From Kassel To Frankfurt
I could have taken a German ICE train from Kassel to Frankfurt, but I took a regional train, hoping to get some good views from the top deck.
Unfortunately, as the pictures show, the weather wasn’t that good. But you do see the countryside better from the high position and the comfort and ride is of the same standard as something like the ubiquitous Class 377 in the UK.
One reason I took this train, was that I’d been told by the lady in the Tourist Office in Kassel to buy a Hesse Ticket.
My Hesse Ticket
I thought it was a bit steep at €33 for twenty-four hours, but it did include the buses and trams in Frankfurt and the train between the two cities.
The price actually included up to five passengers. But there is no similar ticket for a person like me, who usually travels alone.
How visitor-friendly is that?
A Train With The Engine In The Middle
As I left Kassel, I saw this train, which appears to have an engine module in the middle.
It is actually a Stadler GTW and it must be a good concept as over five hundred of them are working all around the world, in both diesel and electric versions..
One great advantage for passengers is surely that the noise and vibration problem of underfloor diesel engines is minimised. The train is also a low floor design.
The design is also very flexible.
- The power packs are probably interchangeable, so you could switch trains from diesel to electric according to need.
- A battery could be incorporated into the power pack, which is charged when running under wires.
- The articulated design goes well on curvy track.
- Extra passenger modules can be added.
- For the UK, they could be a way round not buying any more diesel multiple units. We would buy some diesel versions and if we had too many due to the march of electrification, we just swap the central module.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more trains with a central power pack. I think if the UK used the same loading gauge as Europe, we’d have seen one in the UK on test by now.
A Design Crime – Crap Station Design In Kassel
Some parts of Kassel’s urban tram system might well have been good, but these images of some of the stations, show the crap level of some of the design.
One thing that surprised me was the crudeness of some of the stations I visited, which just had steep steps and no lifts. This certainly wouldn’t be acceptable in the UK for a new station and I’m surprised that German disability rules allowed such a station design.
I nominate their stations as a Design Crime.
The Trams And Tram-Trains Of Kassel
Kassel’s urban tram system mixes both regular trams and larger tram-trains on lines that cross the city. I took these pictures as I sat in a cafe on the Königsplatz in the centre.
The smaller generally blue ones are trams, whereas the larger silver ones are the tram-trains, which have routes that reach far into the suburbs.
The passengers could be seen alighting, boarding and transferring between the various trams, very much as they do in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, East Croydon and Fitzalan Square in Sheffield. It is interesting to note that the current Sheffield Supertrams are more the size of Kassel’s tram-trains, rather than their trams. Comparing Sheffield to Kassel, it is a bigger city, but its tram network, is nowhere near the size of that in Kassel, which is about six times as large.
After sitting for half-an-hour or so, I decided to explore the outer reaches of the system on a tram-train.
One thing that surprised me was the crudeness of some of the stations I visited, which are shown separately in this post.
There also only seems to be a train in places only once every thirty minutes.
On the core section of the East London Line near where I live it’s sixteen trains per hour, and limbs of the line to places like West Croydon and Clapham Junction, there are four trains per hour. Like much of the transport in London, these trains are also step-free from the platform, which I think a modern transport system should be. As the picture shows there was a protected gap in Kassel, which would have been difficult in a wheel-chair.
Kassel seems to have about half London’s frequencies. This low frequency and the poor street access probably explains, why in the middle of a Monday, there wasn’t a large number of passengers about.
A Hauptbahnhof But Not As The Germans Know It!
Hauptbahnhof, which is often abbreviated to Hbf, is the German equivalent of Central.
But Kassel Hauptbahnhof is a station that the high speed line from Hanover to Wurzburg, ignored to call at a new station of Kassel-Wilhelmshohe. So as it now gets only a few trains, and has been transformed into a culture station, with a tram-train station underneath.
It struck me that the people of Kassel could find a better use for it, although the tram-train station appeared to work well.
According to Wikipedia it is the only Hauptbahnhof, that is not the main station for the town or city. So when you book a hotel in Kassel and you’re coming by train, make sure the hotel is by Kassel-Wilhemshohe station
My Hotel In Kassel
I stayed in the Golden Tulip Hotel Reiss, by the Hauptbahnhof.
On my checklist it scored three negatives.
The worst failure, is that although it is close to the station, the Hautbahnhof is now no longer the main station for Kassel. So I arrived at the other one and needed a taxi to get between the two.
Perhaps, this explains why the hotel wasn’t very busy.
London To Kassel
When I left the UK, my aims were to travel to Kassel, Karlsruhe and Strasbourg and a few other cities, I’d not visited before as a tourist.
I was also intending to see and ride on some of the tram-trains that seem to be used in the area.
I started my journey on a 73 bus and finished it in a taxi. More on why I used a dreaded taxi later.
These pictures tell the story.
In some ways it was an easy but boring journey, which because of the extremely dull weather past Liege there wasn’t much to see.
Personally, I can’t wait for a direct London to Frankfurt train, which would make trips like this so much easier.
The Anonymous Widower 