A Train Builder With Form
I have been following the farce of the Fyra trains between Brussels and Amsterdam with interest. Modern Railways this month, gives a very full account of the problems and the big row between the Dutch and the Belgians and the Italian company; AnsaldoBreda who built the V250 trains. These trains were incidentally called Albatross by the makers.
I’ve just been reading about AnsaldoBreda on Wikipedia. It says this about the problems the company has had with an order for IC4 trains for Denmark.
Delivery of 83 IC4 trainsets for the Danish State Railways DSB was originally planned for 2003-2006. As of March 2013, 22 trainsets have still not been delivered,[52] On 2 July 2012, the DSB announced that the Transportation Authority had approved Denmark’s railway operator to put back into operation the fleet of 37 IC4s which had been withdrawn from service in November 2011. In December 2011, it was reported that one of the missing IC4 trainsets planned for delivery in Denmark was found in Libya. Reportedly, AnsaldoBreda and then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi gave Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi the trainset as a present on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Gaddafi’s revolution in 2009.
I suppose now, it doesn’t work, as there is sand in the bogies!
No wonder the Dutch and the Belgians bought a load of dud trains, that go bunga bunga!
Incidentally, I was led to look up AnsaldoBreda by looking at the progress of the Midland Metro extension to Birmingham New Street station. I found that the same Italian company had sold a load of dodgy trams to the Brummies. The details are here.
Impressive Structures At Liege Station
In this home run from Stockholm, I didn’t see any good modern station architecture, until I got to Liege station.
Impressive Structures At Liege Station
So why can’t the Swedes, Danes and Germans, do what the Belgians obviously can?
Belgians Give Up On Fyra
The Belgian government has pulled out of the Fyra project to run high speed trains between Brussels and Amsterdam. It’s reported here.
This sorry story has a lot of lessons for governments, who try to implement large projects.
Building railway lines and in particular high-speed lines is not difficult, except for the odd local political and environmental problems, as HS1 found in Kent and HS2 is now finding. But the actual line generally works well from an engineering perspective, with the possible exception of the Wenzhou crash in China, where signalling may have been at fault. None of the high speed train crashes in this country, were caused by engineering problems on new lines.
The main problems with Fyra are all about using new unproven trains. No sensible project manager would ever use unproven technology at the heart of a new project. You could argue, that Boeing used an unproven battery system on the Dreamliner. But look what happened there!
The other major problem with Fyra is that they discontinued the traditional services between towns like The Hague and Brussels, thus alienating a lot of their target market.
So when you do a large project, make sure that it fits the aspirations of your customers.
If we look at HS2 to Birmingham, the technology to be used to build the line will be very much proven, as hopefully will be the trains, which will probably be derived from something that is working well in the UK or Europe.
The line too, will be an addition to the current services between the two cities. This in itself removes a lot of risk from this line, as say there is a problem that cuts capacity on HS2, you don’t have only one basket for your eggs. I also believe the competition from such as Chiltern and Virgin trains and their successors, will make sure that HS2 is competitive and reliable. Those two services, will also act as valuable feeder services to HS2, as say you live in Banbury and want to go to Leeds, you’d hop to Moor Street station in Birmingham and then take HS2 to Leeds, when that section of the line is completed.
Fyra Explained
I have just found this detailed explanation of the Fyra fiasco on the International Railway Journal.
The title of the article is “Fyra problems could be more political than technical” and it starts and finishes with the simple phrase, “What a Mess!”
We may create the odd mess in the UK concerning the trains, but usually it blows over in a couple of days as all the underlying technology is sound and managers and politicians come up with a quick solution.
To cap it all, isn’t the Fyra train one of the most ugly ones, we’ve seen in a long time?
The Fyra Farce Goes Worldwide
I’ve just been notified of two articles about Fyra; the Dutch/Belgium high-speed train from Business Traveller and Cleveland.com.
I’ve also had a look on the Eurostar web site. They’re saying this.
To travel to the Netherlands book your Eurostar to Brussels first and then your Thalys train from Brussels to Amsterdam, Schiphol or Rotterdam.
I suppose they’re only telling you what is possible.
Let’s face it London to Amsterdam is probably only a similar distance, as London to say Perth in Scotland. I haven’t done that journey but I know it would be one web purchase not two, as incidentally so would London to Geneva on Eurostar’s web site, changing in Paris.
It’s a complete mess and it seems to be getting worse, with little leadership or common sense being shown.
Fyra Suspended
The launch on the Fyra trains between Brussels and Amsterdam, must rank as one of the worst launches of any train services in the last few years. We’ve had a few bad ones in the UK, where reliability has been questioned and we’ve also had problems with the wrong kind of snow, but nothing, which seems to have been hated by so many as this train has. The BBC tries to explain the mess here.
If we are going to go back to the future, let’s hope that Eurostar are able to reinstate their beautifully simple ticket to Any Dutch Station.
I will be first in the queue to buy one!
If they don’t I’ll just go by train to that jewel of the Essex coast; Southend, get in an orange aeroplane and hop across to Schipol. The Belgians, Brussels and the planet will all be losers.
Is This The Wrong Name For A Train?
The Dutch and the Belgians have given the new high speed train linking Brussels and Amsterdam the name Fyra. Here’e what Wikipedia says about the origin of the name.
The name Fyra represents pride, and is derived from the Dutch and French words fier/fière, both meaning proud.
Pride or proud is not a name that would be high on an Englishman’s choice, as pride comes before a fall. I think it’s from the bible!
Saying that various ferries across the Channel have been named Pride of Dover, Calais etc.
I do suppose the Dutch and the Belgians had a problem here, with their various languages. But then in the UK, some of our fastest trains; Class 390 Pendolinos, keep their Italian names.
Someone has just told me that the Dutch have another name for the train. This is the first paragraph from the story.
The Fyra is actually a high speed of Aldi. If you have a cheapest possible train orders, you get those too.
I wonder what Aldi thought of the free publicity.
Booking A Train Ticket To The Hague From London
The last time, I went to The Hague, I just went to the Eurostar site and booked one ticket to Any Dutch Station.
But now, this simple system has been discontinued at the behest of the Dutch government. For what reason, I will not speculate although, I have had various opinions given to me by my Dutch friends. I’ll give my view after I return from The Netherlands.
So this time, I’ve booked a single ticket to Brussels on Eurostar.
The train I shall be riding on Tuesday, will get me to Brussels just after mid-day. I shall be trying to buy a ticket to The Hague on the convenient 13:18 departure between the two capitals, when I arrive in Brussels.
It’s a real downgrade from the previous service, in that I shall have to change trains at Rotterdam as well. The direct train has been discontinued. I’ve taken that train several times and the standard is similar to what I you get on the fast London to Ipswich and Norwich trains.
So I’ll be getting a quicker high-speed train, but I’d prefer a direct train. In the UK, when I go say from London to Liverpool, I always book direct trains for convenience. I also don’t want to have to wait on a cold platform for a train to arrive. The connection in Rotterdam might be easy, but I’ve only been to the station there, some years ago and can’t remember it.
I thought for safety, I would book a later train in case, I couldn’t fathom out how to buy the ticket in Brussels.
So I went to the SNCB web site to book one. Incidentally, Eurostar allows you to enter Rotterdam into their site, but doesn’t allow you to book tickets, just telling you that there are no tickets available. To find where to book, I looked up how on Seat 61, which gave me the address of the SNCB web site to book the ticket from Brussels to The Hague.
Just imagine someone having to book a ticket urgently, for either business or family reasons and wanting to get to say Utrecht. They would give up or just book to Brussels knowing or even just thinking that they could get a train from there.
So I looked up the SNCB web site and found these trains from Brussels to Den Haag.
13:18 – Dutch high speed train – 15:02 – £21.42
13:52 – Thalys – 15:26 – £38.47
13:56 – Local Train – 2 changes – 16:41 – £24.35
15:18 – Dutch high speed train – 17:02 – £21.42
So by travelling on the slow Dutch train, you have two changes and pay more.
In the end I bought a ticket on the 13:56.
But I had to pay an extra booking fee, just like you don’t do on any British train booked on the train company’s web site. Although I had to pay a similar amount on Eurostar.
The ticket is two sheets of A4 paper, one for each leg of the journey. We may go on about the old British Rail-era orange tickets, but they fit nicely in a wallet.
What do you do incidentally, if you’re booking these tickets on a laptop on a train coming to London to get the Eurostar? Or you’re doing it late at night, and the printer runs out of paper?
I don’t think the SNCB web site gave you an alternative.
How Times Change
This was posted in the local newsletter.
The Rosemary Branch is looking to borrow a gentleman’s pipe from the 1950s for use a prop for an opera opening tomorrow. If you can help, you will get a couple of free tickets from a grateful Cec at the Rosie.
My father had loads of pipes in the 1950s. The last time I saw anybody smoking a pipe, it was clamped between a Belgian’s teeth as he drove towards me going the wrong way down a Belgian motorway.
Bilingual Signs
I’ve said before that I don’t like bilingual place names. Mainly with concern to Belgium, where they suddenly change language of the signs to the place you are going. In one case it led to a detour of about fifty kilometres.
Take this sign in Cardiff station.
Cardiff or Caerdydd
Surely, it should be in English or Welsh but not both! If the inhabitants of the city want Welsh to be the name, then so be it! An interesting example is London, where although there is a French name for the city, most French of my acquaintance, have used the English form, when speaking to me.
Obviously, where there can be confusion, like this informational sign both common languages are needed.
Bilingual Information Sign
In a few years time incidentally, this sign will be unneccessary as new regulations will mean that toilets will not be able to flush directly onto the track.
The Anonymous Widower 