotland it was allowed on exposed parts of platforms - not sure if that's still the case). On the one hand, that means you're not bothered by people smoking as you walk past the smoking areas, but on the other hand it makes long-distance rail travel less pleasant for smokers than in countries like Germany where they can make use of the smoking areas on platforms during long station stops.

TravellingPhil said:

I lived in Columbus, Ohio from 2004 to 2006. One of the things I was looking forward to was using the train over there...

...except I never did. Despite being the 15th largest city in the US, Columbus hasn't had a passenger service since 1979. The nearest passenger station is over 200 miles away and the daily train, in each direction, stops in the middle of the night. If I remember, I think the Amtrak station was in a place called Alliance on the Capital Limited route.

Columbus doesn't even have light rail, a metro or streetcars, only buses. There have been many attempts to bring passenger rail and streetcars back to Columbus, but it's a very political topic there and each attempt has failed simply because of the ideology of whoever State Governor or City Mayor happens to be.

So there is one thing straight away we do better, we serve our largest cities with a regular train service.

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Another thing that we (and the rest of Europe too, to be fair) do better than the USA, is having passengers already waiting on the platform when the train arrives, rather than making them wait in a waiting room/departure lounge and then inviting them to board the train one carriage at a time (and having a conductor in each coach who escorts the alighting passengers off the train into the station building) as on Amtrak trains in the US. The Amtrak method of operation is more labour intensive and leads to longer dwell times at stations.

That said, the rebuilt Birmingham New Street station, with its colour coded waiting areas at concourse level (and very few or no seats on the platforms) could perhaps be said to be modelled on Amtrak practice to some extent, as I presume it is designed to encourage passengers to wait in those places rather than on the platform until just before their train is due.

AY1975 said:

That said, the rebuilt Birmingham New Street station, with its colour coded waiting areas at concourse level (and very few or no seats on the platforms) could perhaps be said to be modelled on Amtrak practice to some extent, as I presume it is designed to encourage passengers to wait in those places rather than on the platform until just before their train is due.

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It's an elegant workaround for the problem of the platforms being far too small for the number of people that need to use them, especially as there are intercity passengers who arrive there significantly in advance of their train (I was about 15 minutes early iirc)

AY1975 said:

Another thing that we (and the rest of Europe too, to be fair) do better than the USA, is having passengers already waiting on the platform when the train arrives, rather than making them wait in a waiting room/departure lounge and then inviting them to board the train one carriage at a time (and having a conductor in each coach who escorts the alighting passengers off the train into the station building) as on Amtrak trains in the US. The Amtrak method of operation is more labour intensive and leads to longer dwell times at stations.

That said, the rebuilt Birmingham New Street station, with its colour coded waiting areas at concourse level (and very few or no seats on the platforms) could perhaps be said to be modelled on Amtrak practice to some extent, as I presume it is designed to encourage passengers to wait in those places rather than on the platform until just before their train is due.

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Typical approach for the long distance trains is to line everyone up on the platform at a single entry where crew can scan tickets. Rain, snow, sleet , children and bags notwithstanding.
Generally intermediate stations between Washington and New York, Philadelphia for example, do require passengers to be on the platform when trains arrive. Long dwells are not permitted on that route, but otherwise common practice is as you state.

Chris M said:

It's an elegant workaround for the problem of the platforms being far too small for the number of people that need to use them, especially as there are intercity passengers who arrive there significantly in advance of their train (I was about 15 minutes early iirc)

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There is nothing elegant about New Street. And whilst we’re at it with American comparisons, New York Penn is as bad, if not worse.

43096 said:

There is nothing elegant about New Street. And whilst we’re at it with American comparisons, New York Penn is as bad, if not worse.

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Ah sorry, I was getting confused with the waiting areas for the through platforms at Manchester Piccadilly (where colours are used to indicate whether you should be relaxing in the waiting area, ready to move to the platforms, or actually on the platform)
As for New Street, I've not spent much time there since the refurb was complete, but I concur with whoever it was that said that it proves you can polish a turd.

"With DB, you either have to pick up a claim form from a station help desk and hand it in at the station where your journey finishes (which is obviously no use if your journey ends outside Germany), or print one off their website and post it to them."

A couple of years ago I was on a Hannover - Leipzig train which was delayed by 2+ hours due to a level crossing incident. I checked the DB website and it included the option of getting a cash refund at my destination. On arrival I went to the "Travel Centre", explained my situation to a rather formidable lady. She confirmed via her computer that my train had indeed been delayed, opened her cash drawer and handed me a full cash refund. Result!