The main project trip starts at 11:20 at Berlin Hbf, but I am in Leipzig!
I’ve finally found a second hand Birdy bike for my future #CrossBorderRail projects! So I collected it early this morning, then I’ll drop it off at home, put the panniers on the regular red Birdy, and head to Hbf to start
This year: luggage 🧳 and cleanliness 🧽 added, and 🍽️ removed - I’m on regional trains, no dining cars 😢. 📶 is for wifi on board (I can’t assess mobile reception)
@jon@europaulb it’s in the symbols area of the iOS emoji keyboard but won’t show up when searching for wifi or WLAN. Wireless or drahtlos work, though.
@PGLux@weematt@diningcar there are few lines where using them makes sense. And will be even fewer by 2030. I’ve not been on one in ages - had forgotten how bumpy they are!
@jon@diningcar Best croissant I'e had on a train was on the #ICE. A #SNCF brioche in plastic wrapping and a Nespresso pod in a paper cup does not a breakfast make.
This RE 8 train Berlin Flughafen - Wismar (I am taking it Berlin Hbf - Bad Kleinen, at least 80% of its route, 226 km) shows both the upsides and downsides of #Deutschlandticket
As regional trains go it's not bad. It's quite speedy. Modern. There's wifi. But because it stops all over the place it's a lot slower than the ECs and ICs that also run here
A EC manages Berlin-Ludwigslust in 1 hour 16, this takes 2 hours 5 mins for that section
From what I gathered, one should calculate on average 1.5-2x longer travels with regional vs. high-speed trains across Germany. So while with a Supersparpreis the difference in cost might not be so large vs. a D-Ticket, from the 2nd trip onward just using regional trains will be a huge difference in cost.
@knud depends on the route. The better the infra is, the more the difference is! Also if there’s a Landesgrenze on route somewhere that slows things down even more as few RE trains cover multiple Länder (the Berlin-Brandenburg-Mecklenburg Vorpommern is a good counter example)
@i3ke Ich bin hier im Luxus-ODEG. Ein Stadler Triebwagen. Nicht die ältere Dieseltriebwagen um Görlitz… (Ich bin in Görlitz am Tag 13 von #CrossBorderRail)
North of Ludwigslust the lines fork. ICEs continue north west towards Hamburg, while this RE 8 continues due north to Schwerin, Bad Kleinen and Ludwigslust
When the Fehmarn Tunnel is done (more about that tomorrow!), Berlin-København trains will route this way avoiding Hamburg. So that’s why I’m taking this line today
First observation: there’s no PZB on this part of the line, so vMax 160km/h not 200/230km/h as between Berlin and Ludwigslust
@MovementOfThePeople This has a custom footbridge… But seriously - standardisation is ok, but think about users. It can be generic and still more charming and useable than this!
Did they need to leave this massive wasteland in the middle? There’s space for at least 4 tracks there. And it’s covered in scrubby bushes. I’m pretty sure if Netherlands were rebuilding a station like this they’d have thought of the aesthetics a little? Bad Kleinen
Oh this is fascinating. Thanks @6d03 for alerting me! A 1993 incident at Bad Kleinen against Rote Armee Fraktion members Birgit Hogefeld and Wolfgang Grams
Please do keep pointing out things like this about the places I’m passing! The odder the better!
The idea that København - Berlin trains are going to run through here once the Fehmarn Tunnel is done strikes me as… far fetched.
This Bad Kleinen - Lübeck line is a non electrified, single track branch line that serves tiny villages. You’d have to basically rebuild it all from scratch to run ICEs and 740m long goods trains through here
Given Germany’s reluctance to renovate infra… well, I’ll believe it when I see it!
Set aside whether Germany should fundamentally reconstruct rail infra a moment.
I think Germany does rail on tiny branch lines comparatively well.
Were this line in Spain it’d have been shut. In France it’d have 3 trains a day at times no one can use, but here it’s every hour. Czechia or Poland have trains like this, but they’re slower and the ride bumpier.
So given the lack of investment, this is actually as good an outcome as is possible.
@jon Yeah, the problem here is underinvestment in the core intercity lines. It's especially frustrating, because the stronger connecting lines than those of France and Spain mean the ridership boost from a complete high-speed rail network is greater...
And this is a bit absurd if you think about it - Kiel (246k) is the biggest city in Schleswig Holstein. Lübeck (211k) the second largest. 80km between them. And they’re connected by a single track non electrified railway…
Ok, infra in Schleswig Holstein is organised towards Hamburg, but this still ought to be better than it is!
Edit: there is some double track north of Eutin. But the basic point holds!
Störtebeker Baltik Lager. Golden and caramel-ish, malty. It’s one of the best mid price beers in Germany I think (Störtebeker Pilsner is also excellent)
@jon Oldenburg Is nice little place. Have been there a few times when visiting weissenhuiser strand with family :-)
What do you know about DSB international plans?.
They have bought a lot of Talgo trains. Now mit "steuerwagen"
@jon In your talk you mentioned the lack of regional trains between france and italy, so that you have to travel by high speed train.
As far as I can see, the same happens in the very center of the EU. Try to take a direct train from Aachen to Liege. You can choose between Thalys, ICE and even NightJet. There are as many direct connections per day between Aachen and Liege as there are direct connections between Cologne and Brussels.
@jon Otherwise you have to make the 40km in around 1h using at least 2 regional trains or busses. Aachen (250k) and Liege (200k) are the two biggest cities in the so called EuREGIO Maas-Rhein, yet there is no direct connection by REGIOnal train. It's almost the same level of irony as putting the european rail agency near a dead-end track (as you showed in your talk)
@jon This reminds me of all the NOTSTOP on the Wiener U-Bahn (since then, the NOTSTOP signs/handles have been replaced with STOP signs/handles, as far as I could tell).
@jon So you asked for tidbits: due to the final training camp of the football national team in the run-up to the 1974 World Cup (in which the German team won the title) the "Geist von Malente" established here became a fixed term for German soccer culture.
@olifantoliver Right. I went to the Stadler Pankow factory last year where they were making the trains for it ;-) But that’s not going to fix the capacity and lack of reliability due to the single track sections (that are 70% or so of it!)
@jon oh right, the single track sections. They have been reduced in the last few years already to allow for a higher frequency and faster travel, but that's of course not enough. This line has a lot of potential, SH only has to want to use it. ;)
@jon I'd have expected a Kiel-Lübeck connection to go via Neumünster and Bad Segeberg, but it turns out there's no track between Bad Segeberg and Lübeck at al...
@jon This is (obviously) for historical reasons. Lübeck was its own city state until 1937. Most of its railways were still private until about that time (only to Bad Kleinen was state railway). Consequently, the line from Kiel didn’t go to Lübeck but to Neustadt. It connected in Eutin to the Eutin-Lübecker Eisenbahn, private until 1941. There was a lot of through-running already back then between Kiel and Lübeck, but this wasn’t exactly a line anyone focused on.
@jon Yes. But the railway network hasn’t changed in those other than a couple high-speed lines and a few extra S-Bahn tracks here and there. So if something got screwed up in the 1880s, it will generally still be.
(And the network wasn’t great then either. They finally started to improve it around 1910 but then the rest of the first half of the century happened and so we still have a network that was already problematic a hundred and fifty years ago.)
@PGLux The plan was explicitly NOT to run Kbh - Berlin via Hamburg, as the tracks from Lübeck into HH Hbf are overloaded. Hence why going via Bad Kleinen is still officially the policy.
@jon@PGLux
in the 3rd Gutachterentwurf of #Deutschlandtakt the direct trains Berlin-Copenhagen are cancelled. In the Evaluation document it is written down, that's why the doubling of the track near Grevesmühlen, which is "not economical", can be skipped.
That was one of the biggest setbacks between 2nd and 3rd Version.
DB does not like bushes. They tend to burn when breaks of cargo trains malfunction and spark.
Many municipalities still design their stations as anti-people places because they don't want youth and/or homeless people to hang out there.
Also it's not for people it's for cars: This clearly has a P&R parking space adjacent to it, right? Cars don't care!
Proper, inviting planning is probably more costly. It's not about the standardised parts, it's the architect hours you pay for that would make it more expensive.
@jon My guess would be that that’s where the old station building used to be. It was quite charming but obviously would have needed money for renovation and then an idea what to do with it.
@jon It was in the centre between the two platforms. Check Google Map’s aerial imagery, that still has the old situation with the building present. Essentially: the basic track layout hasn’t changed from before. They just removed a few tracks and points.
@jon the Station "Schwerin Mitte" is on lower ground as normal ground. I think this and the buildings around results in Bad mobile Signal. I live very nearby and have 5g.
@prefec2 right. And even Schwerin-Ludwigslust is not in a great way. So I am not sure how this is meant to work! But this is why I am here - to document these things
@jon Is PZB the only limiting factor for a higher Vmax? That should be relatively easy to retrofit. But if they have to change the curve radii or cant, that probably won't happen.
@jon At least it feels like this is also because on this line the train has to go over 60 (or even 40?) kph points into and out of every of the many stations.
@cfauske Sure. But better then on small local lines too. A slow train on a sanitised semi high speed line like this, especially because the landscape isn’t super interesting either, is the worst of all worlds!
@jon If you come across Snack services or trolleys, maybe add a bonus 🥤🍪 ? I really appreciate when they have some and buy something because they may take them away again if no one uses them.
@kupfers Sure. But I think there are only 2 of those in the project! Maybe there’s a train with a vending machine somewhere? (Berlin RE1 used to have that)
@jon sorry if you already explained somewhere and I missed it, I’m curious why you can’t assess mobile reception.
For me that data has huge value and I’d love to contribute to it somehow, as connectivity in Germany is mostly bad and it is hard for me to plan calls ahead of a day travel.
I love the French ARCEP maps for example. https://monreseaumobile.arcep.fr/
They are detailed enough they even enable planning video calls during train trips :)
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