Today I’m trying the fastest Berlin - Nuits-sous-Ravières you can do, changing only in Strasbourg and Dijon
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@ajinkyapdahale Even getting prices for Interrail seat reservations is a pain. I have Berlin-Strasbourg with DB Passzuschlag and Strasbourg-Dijon TGV reservation booked with Rail Europe
@jon Is "DB Passzuschlag" a website? Rail europe (or probably Trainline) didn't accept my Indian card once, so that's an additional drama (especially when I've heard of visas being rejected for not producing internal travel tickets).
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@ajinkyapdahale Hmm, also tricky. I then leave a seat empty Paris-Strasbourg if the train does run on time! So I’m reluctant to do that. But there’s nothing to stop me doing that on Interrail indeed - Berlin-Strasbourg and Berlin-Paris seat reservations are the same price.
@jon out of curiosity could you share that number? In my experience the cheapest early bird tickets are just about 10-20% over just the reservation, so for my upcoming trip I ended up canceling an eurail pass and booking a la carte.
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Siemens builds good trains
(Sure they’re not always perfect, but they’re never dreadful. Siemens would never build a Régiolis.)
Thinking further about this re-routing issue: my favoured re-routing if I need it (via Paris) is actually what would make most sense for SNCF as well (no trying to find space for me on another TGV)
But the rule that applies here - AJC - states precisely the opposite
I wonder how you could better allow “any suitable route” rather than same route?
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Siemens builds good trains
(Sure they’re not always perfect, but they’re never dreadful. Siemens would never build a Régiolis.)
@jon A single trip from Liège to Luxembourg in a Siemens Desiro ML can change this statement
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@jon out of curiosity could you share that number? In my experience the cheapest early bird tickets are just about 10-20% over just the reservation, so for my upcoming trip I ended up canceling an eurail pass and booking a la carte.
@ajinkyapdahale €19 for Berlin-Strasbourg and €10 for Strasbourg-Dijon. But the cheapest regular ticket I could find for today was c. €150, so Interrail made sense
Passzuschlag is a special search on DB’s website
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@jon A single trip from Liège to Luxembourg in a Siemens Desiro ML can change this statement
@smveerman ah. The interior is crap. But that’s SNCB’s fault not Siemens’s fault. Desiro ML in Austria is fine.
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Thinking further about this re-routing issue: my favoured re-routing if I need it (via Paris) is actually what would make most sense for SNCF as well (no trying to find space for me on another TGV)
But the rule that applies here - AJC - states precisely the opposite
I wonder how you could better allow “any suitable route” rather than same route?
Also on the Siemens builds good trains point
Desiro ML for SNCB is horrid - because SNCB ordered a terrible interior. Desiro ML for ÖBB is fine
Similarly a DB ICE 407 has a nicer interior but same engineering as a Eurostar e320
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@smveerman ah. The interior is crap. But that’s SNCB’s fault not Siemens’s fault. Desiro ML in Austria is fine.
@jon It's the default interior from Siemens, surely that should be good enough
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@ajinkyapdahale €19 for Berlin-Strasbourg and €10 for Strasbourg-Dijon. But the cheapest regular ticket I could find for today was c. €150, so Interrail made sense
Passzuschlag is a special search on DB’s website
@jon On day of, of course. My particular bookings were Oct-Nov when the new timetable opened.
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@jon It's the default interior from Siemens, surely that should be good enough
️@smveerman for a S-Bahn. I don’t think even Siemens would suggest sitting in that for 3 hours!
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@smveerman for a S-Bahn. I don’t think even Siemens would suggest sitting in that for 3 hours!
@jon It's also being used on the Mittelrheinbahn Köln - Koblenz - Mainz, and that does attract quite a lot of passengers sitting in it for more than an hour.
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Thinking further about this re-routing issue: my favoured re-routing if I need it (via Paris) is actually what would make most sense for SNCF as well (no trying to find space for me on another TGV)
But the rule that applies here - AJC - states precisely the opposite
I wonder how you could better allow “any suitable route” rather than same route?
@jon I would posit that the way you do this is to just allow any route, then accept that you can minimise the disruption this causes by holding trains when needed for connections and/or having a Frankreichtakt.
Yes, I know this would involve SNCF. Stop laughing up the back.
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@jon I would posit that the way you do this is to just allow any route, then accept that you can minimise the disruption this causes by holding trains when needed for connections and/or having a Frankreichtakt.
Yes, I know this would involve SNCF. Stop laughing up the back.
@SarahAS2 Right. Exactly.
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Thinking further about this re-routing issue: my favoured re-routing if I need it (via Paris) is actually what would make most sense for SNCF as well (no trying to find space for me on another TGV)
But the rule that applies here - AJC - states precisely the opposite
I wonder how you could better allow “any suitable route” rather than same route?
@jon I guess DB's "Zugbindung aufgehoben" doesn't work well with mandatory reservation.
For interrailers, the easy but ugly solution would be to book all the way to Paris "just in case". But that's potentially an empty seat noone else can use. -
Just had to tell off an Italian guy for playing a video full volume on his mobile in the Ruhebereich (Quiet Carriage)
With 5 hours on this train it’s important to get the norms right at the start
@jon Omg marry me
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Also on the Siemens builds good trains point
Desiro ML for SNCB is horrid - because SNCB ordered a terrible interior. Desiro ML for ÖBB is fine
Similarly a DB ICE 407 has a nicer interior but same engineering as a Eurostar e320
@jon in Zürich, I suspect the average passenger cannot distinguish the Desiro trains from the KISS ones.
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@ajinkyapdahale Hmm, also tricky. I then leave a seat empty Paris-Strasbourg if the train does run on time! So I’m reluctant to do that. But there’s nothing to stop me doing that on Interrail indeed - Berlin-Strasbourg and Berlin-Paris seat reservations are the same price.
@jon @ajinkyapdahale That's the eternal problem with mandatory reservations. Once passengers have been stranded once they'll just book extra spots as an insurance if the fee is low, which leads to inefficient occupancy and more passengers blocked from traveling...
Similar situations arise with bicycle reservations, exacerbated by having only a handful of bicycle spots on long-distance trains. Btw, I still need to finish and publish my blog post comparing bicycle reservation systems in Europe.
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@ajinkyapdahale €19 for Berlin-Strasbourg and €10 for Strasbourg-Dijon. But the cheapest regular ticket I could find for today was c. €150, so Interrail made sense
Passzuschlag is a special search on DB’s website
@jon magically, now it's showing the "seats only" reservation, but with a significantly less 5.50€ price. Is this different than the reservation with the global pass?
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Also on the Siemens builds good trains point
Desiro ML for SNCB is horrid - because SNCB ordered a terrible interior. Desiro ML for ÖBB is fine
Similarly a DB ICE 407 has a nicer interior but same engineering as a Eurostar e320
@jon As ÖBB Desiro ML have many wall-windowed seats I hate them as much as I do the Belgian ones.
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Also on the Siemens builds good trains point
Desiro ML for SNCB is horrid - because SNCB ordered a terrible interior. Desiro ML for ÖBB is fine
Similarly a DB ICE 407 has a nicer interior but same engineering as a Eurostar e320
@jon the bwegt bw battery Mireoa have seats matching the windows and lots of legspace. The mainline not
