Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-02-19 08:45:52 - Graham Ellis
"Sorry about the small delay to your journey this morning. This is waiting for platform to become available at Manningtree Station. As soon as I have more information I'll pass it on to you". Yes - we're back in the UK and the very first train we're on is delayed. I'm not sure if that's a co-incidence or a pattern.
Yesterday, we traveled from the town of Sulzbach (Taunus) by train to Hoek van Holland for the overnight boat to England. There are several places called Sulzbach so you may not immediately find "ours" in a search; it's a township with a population of around 8,000, around 10 to 15 miles from Frankfurt. During the Day, there's an hourly train (every 30 minutes in the peak) each way - shuttling between Frankfurt Hocst and Bad Soden, both of which are on the S-Bahn from the city ... so it's a small connecting line. Alas, I start to draw parallels to Melksham's situation with regards to train service and, alas, Melksham shows up as being short-changed in a quite dramatic way yet again. Three times the population, one tenth the service - so Sulzbach has thirty times the service per person.
At Hoest, we changed into the regional train for Koblnez via Wiesdbaden. At Kobelnz into the Intercity train that was going all the way to Hamburg, but we changed at Dusseldorf into the Hamm to Venlo (via Monchengladbach) service; at Venlo, just across the Dutch border, we changed onto Dutch National Rail.
I read our schedule ahead of time with a little misgiving - there were allowances of just a small handful of minutes to switch from one train to another in what I (correctly) anticipated were large operating hubs, and one of the trains in particular was a very long distance express. But I need not have worried, the whole thing ran like clockwork as I suspect it does every hour. We got seats on all the services, though the Hamm to Venlo train had standees for much of the way (it was mid afternoon on POETS day, after all).
The price wasn't too bad either - 400km, 117 Euros for 2 people = 14c/km. That's the whole journey Sulzbach to Hoek van Holland, booked via a single site request, but supplied as two tickets (and cheaper than the site had quoted) as a split / specific trains made us a good saving.
Impressed by the Germans? Yes - but not half as much as impressed by the Dutch. Our long distance express from Venlo to Rotterdam ran every half hour - long train, and busy on the Friday afternoon At Eindhoven, it comes in alongside the Maastrcicht to Amsterdam Express, again every half hour. One of the trains stops for four minutes, the other for just two, and there's the most enormous interchange flow between them. I'm sure the locals have some grumbles, and I'm sure there's reasons it can't be done in the UK ... but I found myself comparing and contrasting to the half hourly Chippenham to London train, and how it doesn't do very will in connecting into the services to Oxford, and to the north, at Didcot.
And another view of Dutch Railways. The "Sprinter" - a rather nice, fast, modern, tramish 3 car setup - for Hoek van Holland leaves from platform 1A - yes, a bay at the end of the station. People are running up the platform to catch the train, and the lady conductor holds her door opened for them and encourages them into a sprint for the final few yards. And I recollect (on the way down) a train that was held for five minutes for a connection. This all sounds like the most natural thing in the world, doesn't it? Well - the UK story tends to be "train must leave on time" and the reasons given are "we are penalized if we don't" (which I believe), "it's more complicated in the UK" (which I don't think I believe) and "it will lead to knock-on delays" which certainly didn't happen to us as we pulled into Hoek van Holland - exactly on time, after our 6 train journey.
"People used to use our line a lot on Saturdays for days out in London" says the gent we got chatting to on the train this morning "but with all the engineering works that have been going on to improve the line, and bus substitutions, they have stopped doing that ...." Truly, the impression given of how we do trains and how the Germans and Dutch to them is rather different.
It's now 08:45 .. and we're due to be pulling in to Liverpool Street in London.
Actually "We are now approaching Shenfield. Please change here for services to Southend Victoria and Southminster". Hmmm ...
Update for the record ... we were 20 minutes late into Liverpool Street