Where in Europe is rail travel a nightmare?

[alex397]

Have some photos, though this was about 10 years ago and I'm quite a bit podgier now than pictured!

Albania is a fascinating (if very poor) country.

Thanks for sharing those photos - very interesting. The line looks in better condition than more recent photos that i've seen from there!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thanks for sharing those photos - very interesting. The line looks in better condition than more recent photos that i've seen from there!

Yeah, a lot can happen (badly) in 11 years (it was 2009) when you've got no maintenance budget! I suspect the system will be closed and forgotten about soon enough - possibly it won't reopen after COVID, I'd be surprised if it was open at the moment.

The journey was Durres-Vora-Lezhe, though we did also get to Tirana station to have a nose - long gone of course.

They did recently get some ex-East German "Ostling" coaches and tart them up as per the photo for reopening of the "Tirana Parkway" to Durres service, but I believe these too are now in a right state. Photo here:

 

[duesselmartin]

Yeah, a lot can happen (badly) in 11 years (it was 2009) when you've got no maintenance budget! I suspect the system will be closed and forgotten about soon enough - possibly it won't reopen after COVID, I'd be surprised if it was open at the moment.

The journey was Durres-Vora-Lezhe, though we did also get to Tirana station to have a nose - long gone of course.

They did recently get some ex-East German "Ostling" coaches and tart them up as per the photo for reopening of the "Tirana Parkway" to Durres service, but I believe these too are now in a right state. Photo here:

That stocks Looks better than anything they had before. They Investors, even if only in paint.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That stocks Looks better than anything they had before. They Investors, even if only in paint.

Though they don't look after stuff. This photo (not mine) shows those two coaches parked up at Durres (behind an unliveried Ostling) in a right state:

From: http://jonathansworldlyimages.com/post/albania-montenegro-serbia-october-2017-a-brief-3-day-jaunt/

Whoops, the paint was clearly done on the cheap, can anyone spot 1990s DB Regio livery underneath?

(HSH coaches with peeling paint - from this blog which says a bit more about them: http://nachster-halte.blogspot.com/2017/11/hekurudha-shqiptare-albanian-railways.html)

Edit: looks like they are operating at the moment despite COVID, though somewhat of a skeleton service and nothing on the Shkoder line:

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[peteb]

French country rail routes can be extremely vexing: many run mainly to serve as peak hour TER trains to supplement daytime SNCF buses. So you get a place like Loches which has an early morning TER train to Tours and a return in the evening, but the unit appears to be stabled at Loches overnight, thus intending track bashers must overnight in Loches or take an expensive taxi back to Tours. Some like St Pol near Lens at least have a couple of out and back services but only in morning and evening peaks.....

 

[alex397]

The Baltic states aren't very good, apart from Kaunus-Vilnius in Lithuania

I agree with Kaunas-Vilnius. I traveled on that line in February - reasonable journey time, frequent timetable, comfortable modern double-decker electric Skoda trains too. And it goes without saying, it was cheap. Ticket office staff and conductors were notably friendly and helpful.
Frequencies for most other lines looked very infrequent.

Latvia in October 2019 had confusing information regarding temporary timetables. Language barrier a bit of an issue, and even translating some of the notices didn't make sense. Station staff couldn't quite understand English either. So, instead we just made some local journeys within Riga (something like 80p for a single ticket). As far as my research shows, all of their rolling stock is elderly Soviet-era RVR types (with the most modern stuff just being facelifted RVRs). The RVRs make some of the remaining step-entrance stuff in Western Europe seem far more accessible! (I wasn't complaining though, as they were right up my street!). Latvia must be one of the few European places with no modern trains, though this is set to change I believe.

I didn't sample the Estonian network, but saw stations and trains in Tallinn in 2018. Trains must be the most modern of the Baltics (with no remaining ex-Soviet stock as far as I could tell), and stations were basic but modern. Not sure about frequencies, but Tallinn station was certainly not busy for a main capital city station.

 

[Jamesrob637]

I agree with Kaunas-Vilnius. I traveled on that line in February - reasonable journey time, frequent timetable, comfortable modern double-decker electric Skoda trains too. And it goes without saying, it was cheap. Ticket office staff and conductors were notably friendly and helpful.
Frequencies for most other lines looked very infrequent.

Latvia in October 2019 had confusing information regarding temporary timetables. Language barrier a bit of an issue, and even translating some of the notices didn't make sense. Station staff couldn't quite understand English either. So, instead we just made some local journeys within Riga (something like 80p for a single ticket). As far as my research shows, all of their rolling stock is elderly Soviet-era RVR types (with the most modern stuff just being facelifted RVRs). The RVRs make some of the remaining step-entrance stuff in Western Europe seem far more accessible! (I wasn't complaining though, as they were right up my street!). Latvia must be one of the few European places with no modern trains, though this is set to change I believe.

I didn't sample the Estonian network, but saw stations and trains in Tallinn in 2018. Trains must be the most modern of the Baltics (with no remaining ex-Soviet stock as far as I could tell), and stations were basic but modern. Not sure about frequencies, but Tallinn station was certainly not busy for a main capital city station.

Zagreb main station wasn't busy at 17:00 on a Monday two years ago so I think the Croatian network is more patchy than it used to be in the days of Yugoslavia.

 

[Richard Scott]

I agree with Kaunas-Vilnius. I traveled on that line in February - reasonable journey time, frequent timetable, comfortable modern double-decker electric Skoda trains too. And it goes without saying, it was cheap. Ticket office staff and conductors were notably friendly and helpful.
Frequencies for most other lines looked very infrequent.

Latvia in October 2019 had confusing information regarding temporary timetables. Language barrier a bit of an issue, and even translating some of the notices didn't make sense. Station staff couldn't quite understand English either. So, instead we just made some local journeys within Riga (something like 80p for a single ticket). As far as my research shows, all of their rolling stock is elderly Soviet-era RVR types (with the most modern stuff just being facelifted RVRs). The RVRs make some of the remaining step-entrance stuff in Western Europe seem far more accessible! (I wasn't complaining though, as they were right up my street!). Latvia must be one of the few European places with no modern trains, though this is set to change I believe.

I didn't sample the Estonian network, but saw stations and trains in Tallinn in 2018. Trains must be the most modern of the Baltics (with no remaining ex-Soviet stock as far as I could tell), and stations were basic but modern. Not sure about frequencies, but Tallinn station was certainly not busy for a main capital city station.

Estonia is ok, went there last year. Some routes only see a couple of trains a day so no clockface timetable. The only thing of interest is the daily train to/from St. Petersburg with Russian stock hauled by a TEP70; unless Stadler Flirts are your bag!
Someone mentioned Serbia, slowly moving forward but mostly stuck in the dark ages with slow trains as line speed often dire, did see a 10km/h restriction at one point!! One hour late has to be considered on time in Serbia. Never done better than that (except on local trains around Belgrade).

 

[Peter Kelford]

Can you explain the SBB IC = Thameslink comment please? Having used both extensively I'm struggling to see any similarities. Geneva - St Gallen is almost 4 hours!

And some of the longer flows of Thameslink are 3.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Someone mentioned Serbia, slowly moving forward but mostly stuck in the dark ages with slow trains as line speed often dire, did see a 10km/h restriction at one point!! One hour late has to be considered on time in Serbia. Never done better than that (except on local trains around Belgrade).

I noticed a 5 km/h speed limit on the final crawl into Belgrade main station from the original Sava bridge in 2018, on heavily overgrown tracks.
The 1884 station closed 10 days later, with services now using Centar station (which isn't at all Central!) and its modern approach routes over the Sava.
I think it will become a museum in the redeveloped old station area.

Best thing in Serbia was the itinerant ice-cream seller who came round after border formalities on the train from Zagreb.
Plenty of route improvement work going on, but not much to show for it yet.
Both HŽ and ŽS have spent money repainting their electric locos into fancy new national liveries, but they are still the same ex-JŽ locos underneath (built in Zagreb).

 

[Richard Scott]

I noticed a 5 km/h speed limit on the final crawl into Belgrade main station from the original Sava bridge in 2018, on heavily overgrown tracks.
The 1884 station closed 10 days later, with services now using Centar station (which isn't at all Central!) and its modern approach routes over the Sava.
I think it will become a museum in the redeveloped old station area.

Best thing in Serbia was the itinerant ice-cream seller who came round after border formalities on the train from Zagreb.
Plenty of route improvement work going on, but not much to show for it yet.
Both HŽ and ŽS have spent money repainting their electric locos into fancy new national liveries, but they are still the same ex-JŽ locos underneath (built in Zagreb).

Forgot about the old station, went there in 2016 and was hand signalled! As far as locos go not forgetting banger GM 661s, the one I had was so smokey a steam engine would've been hard pushed to beat it. Oh and the air con coaches with no working air con just a few open vents in over 30 degree heat. Definitely an interesting travel experience.

 

[TheSeeker]

Took the train in Latvia a couple of years ago, very impressive scenery. Very odd to see women sitting on a little wooden stool in each vestibul. I asked a friend what they were doing who said "to keep an eye on things". Same thing in every room of the Riga museum. Also odd that nobody has any fear of walking along the tracks. Even right into Riga city centre. Asked my friend about that too and was told "Russians".

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

I didn't sample the Estonian network, but saw stations and trains in Tallinn in 2018. Trains must be the most modern of the Baltics (with no remaining ex-Soviet stock as far as I could tell), and stations were basic but modern. Not sure about frequencies, but Tallinn station was certainly not busy for a main capital city station.

On domestic services, Elron only uses diesel and electric Stadler Flirt trains, only the Russia trains are older. I'm not sure what people expect regarding frequency: Estonia only has 1.3 million people of which almost half lives in the county that Tallinn is in (Harjumaa), so demand for train service drops really fast. There's reasonable commuter service around Tallinn: on the western main line there's around 2-4 trains per hour toward Pääskula, of which 1 per 2 hours continues to Paldiski and another to Turba. On the southern main line there's hourly trains to Rapla, some continuing to Türi and 5 a day to Viljandi. And on the eastern line there's around 1-2 stopping trains per hour towards Aegviidu, in addition to 6 express trains per day to Tartu. The Narva branch gets 4 trains a day (plus Russian trains), as do the southern branch lines from Tartu.

The big downside is of course that the line to Pärnu is closed, I'm not sure if it's expected to reopen if Rail Baltica will go there anyway.