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Your first experience of foreign train travel

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Bletchleyite

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On a family holiday in 1996 (age 17 but only just) - took the train from Trier back to Saarburg where we were staying. I was incredibly nervous. No mobile phones back then, so probably a first feeling of being *really* on my own.

Though my real discovery of it was on a Scout event 2 years later, we went from Preston all the way through to Salzburg by train and ferry!

A photo from each is attached so you can laugh at younger me :)
 

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nlogax

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@Bletchleyite Great pics!

You just reminded me, my first foreign train travel was actually around the same time, via the Three Capitals railtour... Waterloo > Paris > Brussels and back to London very late at night. Guess it really didn't feel that new/foreign as we were on the same Eurostar stock for the entire day.

http://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/90s/960928hr.htm

28th September 1996

Hertfordshire Railtours
The Three Capitals

Eurostars Used
3007+3008 & 3017+3018
Train 9008 : London Waterloo to Paris Nord
Train 9035 : Paris Nord to Bruxelles Midi
Train 9161 : Bruxelles Midi to London Waterloo


 

eMeS

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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?...

August 1958, and my very first time abroad. Troopship from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, then to Nijmegen / Mönchengladbach by troop train. (I think we might have been taken by coach from Nijmegen, but it's a long time ago.) I was starting my second year of National Service in the RAF0407 August 1958 Hoek van Holland station.jpg, and being shipped out to Obernkirchen, near Hanover. What I particularly remember was that I saw no windmills whatsoever in Holland, had to wait until we crossed the border into Germany!
0407 August 1958 Hoek van Holland station.jpg
 

Struner

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On a family holiday in 1996 (age 17 but only just) - took the train from Trier back to Saarburg where we were staying. I was incredibly nervous. No mobile phones back then, so probably a first feeling of being *really* on my own.

Though my real discovery of it was on a Scout event 2 years later, we went from Preston all the way through to Salzburg by train and ferry!

A photo from each is attached so you can laugh at younger me :)
Revealing indeed ;)
But how did you get to Trier?
 

MarcVD

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Trip from Belgium to Italy when I was 15 (I'm now 61). Put in place by a large youth organization, special train, and all that. Don't remember much, except the night on the gotthard that I spent leaning out of the window. I wasn't much of a train fan at that time yet.

The real first one for me has been my trip all the way from Belgium to Greece, when I was 20. Rail fan by then, but not yet very experimented, so probably missed to observe a lot of things. But it was the first time I had a fair chance to observe railway practices that were radically different from those I got used to at home.
 

43096

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I had a school trip to Switzerland back in the 80s. We went via Dover, using the boat train (12-CEP+MLV) to get there. I've not got much memory of the actual time in Switzerland (well not the travel experience anyway) so no notes of locos or anything like that sadly. I do remember we came back overnight (couchette I think) and remember waiting at Basel SBB and we were fascinated by the classic clock with the sweep round of the second hand before the minute hand ticked over and the performance repeated. Shame I don't remember more about it as Switzerland is a country I love visiting - would be great to have a time machine to do it again!
 
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dgl

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Mine would be Eurostar to Paris, then use of the metro around Paris followed by taking the RER A? to Disneyland for a trip in 2015.
I had designed the holiday so that on the way going to Disney we had a full day in Paris. It also meant that we didn't have to get up too early to catch the Eurostar, esp. given that we were travelling by train from Weymouth to London and needed plenty of time to get not only to waterloo but to get across London on the tube with a fair bit of luggage.
 

Bald Rick

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1991, Oostende - Calais Maritime, taking in the Baltic Sea, Arctic Ocean, Adriatic and Mediterranean en route.
 

30907

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Easter school holidays 1969. School had an exchange scheme with SNCF families, but my exchange partner wasn't into trains (nor were his parents) unfortunately.
I travelled solo on the Golden Arrow and was decidedly unimpressed by the SNCF 2nd class. Calais to Amiens had recently gone diesel, though there was steam around; I did manage to see 141 suburban tanks at Nord, but didn't make it to Bastille (the station!). Memories include the then-new stainless-steel EMUs out of St Lazare (Z5300?) as well as the ancient DC sets.
 

Peter Mugridge

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Mine would have been a pair of Z8100s from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Gare du Nord, on 4th July 1992.
 

181

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It's interesting to see everyone's different experiences.

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.

I'd include Ireland (the extent to which Northern Ireland counts as foreign with regard to either the UK or the Republic I will leave to people's own opinions!), but it's certainly interesting to hear about your Canadian experience. My first foreign steam train journey (while on a gap year trip to visit relatives less than a year after the German visit mentioned above) was on the now defunct tourist operation between North Vancouver and Squamish. Apart from some short workings to serve settlements with no road access, I think the only passenger service on the PGE these days is the premium-priced Rocky Mountaineer.

How did you get to Schleswig though?

By bicycle (not all the way!). We (parents, younger brother and I) got the boat from Harwich to Hamburg and spent a few days cycling, first south-east towards Luneburg and then north (crossing the canal on a small ferry just inland from the eastern end) before getting the train to Hamburg to get the boat home. (The two other overseas family holidays that we did had both been cycling trips beginning and ending at a port).


I remember toilets with straight pipes down onto the tracks

If I remember rightly, I commented on one of these on the previously-mentioned Schleswig-Hamburg journey, and my mother said that she remembered losing her ticket down one on the way to (or from) Austria in her youth.

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.

Yes, interesting parents are a great asset; we rarely went abroad, but did interesting things in the UK, and both my parents had travelled a fair bit in earlier years so I acquired their ideas of what a foreign trip ought to be.

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.

I don't see why not. My first non-European train journey was on the rubber-tyred Montreal Metro, although I went on a 'proper' train a few days later.
 

Springs Branch

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For me, it was a solo holiday in the Netherlands in the late 1970s.

I went with a little cardboard Vierdagenkaart - the Dutch equivalent of a 4-day Britrail Pass, valid on trains, trams and local buses, plus a wedge of guilders in my pocket (no credit cards back then). Each day was spent roaming the country on NS trains & various cities' trams, then returning to my hotel in Amsterdam and evening refreshments & recreation.

I flew with British Caledonian (remember them? Jaunty young women in kilts, long before Branson's jaunty young women in red jackets).
I had to take an express bus from Schiphol to Centraal Station, since trains only ran between the airport and Amsterdam Zuid at the time.

I remember my impressions were:
  1. First stop on alighting the bus was the GVB info. booth at Centraal Station tram terminus to pick up a map of Amsterdam tram routes. Here I was served by a friendly, helpful & attractive young woman - who spoke English perfectly, of course, and wished me a very pleasant stay in Amsterdam. Quite a different experience from the grumpy & unhelpful gits you often found behind equivalent UK enquiry counters in the 1970s.
  2. From the outside, NS rolling stock - whether the ubiquitous & iconic Dognose EMUs or domestic hauled stock - looked more modern than the most similar part of the network in Britain. By this I mean the BR Southern Region, with its slam-door-to-a-bay SUBs, CEPs and CIGs or Mk.1 coaches at that time. And the Dutch trains seemed to be kept cleaner inside & out, and free of vandalism.
  3. Train interiors all seemed a little spartan by BR standards, although adequate for relatively short Dutch journeys. Not as comfortable as BR Mk.1, 2 or 3 stock, or even some of the better 1st gen. DMUs. The NS system reminded me of Salford City Transport buses - quite utilitarian and unglamorous, but fast and frequent and got you where you wanted to go cheaply & reliably.
  4. The railway environment around the Netherlands (and the country generally) looked very neat and tidy, with quite a bit of new construction evident. Travelling on British railways in the 70s, there was still a lot of post-Beeching derelict railway land, redundant infrastructure and decrepit station buildings, especially around northern towns & cities. Maybe the Dutch railways had been badly damaged in WW2, so were mostly of postwar construction?
  5. I noticed quite a few NS drivers making their way to and from the cab at terminal stations. These gentlemen looked more like upright, sober clerks, with their uniform jackets, tie and each carrying a briefcase. Contrast the more proletarian local DMU driver at home, often in flat cap, uniform sometimes optional, carrying a canvas satchel over his shoulder and maybe a Woodbine in mouth.
  6. I was surprised by the punctilious ticket checks onboard NS trains - pretty much once every journey. In the UK at the time, on-board checks were quite rare outside specific Paytrain areas, although there were more fully-barriered stations over here, which they didn't have at all in the Netherlands.
  7. One of the conditions of my Rover was the ticket was meant to be presented for inspection along with my passport (I understand that Vierdagenkaart was only sold outside NL). Only one of the many conductors I encountered insisted on seeing my passport. Luckily for me, on the first page Her Majesty requested and required him to let me pass without any further let or hinderance.
Altogether a very positive experience and made me realise that my more reactionary relatives had been wrong in their confidently-espoused opinions about foreign parts and the British way always being the best.
 
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Bletchleyite

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  1. I noticed quite a few NS drivers making their way to and from the cab at terminal stations. These gentlemen looked more like upright, sober clerks, with their uniform jackets, tie and each carrying a briefcase. Contrast the more proletarian local DMU driver at home, often in flat cap, uniform sometimes optional, carrying a canvas satchel over his shoulder and maybe a Woodbine in mouth.

And yet your DB driver is more usually a podgy, moustached middle aged bloke in a flannel shirt and jeans who looks like he's just come straight from die Kneipe (and in the 80s probably had), and long was - did they ever wear uniform? I recall that standing out to me at various points.
 

alangla

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2002, The Coast Starlight, Los Angeles to Oakland Jack London Square then the connecting coach from there to San Francisco. Upper deck of a Superliner watching the California countryside change from the scorched ground in the south to the wine country in the north via smoke & pathing stops at various lovely little stations, San Luis Obispo in particular. Fantastic trip, albeit glacially slow with long waits for massive Union Pacific freights going the other way.
 

Struner

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And yet your DB driver is more usually a podgy, moustached middle aged bloke in a flannel shirt and jeans who looks like he's just come straight from die Kneipe (and in the 80s probably had), and long was - did they ever wear uniform? I recall that standing out to me at various points.
Oh dear, what’s DB got to do with NS?
 

Calthrop

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For me, it was a solo holiday in the Netherlands in the late 1970s.

I went with a little cardboard Vierdagenkaart - the Dutch equivalent of a 4-day Britrail Pass, valid on trains, trams and local buses, plus a wedge of guilders in my pocket (no credit cards back then). Each day was spent roaming the country on NS trains & various cities' trams, then returning to my hotel in Amsterdam and evening refreshments & recreation...


Altogether a very positive experience and made me realise that my more reactionary relatives had been wrong in their confidently-espoused opinions about foreign parts and the British way always being the best.

You got much more out of the NS experience, than I did as a kid some fifteen years previously !

I took a week's holiday in the Netherlands in summer 2011 -- but with the objective of "heritage" lines, and some non-rail doings; though travelling by train between the various venues. For me, I'm afraid the NS and its works remained basically ditchwater-dull; interest, though, in seeing the scenes travelled through. I admit to being a hopeless dreamy nostalgia-merchant, and not technically-minded -- in some folks' view, not a serious enthusiast. It takes all sorts, etc. ...
 

Aictos

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Eurostar to Brussels with a SNCB double decker IC to Bruges.
 

AM9

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My first train journey outside England was in 1963 on a school holiday to Germany & Austria. The route was from Victoria to Dover Marine, then a BR ferry to Ostend, arriving at about 05:30. We were allowed onto our train waiting in the station. As young'ish teenagers we were probably not as orderly as the treachers might want so we went exploring. The trains were completely different to what we had been used to, (much bigger, pull-down seats in the corridor, half opening windows and inward opening doors). At on point a railway employee asked us (in flemish I presumed which none of us understood). After a shrug on shoulders, he asked: "take me to your leader" which of course we found quite amusing.
That first train took us all the way to Koblenz, via Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Liege, Where the SNCB electric loco was replaced by a steam loco. I have no idea what sort as we were at the rear of a long train but we could see, hear and smell it as it climbed over the hills along a very twisted route via Verviers. From Aachen onwards, a German electric loco made for a smooth and uneventful journey southwards although I do remeber the view from the train of Cologne city centre including the cathedral.
Overall I would love to have been aware more of the railway aspects of the holiday. From a short break in Koblenz, we went by train down the west bank of the Rhine Gorge to Heidelberg. A few days later from Heidelberg to Salzburg with a 3 hour break in Munich. Then a week later, by OBB train from Salzburg via Linz to Vienna. The whole journey back was overnight on a couchette to Ostend taking about 15 hours. The initial journey to Koblenz was the most interesting though.
 

Taunton

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but it's certainly interesting to hear about your Canadian experience. My first foreign steam train journey (while on a gap year trip to visit relatives less than a year after the German visit mentioned above) was on the now defunct tourist operation between North Vancouver and Squamish. Apart from some short workings to serve settlements with no road access, I think the only passenger service on the PGE these days is the premium-priced Rocky Mountaineer.
The PGE ran along the West Vancouver shore, not visible but the multiple diesels were audible at the house further up the hill. It was actually the only day return train trip possible from Vancouver, leave at 8am, back by 7pm. For what must have been a very expensive and lengthy railway to construct northwards through virgin country (it went all the way up to the Yukon border, and must have had its sights on Fairbanks in Alaska) it only seemed to have one, maybe two freight trains each way per day, plus the once daily passenger service. I did, on a later trip a couple of years later, ride that steam excursion in its first year, 1974, about two hours each way. It carried on for a long time but finally ceased about 10 years ago. Canadian Pacific 4-6-4 2860 was the main power but on a trip many years later I went to photograph it one morning and there was a 2-8-0 in charge instead. On that 1974 outward journey we, most surprisingly, encountered a substantial 4-diesel southbound freight halfway along, according to the conductor on the PA an almost unknown happening on the trip, and made a most convoluted passing movement which involved the big excursion train being very haltingly reversed into a rickety siding and losing more than half an hour in the process.

The PGE, although sold out to the BC Provincial government long ago, always lost money each year and has finally been absorbed into Canadian National, and as stated the Budd Cars have gone. The prospect of rock slides or washouts is still sufficient through the mountains that every train is preceded about a mile ahead, quite unsignalled, by a typically North American works Speeder with a couple of crew, which can stop in a moment and radio back if there's any issue encountered.
 
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Calthrop

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Off-topic -- but I love the incongruity of a railway located about as far west as you can get in Canada; being named the Pacific Great Eastern. I gather that the name stems from the railway at its inception, shortly before the First World War, being launched with much financial backing and more general "goodwill", from Britain's Great Eastern Railway -- that undertaking presumably seeing possible future financial advantage from the venture. One has to wonder whether those who bestowed the name, saw and enjoyed the humorous side of it; or were thoroughly humourless.
 

Jamesrob637

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It would be SBB CFF FFS for me some time in the late-80s or 1990 around the Lausanne/Montreux area. We flew to Switzerland almost all times however we did do the whole journey by train (starting with the Eurostar from Ashford) eventually in 2003, well within my living memory. Most CFF (let's use the French as this was "Suisse Romande!") stock was dark green at the time. The air-conditioned EWIV (Mark 4) had entered service but no driving trailers yet and they could subsequently often be found in mixed formations together with older non air-conditioned stock. Lok 2000s (Re460) were still a couple of years off also, so Re4/4 and Re6/6 were haulage on passenger trains, with Ae6/6 often being used on freight.
 

Bletchleyite

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It would be SBB CFF FFS for me some time in the late-80s or 1990 around the Lausanne/Montreux area. We flew to Switzerland almost all times however we did do the whole journey by train (starting with the Eurostar from Ashford) eventually in 2003, well within my living memory. Most CFF (let's use the French as this was "Suisse Romande!") stock was dark green at the time. The air-conditioned EWIV (Mark 4) had entered service but no driving trailers yet and they could subsequently often be found in mixed formations together with older non air-conditioned stock. Lok 2000s (Re460) were still a couple of years off also, so Re4/4 and Re6/6 were haulage on passenger trains, with Ae6/6 often being used on freight.

Other than Lok 2000s this was the case until very recently - until about 2012 or so the Riviera line was operated with mixed formations of green "fresh air" UIC coaches and EW IVs, which appeared to have had the bogies replaced (no damper connected to the bodyside with a visible gap where it should go) and were downrated to 160km/h, with the loco run round at each end.
 

jfollows

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My first experience was Boulogne to Paris, having crossed the Channel by hovercraft from Dover, as part of a French exchange in summer 1975. This involved a diesel engine to Amiens, followed by electric engine to Paris I think; the line to Boulogne wasn't electrified until 2010 I believe.

The main thing I remember is just how long it took, starting from Manchester early in the morning, but still taking most of the day, and it's now quite wonderful how soon it's possible to arrive in Paris Gare du Nord.

I guess the hovercraft was an interesting experiment in speeding up the journey, but after that I always preferred a boat I could walk around, and hide in the bar from the hordes of school children when necessary.
 

Jamesrob637

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Other than Lok 2000s this was the case until very recently - until about 2012 or so the Riviera line was operated with mixed formations of green "fresh air" UIC coaches and EW IVs, which appeared to have had the bogies replaced (no damper connected to the bodyside with a visible gap where it should go) and were downrated to 160km/h, with the loco run round at each end.

Thank you for the insight as always! Driving Trailers were definitely on the line in the early-00s, but I haven't been to Switzerland in nearly a decade now :'( can you remember CHF/GBP being 2 or more? Made Switzerland relatively cheap to us Brits!
 

Bletchleyite

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Thank you for the insight as always! Driving Trailers were definitely on the line in the early-00s, but I haven't been to Switzerland in nearly a decade now :'( can you remember CHF/GBP being 2 or more? Made Switzerland relatively cheap to us Brits!

1.6 I think when I was working over there.

Perhaps the driving trailers were put there and removed again.
 

EAD

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This is tricky for me to identify as I am pretty sure I have been on many journeys outside the UK since I was born (1982 vintage here). This is thanks to my paternal Grandfather being a retired railwayman who would take me many places in the UK by rail (he also regularly went to France for the day on his own from Buckinghamshire just to get fresh produce on the markets). He had taken my father on many family holidays by rail across Europe in the 50s and 60s, so rail travel and enthusiasm was very much in the blood.

My father did a lot of work travel so I inevitably spent plenty of time at Heathrow seeing him off or collecting him, but I do recall aged around 4 that I got to go with him to Frankfurt (Main) and indeed not two years later we were living in the Taunus hills so this would have been initial steps to that as he was working a lot in Germany at the time. On that trip we travelled down to Rosenheim by train and then drove to Tirol in Austria - ironically to the village where my parents now live. I still have the ticket somewhere, but I can recall certain aspects and have photos too - parts of it are now from a bygone era.

S-Bahn to Frankfurt (Main) Hbf from Kronberg - so that would have been a 420 EMU in its classic orange and white, then up to the main concourse for our train. For ease my father had booked us on the FD (this would have been FD723 from memory). FDs (Fern Express) were long distance expresses in Germany to the Alps outside of the usual regular interval IC services that connected conurbations with holiday regions. In this case it ran Dortmund-Frankfurt-Würzburg-München-Freislassing-Berchtesgaden. I recall we were in 1st class, so that would have been an air conditioned IC standard carriage in red and ivory as the D/FDs had been updated on these routes to these in 1985 - while I need to check the ticket/reservation which is not with me looking at the planned rake we would have been in one of two Avm carriages so side corridor compartment. In a touch of novelty it had a Quick-Pick restaurant carriage - these were essentially set up like a canteen where you chose what you wanted from hatches from memory/asked the staff for more worthy items like alcohol and paid at the till. They had not been successful on regular IC routes and indeed were all rebuilt in 1987 so this was my one and only experience of one. I recall visiting it for some food given we would have been on the train from 10:51 to 16:05.

The bit I struggle a little with is what traction we had, but I know 111's were regularly used which would make sense given the BW München 1 (Munich main depot) allocation and the run straight to there and I am pretty sure a 110 would have brought it in to Frankfurt (I have a vague recollection of a blue 110 from talking to my father). I suspect we had another 111 on from Munich (given change of direction), but to be fair pretty much anything could have been on.

I am pretty sure this trip, coupled with my father starting to buy German model railway items on these trips got me interested in their railways.
 

Giugiaro

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I think my first experience of travelling by train abroad was in 2010, between Redondela de Galicia and Santiago de Compostela aboard an R-599, on a railfan trip that had more bus that trains in its journey.

It struck me how far more advanced and better quality newer trains where at the time in contrast with Portugal. The earliest trains we had doing a similar kind of service was already from 1985. The R-599 was brand new and felt in quality and experience like an Alfa Pendular, which is the highest prestige train down in Lusitania.

 
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