Where’s The Beard News?
As a beard wearer for fifty years, I wonder if Harry will be hirsute tomorrow, like his great-great-grandfather, George V, was at his wedding.
This article in The Independent discusses the question.
It says this.
- Beards are not allowed with Army dress uniforms.
- The Queen is not a fan of beards.
But Harry is a Spencer, and there will be independent thought!
Oostende Station – 16th May 2018
I caught the train back to Brussels from the building site that is Oostende station.
I’v been to various stations in the last ten years or so, that are being rebuilt, including Berlin Hbf, Liverpool Lime Street. London Bridge and Stuttgart Hbf.
But not gave out the air that was shown at Oostende station.
- Information was non-existent.
- Floors were uneven and a hazard.
- Safety seemed a bit random.
- The toilets were tucked away from the station and run by a drogon, who demanded fees for something that looked very dubious.
It very much gave the impression that passengers were not very important.
Is this the best that Belgian Railways can do?
Eurostar To And From Amsterdam
On Tuesday I took Eurostar to Amsterdam.
The trip took three hours and forty-one minutes with stops at Brussels and Rotterdam.
The Brussels stop allows passengers to leave and join, but Rotterdam only allows passengers to leave.
As the number of passengers grow between London and Amsterdam, could there come a time, when some or all Amsterdam services don’t need to stop at Brussels.
If so, how much time would this save?
Current stops by Eurostar take the following times.
- Ashford – 9 mins.
- Calais – 3 mins
- Ebbsfleet – 6 mins.
- Lille – 14 minutes
These times have been calculated by looking at similar services that have different stopping patterns.
Note that, Calais and Ebbsfleet are faster as they are stops on the direct route.
So I suspect that if an Amsterdam service could go through Brussels without stopping, something between 9-12 minutes could be saved.
This could bring the journey time between London and Amsterdam closer to three and a half hours.
What would that time do for sales of tickets?
Eurostar Hold A Lot Of Cards
Eurostar are in a very good position on this route.
- They could run a flagship express service twice a day for those in a hurry.
- This could be backed up by slightly slower services calling at places from or to where passengers want to go. These would include Ebbsfleet, Ashford and Antwerp.
- Immigration and security clearance is probably under thirty minutes at the start of the journey and perhaps ten at the end.
- Immigration and security times will be reduced, as procedures get better.
- St. Pancras, Rotterdam Centraal and Amsterdam Centraal are all very well-connected stations.
- Extra services can be added as demand dictates.
- Eurostar is more diabled-friendly and those in smaller scooters can drive in!
- They could extend some Brussels services to Amsterdam.
- I estimate that just under 4,000,000 people live within the North and South Circular Roads and have easy access by public transport to St. Pancras.
They can also create a very intelligent booking computer system, that optimises their services. Budget airlines have been doing this for years.
What About The Airlines?
Note the numbers of passengers who fly.
According to Skyscanner, there are upwards of two hundred flights a day between London and Amsterdam. An Airbus A320 holds 150 passengers, so if there are only a hundred per flight, that is 20,000 passengers per day.
Looking at the 6th of June, Eurostar are running nine trains between London and Brussels. As each new Class 374 train can hold 900 passengers, that is around 8,000 seats per day.
So the airlines have much more capacity than Eurostar and they can add and remove it, easier than Eurostar can?
The Comfort Factor
I haven’t travelled in steerage on the new trains, as I always pay about thirty-forty pounds extra for Premium Economy, so I get the following benefits.
- A very pleasant gluten-free meal.
- A much more spacious environment.
- It’s also rare that I don’t get a window seat.
But if I did use steerage, it would be a more pleasant experience than flying on a budget airline.
I think it’s been about ten years since I flew to a city within a two-hour flight of London, where there was a rail alternative.
I also tend to come home by rail, where I often get a connection to Brussels or Paris to catch a late Eurostar to London.
Comparing London-Amsterdam With London-Edinburgh
Both routes take about four hours by train, with the Dutch route slightly quicker.
Generally, trains operate between London and Edinburgh half-hourly for much of the day, whereas Eurostar only runs twice a day.
Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Schipol Airport is surely a much bigger market in terms of possible passengers, than the Edinburgh catchment area.
I think we’ll see the astute Dutch, using Eurostar as a marketing tool to attract more passengers to the Netherlands and London’s next airport at Schipol.
Especially, as the British seem very happy with a four-hour train ride in comfort.
Eurostar Will Grow Between London And Amsterdam
For these and other rambling reasons, I think that Eurostar to Amsterdam will grow to be a successful route.
The one thing they must do, is to make it possible to come back to London, without having to clear immigration and security in Brussels.
But Eurostar know that!
Amsterdam Is Just The Hors D’Oeuvre!
Once Eurostar and the Dutch get the route between London and the Netherlands working smoothly, I don’t think it will be long before other routes are inaugurated.
Eurostar have said these could be.
- Bordeaux
- Cologne and Frankfurt
- Geneva
The key will be getting the immigration and security smooth.
I think it will continue to improve, as it seems to do, every time I travel.
Remember, the Belgians, Dutch, French, Germans and Swiss will want it to be smooth, as they will want to market their delights to a whole new market, so suspect a lot of co-operation, despite the decision of Brexit.
But, I think that a limit on a journey time of four or five hours would cut out a lot of other destinations.
Although many of the destinations like Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt, Geneva and Paris will be places to have an enjoyable day or two before taking another train ride further afield.
The 15:00 From Amsterdam Centraal To Berlin
This train that leaves Amsterdam Centraal just under two hours after the Eurostar arrives and can take you all the way to Berlin, arriving at 21:22.
But this train with a change at Osnabruck, gives you a stopping-off point to Bremen, Hamburg and the Northern part of Germany.
I first came across Osnabruck, when I was left there without a train by Deutsche Bahn, as I wrote about in From Hamburg To Osnabruck By Train.
But I found a delightful hotel on the station forecourt, called the Advena Hotel Hohenzollern.
Trip Advisor give it four out of five and currently say deals are available at under seventy pounds a night.
Osnabruck is not a tourist town, but it sits where the North-South and East-West rail routes cross.
Conclusion
As the network develops, I believe that a whole new form of tourism will take advantage.
Riding The Coast Tram
The Coast Tram in Belgium, runs along the whole Belgian coast and is the longest tram line in the world.
I took these pictures, as I rode it from Blankenberg station to De Panne station and then back to Oostende station.
From Blankenberge To Oostende
At Oostende station we changed trams before moving on to De Panne.
From Oostende To De Panne
There is a lot to see on this part of the route.
From De Panne To Oostende
Would you really want to call a theme Park Plopsaland?
I didn’t see anybody in the sea!
Ridership On The Coastal Tram
Despite the windy weather, the extended intervals due to the strike, the ridership was good.
There were people of all ages from schoolchildren, through teenagers and those going to work, to quite a few pensioners.
And like me, not all were from Belgium.
Wikipedia says this under Characteristics.
The service makes 69 stops along the 68 km line, with a tram running every 10 min during the peak summer months (every 20 min in the winter months), and it is used by over 3 million passengers. The service has recently been made more accessible by new low-floor centre sections to existing vehicles and a few new HermeLijn low-floor trams.
Given, that work was proceeding in several places, I feel the Coastal Tram has a sound future.
Blankenberg Station
The Coast Tram connects to the Belgian Railway network at Knokke, Blankenberge, Oostende and De Panne.
These pictures show Blankenberge station and tram interchange.
Blankenberge station and the tram stop are undergoing a degree of rebuilding and landscaping.
Note.
- The trams are metre gauge.
- They were a bit thin on the ground, as there was a strike.
- Many of the trams were covered in advertising, which made it difficult to see out.
I had taken a train from Bruges to Blankenberge.
In Bruges
I thought that I was passing the city, I should take a pit-stop in Bruges, with perhaps a gluten-free breakfast.
If you go to most cities in Germany, there is always a handy tourist office at the station.
As I didn’t know the city, I needed information on how to get from the station to the centre, which was a twenty minute walk.
If it hadn’t been for a helpful local man, who spoke impeccable English, I wouldn’t have found out that the buses were convenient, but you had to buy the tickets from the paper shop inside the station.
In addition, there wasn’t any visible staff at the station.
How tourist-friendly is that for a welcome to one of the most important sites in Belgium?
My gluten-free breakfast wasn’t very good either!
It came with ordinary bread and only the tea was good.
My argument is that if you advertise gluten-free, then make sure you can do it properly.
Finding a bus back to the station wasn’t easy to cap it all.
Conclusion
Don’t expect to turn up in Bruges on a train and spend a pleasant hour or two before moving on.
Unlike many cities in The Netherlands, Germany and Italy, the information lets you down.
Antwerp To Bruges
I took these pictures as my suburban train went between Antwerp Centraal and Bruges stations.
Note.
- The number of tall houses close to the railway.
- My train eventually went to Ostend.
- The route when through the town of Beveren, which gives its name to the Beveren rabbit.
- Compared to a UK route, like Ipswich to Cambridge, the route wasn’t busy.
When travelling by train in Belgium, the station names are sometimes different on the displays and your tickets, due to Belgium’s languages.
Around Antwerp Station
I took these pictures of the magnificent Antwerp station in the evening light.
I certainly haven’t seen a better station in Belgium.
Financial Trouble At TfL: Can It Stay Afloat?
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Railway Technology.
This is the first paragraph.
London’s public transport provider, TfL, is under increasing pressure. Not only has its government operating grant been slashed but a funding freeze is also expected to cost £640m across the course of the current mayoralty. Can TfL create the commercial income needed to keep it afloat or are there serious causes for concern?
The government is cutting subsidy to TfL, but Sadiq Khan knew that when he stood for Mayor.
So what did he do? He offered a fare freeze until 2020.
It looks like more fantasy Socialist accounting to me, to ensure victory in an election.
The article also says this about the future.
Nevertheless, TfL’s hopes for the future are pinned on the completion of its upcoming Elizabeth Line project, scheduled for the end of the year. The £14.8bn project, which will create a brand new line running underground across London, is expected to be a big revenue raiser. TfL predicts that ridership will increase from the current 46 million passengers on TfL Rail, to nearly 270 million by 2022-2023.
If these predictions are wrong, TfL will be in trouble.
For myself, I suspect that Crossrail will suffer with its own version of London Overground Syndrome, with passenger numbers much higher than predicted. In The Scottish Borders Have Caught London Overground Syndrome, I talked about an outbreak in the Scottish Borders, after the opening of the Borders Railway, and said this.
This disease, which is probably a modern version of the Victorian railway mania, was first identified in East London in 2011, when it was found that the newly-refurbished East London Line and North London Line were inadequate due to high passenger satisfaction and much increased usage. It has now spread across other parts of the capital, despite various eradication programs.
But for the Mayor to rely on that, is clutching at straws.
Sheffield Tram-Train Runs Onto Network Rail Infrastructure
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on Metro International.
This is the first paragraph.
One of Stagecoach Supertram’s Vossloh Class 399 Tramlink tram-train vehicles operated on the national railway network for the first time during the early hours of May 10.
It would appear that the tram-train is getting there.
The Anonymous Widower 