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The worst European train you have travelled on

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class387

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After all the threads detailing your various favourite European trains, what is the worst train you have been on in Europe?

I will admit I have never been in the places where you get horrific trains, but the old coaches on the Chiasso-Milano Trenord service were pretty awful. Covered in vandalism, horrible seats and arrived in Milano 2.5 hours late.

The unrefurbished MI84s on RER-A are quite bad as well for much the same reasons.
 

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Ianno87

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A Pisa Centrale to Genova Piazza Principe regional train where the door fell off as I tried to open it.
 

gordonthemoron

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TLK trains in Poland (especially between Warsaw and Bialystok), ex-DB regio train overnight between Bucharest & Sofia, Pacers
 

MarcVD

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There are two that I specially remember : Liege to Luxembourg in the old CFL wegmann carriages and Lille to Amiens in a old dirty SNCF caravelle.
 

Iskra

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Naples' circumsevia (sp) lines aren't great. They're okay on quiet lines, but when they get rammed full of tourists going to Pompeii, they are sweaty horribly affairs. Then there's beggars, or even a band playing (until people stop giving them money). The seats are plastic so just keep getting hotter. A lot of trains and stations are also covered in graffiti.

However, it's par for the course in Napoli, and I'm still not convinced it was any worse than a leaky bus-seated Pacer in January...
 

glbotu

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When rib80s hauled by BB17000s would be the main local service on the Marseille - Vintimilglia line, they had no air-con, and would take a solid 2 hrs from St Raphael - Cannes, they were pretty unbearable. Leather seats made wearing shorts (notably weather appropriate clothing) practically painful. (Links in French, the pics say it all though)
 

Polarbear

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Before refurbishment, those RB70 coaches (or whatever they were) out from Paris toward Versailles were pretty rank.
 

JP

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The Danish Intercity trains are my least favourite so far. They're comfortable inside, but on trunk routes like Aarhus to Copenhagen they're not frequent enough so they're too busy.

Some of their carriages don't even have doors, and the ones that do only have one set. So boarding and alighting and finding your seat takes longer than it needs to.

And seats can be booked en route for people boarding at upcoming stations. Great if you're buying a reserved seat, but if you don't have one you have to keep checking the display to see if you're going to have to look elsewhere at the next stop.

The front and back is ugly too. Like a big toilet seat stuck on the front.
 

sarahj

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When rib80s hauled by BB17000s would be the main local service on the Marseille - Vintimilglia line, they had no air-con, and would take a solid 2 hrs from St Raphael - Cannes, they were pretty unbearable. Leather seats made wearing shorts (notably weather appropriate clothing) practically painful. (Links in French, the pics say it all though)

I remember traveling on them in 89 from Monaco to Nice in August and they just left the doors open when on the move. Kept them almost cool.
 

theageofthetra

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Some pretty hideous old stock in Slovakia when I last visited about 9 years ago. That rare combination of stale cigarette smoke, fuel, decomposing soviet plastic and sweat.
 

pemma

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Does Metro stock count? If so the old Rome Metro stock which was also used on some services on the Roma-Lido railway.
 

Tim R-T-C

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Some weird older coaches floating around on DB at the moment, caught one on a Cologne service, in white IC colours, it had compartment seats at each end, but in the middle the seats were so oddly arranged, twos, threes, fours, pointing with and against travel seemingly at random. No comfort issues, but they were just so strange.
 

MisterT

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Those are probably bimdz coaches and are former Interregio (IR) coaches, now repainted in Intercity (IC) colors.
They are used in so called Ersatzzügen, a rake of coaches used as a replacement train in case of a train failure (for both IC and ICE services).
With the current temperatures above 32 degrees in Germany, the air conditioning system of many of the IC coaches and ICE trains can't keep up and therefor the Ersatzzügen are used at the moment.
 
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Ianno87

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Back in 1998 our family travelled on the "Costa Blanca Express" from Benidorm to Alicante and back. It was the most ridiculously clapped-out suspension-free DMU ever.

The "highlight" of the return trip was a coming together with a moped rider (who ignored the half barriers and flshing lights) on a level crossing, so we returned to Alicante.

My 10 year old self also found the notion of one of the local stations being called "Condomina" sniggeringly funny.

The route I believe has since been converted to a light rail system.
 
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DEE-DE

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I had a 10 1/2 hour standard class journey on a railjet once. The seats are so horribly uncomfortable that it was worse than the journey from Zagreb to Budapest, I believe just under 7 hours in a comfy compartment coach but with no AC and 38°C outside with long border stops.
 

class387

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I had a 10 1/2 hour standard class journey on a railjet once. The seats are so horribly uncomfortable that it was worse than the journey from Zagreb to Budapest, I believe just under 7 hours in a comfy compartment coach but with no AC and 38°C outside with long border stops.

Surely the Railjet can't be the worst train? They have the same seats as the GWR HSTs don't they?
 

MarcVD

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I had a 10 1/2 hour standard class journey on a railjet once. The seats are so horribly uncomfortable that it was worse than the journey from Zagreb to Budapest, I believe just under 7 hours in a comfy compartment coach but with no AC and 38°C outside with long border stops.
I used railjet twice. First time in 2009 on Munich - Budapest on my way to Istanbul and Téhéran in second class and I don't remember that it was that bad - I think I rather enjoyed it; and second time on Zurich - Budapest in exécutive class on my way to Athens. Exécutive class is very nice and just costs à very small supplément on the top of the First class fare.
 

farci

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I don't need to back further than winter 2015 for a Polish service from Kutno-Lodz. I don't know the Polish word for 'ropey' but this pic says it all

en57-917_kutno_fot_mikolaj_manowski.jpg

Courtesy of Skyscraper City
 

class387

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I don't need to back further than winter 2015 for a Polish service from Kutno-Lodz. I don't know the Polish word for 'ropey' but this pic says it all

en57-917_kutno_fot_mikolaj_manowski.jpg

Courtesy of Skyscraper City

Seems like a decent unit to me. What exactly was wrong with it?

Meanwhile, the station looks to fit the defenition of the word 'dump'.
 

F Great Eastern

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Seems like a decent unit to me. What exactly was wrong with it?

Meanwhile, the station looks to fit the defenition of the word 'dump'.

That will be a Regio/InterRegio, there are lots of them floating around, that one has had a refurbishment, since the ones that have not don't have the LED. There are various levels of internal refurbishment on those units, from the very modern interior but cheap looking, to the lightly refreshed depending on how much money PR had at the time.

The history behind those trains is very interesting, in that whilst now they are operated, along with all other Regio services by Przewozy Regionalne, there is a complex history behind that organisation and the fact they are very old trains operating on mostly local services serving a lot of run down stations is not really a fault of the company itself.

Przewozy Regionalne used to be part of PKP. But because of EU rulings PKP had to be broken up. In early December 2008, PR was forced to transfer virtually all of it's most attractive routes, paths and best condition stock to it's PKP parent. After which the ownership of PR was transferred to 18 regional authorities and the former PR routes that went to PKP were re branded TLK.

Ever since PR have been crippled by high track access charges, an aging stock and a huge debt and various issues with access to stations which has got worse and worse, particularly over the last couple of years. It's safe to say that life hasn't been made easy for them and despite that, they still have achieved many things despite the odds being stacked against them.

They introduced the Balice Ekspress train from Krakow Airport to Krakow many years ago, which people said couldn't be done, they were years ahead of PKP on offering online ticket sales, introduced ticket vending machines for the first time to Poland and played a big part in contributing to station improvements around Euro 2012 and their RegioEkspress offering that they aimed to expand going up against PKP Intercity was way ahead of PKPs of the day.

However they were never really going to be able to properly survive in the market that they were in and soon will most likely vanish completely with RE now dead, IR basically dead assets and investments they made now bearing the PKP name and most regions now looking to bring their operations fully in house I can't see them surviving for long. The shame is generally their RE/IR services were far more punctual than PKPs and the staff were much more easygoing as well.
 

class387

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In 2nd yes. In 1st the seats all have broken recliners so don't provide any back support.


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Still don't see how it can be the worst train though. You don't hear many people saying "The worst train I've ever been on is a high-speed, Austrian train with 2+1 leather seats!". There are lots of trains where the seats don't recline and/or have no back support.
 
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