Ticket gate, bag scan, UK passport check and France passport check took 17 mins total. The French passport check was the bottleneck.
But because Eurostar advises arriving 90 mins ahead the terminal is heaving with people.
I reckon arriving 45 mins before us the sweet spot now at St Pancras. Enough time to get through, but minimises time after security - where you might not get a seat.
@jon been there as well a couple of weeks ago - all beauty of rail travel lost in an overcrowded, underground waiting hall. If it was an airport, one could at least watch arriving and departing planes.
@acb@jon This is the worst when ridership is highest. I was in line for a while when I was traveling during the summer peak in 2018; they ended up giving up on reservations and just let passengers on trains on a first-come, first-on basis, since everything was an hour+ late anyway.
@jon@acb Eurostar has just opened a mini lounge which you can access if you don't have too much luggage. It's nested in between the arrival corridors near the platform end. They take you out of the main queue and send you to a side door to the left of the ticket offices... More seating space, quicker and free bottles of water (as there is no café).
@jon Gotta maximise the spread of covid some how, jamming hundreds of people together in a space they can't get out of for an hour and a half sounds like a good effort.
@jon Yeah, Eurostar at St Pancras manages to accidentally recreate much of the "airport" experience, which is a shame, it's actually a nice station outside the not-enough-seats waiting area.
@jon@Dasy2k1 yeah there are a few droplets of signal, like in the first 200m past the first 50m after St Pancras, and then a couple hotspots which you whiz by in a few seconds each.
Apparently British telcos fail to understand the concept of "antennas in a tunnel" or "cell coverage in Kent".
It's slightly less shitty (but still a lot) using 4G, but not by any appreciable much.
@jon Different service for LeShuttle then? There's a 5 year gap between me being on that and me taking the Eurostar so I can't compare directly. But for LeShuttle the WiFi worked very well.
Siemens Velaro / Eurostar e320 suspension bottoming out on the HSL between Calais and Lille… Siemens train + French high speed track laid to less stringent standards than German HSLs… 😳
#CrossBorderRail Autumn 2023 Train 18
EST 9024
13:31 London St Pancras - Paris Nord 16:47
Eurostar
Distance: 491km
Average speed: 216km/h
Train type: Eurostar e320, 16 carriages
⚡️
🚲: ⛔️ (only if disassembled)
🦽: ✅ (lift on platform)
🛜: ❓ (supposed to be, but seldom works)
🍽️: ✅
🧳: 🙂 (train is full but there’s enough space)
🧽: 🤔 (grimy outside)
Borders crossed: Calais-Fréthun 🇫🇷 - Ashford International 🇬🇧
@jon the Villa Opicina Border felt kinda weird with my EC in terms of operation.
I was in the EC Vienna - Triest.
From Vienna to Ljubljana we hat ÖBB Taurus pulling.
From Ljubljana to Villa Opicina a slovenian loco.
And the last 30min to Triest again an ÖBB Taurus.
And on the last stretch the train manager was someone from ÖBB Cargo 🤔😅
And I remember it not having lots of trains at that border and this 3 coach EC was pretty empty.
But the route is quite scenic! 😇
Also relating to the Siemens Velaro Eurostar e320 not being very smooth on French track at 300km/h, how are other non Alstom / non articulated designs?
How is Hitachi Frecciarossa 1000? Or in the future how will a Renfe Talgo 106 be? 🤔
@PGLux@jon The rule is not because the trains are bad but because trains with mandatory reservation have a tendency to make me grumpy. You end up in a near 100% full carriage in a backwards seats with an obstructed window and no chance to flee.
At least in Italy you can get out of this mess by being slow – although I suspect timetables in the south are a bit more French then I would like.
I’m intrigued by the laziness of train passengers. This train composed of 2 units is just over 200m long. At the station end it was standing room only 10 mins before departure. At the front I have 4 seats to myself. I’d walk the 200m for this every time. But clearly many would not.
@jon Depends how long you're going to be on the train, where you're getting off, and where the exit from the platform is? Some people might prefer to stand by the door they want to exit from in eight minutes' time.
@TimWardCam No stations have exit right at the back. And the first stop is Sens - 70 mins into the journey. Even were your exit theory correct, I would still walk at departure and destination to get a seat for >70 mins!
@jon And this is the good way - the bad is when you have been in the train before it fills and then lazy passengers will block the ways. I really don't get how standing on a moving train is better than moving through the train even with luggage. But then again, there's also a lot of people carrying luggage way heavier than they can lift.
My all the borders map has been updated, inc. the 7 #CrossBorderRail lines I have visited for the first time this week, and 1 - the channel tunnel - that has changed from orange (been there before) to pink (been there during my projects
@jon umap is a great tool. Got french public funding a few weeks ago. If you could, what border station attributes would you think helpful to publish right in the map and be searched by users?
What I think users could benefit from is geo coordinates mapped to umap out of a fully editable spreadsheet that contains anything you find useful during your research.
@wupatz i think there’s something in this. I’m gathering this data - more or less - anyway. The question is how I systematise it… I’ll think further on a long rail trip tomorrow.
@jon Ssshhh!!
Lots of us who prefer some solitude know this - keep it quiet or we'll be inundated with the lazy whining and complaining about why couldn't they have all the empty seats at the other end?, etc.🙄
@jon I recently had a highly irritating experience in which platform staff overcompensated for this dynamic by waving passengers up past some admittedly busy, but not full, carriages. The train got progressively busier until the final carriage was a standing room only crush.
@PGLux I went on that Chsmonix line ages ago, c 2006. Revisiting that is also a good idea. I’ll see what I can plan. More at the Austria-Hungary border might work too.
@jon Slovenia might be a bit hard right now, as there's lot's of construction ongoing, therefore replacment busses on many sections. But at least they publish everything online.
@jon
It is possible my judgement was influenced by the rapidly approaching hour of dinner time. 😋
I would love to be able to buy the flat rate EU wide train tickets that Macron has mentioned, and Volker Wissing supports for international travel by train:
"[...] der deutsche Verkehrsminister Volker Wissing (FDP) die Idee auf, das Deutschland- mit dem Frankreichticket zu kombinieren, perspektivisch ein solches Angebot für ganz Europa aufzubauen."
(https://www.heise.de/news/Frankreichticket-koennte-im-Sommer-2024-kommen-Wissing-fuer-Europaticket-9299007.html)
Napoli, here I come!
@jon@slothrop
There was so much chaos after the war. Boundaries, borders ,people were being shifted around, so why not a few train lines. It would be interesting to know the story
@jon In what seems like just too perfect a metaphor for Brexit, Wifi actually works fairly well on the French side, and practically never, on UK side. 😑
@jon
You actually can transport a bike on the Eurostar (and not disassembled) but you need to bring it before… unless they changed their policy since I did it last.
@jon@rikefranke Yes, as far as I know you now can only take a bike of any kind provided it's bagged and isn't longer than (I think) 90 cm in on dimension. Brompton good. Airnimal by the skin of its teeth.
@jon@rikefranke I think it may be related to the design of the new trains which no longer have a loco on the front with room to stash freight. With powered bogies (not sure what they're called) you can get two more carriages worth of passengers on board, at the expense of bikes. Maybe they need roof carriers. 😝
@sellathechemist@rikefranke Yes. Distributed traction. But now there’s EU law that any new train has to take bikes - so the next generation Eurostar will have to take them.
absoltely, and no need for an expensive tunnel, nor a massive amount of track that is in use for insignificant amounts of time, because the track chugs allong with the train - genius.
I always though it was different: ICEs to Paris 1-2x hitting the bottom really hard, while TGVs don't. So just different standards for the trains, not tracks;-)
@jon Maybe they’re using Three’s cellular network for backhaul, it’s been atrocious during my visit in London. Obviously overloaded. Plenty signal strength, but no bits!
@jon, how was it regarding your bicycle? Any questions asked? I’m still a tiny bit concerned about my upcoming travel with my slightly bigger folding bicycle in October.
@jon Depends on the train. I took the 18:04 to Rotterdam the other week. Joined check-in queue just before 17:00, got through all the controls just as they opened boarding for my train.
@jon
The piano guy was there as called by to drop a bag off earlier.
The city’s buzzing. I’m planning in whiling the afternoon away on a riverboat trip after lunch on the PoW Terrace 😉.
Add comment