Would You Trust Italian Engineering?
The British Grand Prix was a bit of a farce today, as several drivers suffered tyre failures as the BBC reports.
Now Italians may be good at some things like food, parties and calendars, but it does seem that their engineering companies aren’t up to their past high standards at the moment. After all, I did report on the quality of products from AnsaldoBreda here.
I suspect that just as they have with their economy and their politics, there is a lot of rethinking to do.
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Authority had approved Denmark’s railway operator to put back into operation the fleet of 37 IC4s which had been withdrawn from service in November 2011.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.
Birmingham Curzon Street Station
Curzon Street station used to be Birmingham’s main station until the 1850s.
I took this picture, as my train arrived in New Street station.
Birmingham Curzon Street Station
If HS2 is built, it will become part of the station for Birmingham. It is after all a Grade 1 Listed Building.
Who’d Want To Drive From London To Birmingham?
The weather wasn’t good and there had been a severe accident on the M25, so it wasn’t a good day to drive!
Who’d Want To Drive From London To Birmingham?
I took the picture, when the M1 ran alongside the railway by Watford Gap.
A More Colourful Railway
Travelling all over Europe, as I have been recently, when you get on British Trains, you nothing how there is more colour everywhere. Watford Junction shown here, isn’t that bright in the rain, but there’s more colour and texture, than I’ve seen in Europe. Look at the dramatic, but colourless station in Liege.
A More Colourful Railway
The flowers at Watford seemed to be a bit down, but you’ll see lots of flowers on British stations. I can’t really remember them in Europe.
This also extends to metros and subways, where I don’t think I saw anything as bright as London’s, red, white and blue.
The Joy Of Birmingham By Train
An old friend phoned up last night and we decided to have lunch in Birmingham today.
So I got on the Virgin Trains web site and bought myself a ticket to Brum for this morning at nine last night for just £25.75, which gets me to New Street station in good time to walk to Carluccio’s. I should be in the centre of Birmingham about two hours after leaving home
I didn’t buy myself a return ticket, as I want to look at several things in the city and am unsure about, whether I’ll come home to either Euston or Marylebone. So I’ll buy a walk-up ticket in steerage, when I decide to come back.
I just used the Transport Direct web site to see how long it would take someone else to drive. They reckon it will be just under two and a half hours, but they recommend taking a fifteen minute break. The cost in a medium-sized petrol car is £20 plus the parking.
So cost is probably about the same, if you exclude the cost of ownership of the car, but the train is thirty minutes quicker. I can also use my phone and wi-fi.
My one beef at a lot of big stations, is that they don’t have a decent restaurant, cafe or pub, where you could have a quiet meeting, close by. Birmingham New Street is a special case, as they are rebuilding the station, but some don’t provide hardly anything except gluten-rich fast food. Manchester Piccadilly, Kings Cross and Waterloo are setting a standard, that all others should try to follow. Where for instance is a good Indian restaurant in a station?
A Decision Day For HS2?
HS2 is a project that I think will never be built.
I was listening to the debate on Radio 5 this morning about George Osborne’s £11. 5billion public pending cuts and one guy phoned in to question, why with the obvious need for cuts, we are going to spend £33billion on HS2.
There is so much opposition to HS2 amongst the Nimbys, that I suspect that at some time parliament will chicken out and vote the project down.
I have never heard so much opposition to a project, in my lifetime. But then the general public doesn’t want new railways, they want new roads on which to drive their gas-guzzlers.
I also think HS2 is probably going about things the wrong way, but as to what the right way is, I do not know.
But we do urgently need the following.
- More capacity on passenger trains from London to Manchester and onwards to Scotland. The case for Birmingham may be less important, especially, if services to Marylebone can be improved.
- More freight capacity through London and to the North, especially after London Gateway becomes fully operational.
- A rebuilt and more efficient Euston station.
The freight capacity cannot be increased without creating a substantial new railway.
It will be interesting to see the way that MPs vote.
Sensible Station Opening Hours
I saw this notice at Kings Cross station yesterday.
Sensible Station Opening Hours
Copenhagen please note!
From Osnabruck To Brussels By Train
On the Friday, I decided that I would go home the direct route, by taking a train to Brussels and then using the Eurostar.
By eight I was on the platform waiting for the 08:37 train to Cologne, for an onward connection to Brussels.
I waited and I waited! The only entertainment was several car carrying trains going through.
Car Carrying Trains At Osnabruck
i could have sworn that the same train went through first one way and then the other.
I did meet a German lady, who was probably a lot older than me and she was on her way to Paris, after a change at Cologne. Like me, she had a First Class ticket on the 08:37. Even with the advantage of her native tongue, she couldn’t even ascertain what was happening. We did get messages like this.
Zugdurchfahrt
Google Translate says it means train passes. Passes what? Wind? We were also treated to the site of trains going to Cologne that seemed to be running normally.
Hamburg Köln Express
But as these were the Hamburg Köln Express or HKX, our tickets weren’t valid. The HKX has Internet-only ticketing and runs what the lady said were clapped-out ex East German carriages. So it would appear that HKX is something like a German version of Grand Central, running trains in competition to the incumbent operator. But looking at the rust-buckets running on HKX and listening to the lady, they appear to be about ten classes below, those of Grand Central.
In the end we sat and waited on some of the most uncomfortable seats I’ve found in a public place.
Uncomfortable Seats
Seats are generally noticeable by their absence on German stations, as I suppose the operators assume that the trains turn up on time and you don’t need to sit down. Uncomfortable seats mean that stations don’t get cluttered with passengers. I suppose though, we could always have played hopscotch.
Hopscotch
But then I never have and don’t know the rules. And anyway like baseball (i.e. rounders), it’s a girly game. The words are Dutch and mean that the train leaves in 40 mins? – no problem.
They should be so lucky!
We waited for well over an hour and a half, before a train arrived. I got in and found that as the corridors were so congested with bags, it was like crawling through a tunnel to get to a First Class carriage, where I did find a seat next to an amiable German electrical engineer, who spoke excellent English. The highlight of the run to Cologne was catching a glimpse of the amazing Schwebebahn at Wuppertal.
A Glimpse Of The Schwebebahn
I think I might have done better to go to Wuppertal the previous day and ride up and down on this amazing train. I’ve ridden it before and there’s a video I made here.
At Cologne, I had to get my tickets endorsed for another train to Brussels, as my intended one was now probably on the way back from the Belgian capital. But I didn’t get the right endorsement, and for a moment, I thought, that I’d be thrown off the Thalys to Brussels. But I found a seat and just sat put, although I did lose my temper with a Frenchman, who said the seat was his. So he stood to Brussels!
For the last part, I decided to stand and moved to the end of the carriage, which like all trains of the past few days was full of luggage. But sitting on top of it, were a group of Canadians, who had ten minutes to catch the Eurostar out of Brussels.
At Brussels, I stood by, as cases went everywhere and just piled up on the platform.
But I’d made it back to civilisation from the hell of German railways. And for the first time since I took the Underground to Heathrow, reasonably on time too.
I’d also made it back from Osnabruck, without one word of apology from any of the staff I met.
All I expected now, was for Eurostar to get me to St. Pancras.
I
From Hamburg To Osnabruck By Train
Although, I was intending to go from Hamburg to Amsterdam, as I said in this post, things didn’t work out as I and probably Deutsche Bahn intended.
The train was a few minutes late out of Hamburg and my First Class carriage seemed to be missing from the German IC train I was on. (Note the missing E!) Or possibly I couldn’t get near it, as the aisles were blocked with cases. If I’ve complained about Virgin’s services to Glasgow in the past, then this was complete travel hell, that I’ve never encountered on British trains in the worst of times.
At Osnabruck, I was supposed to change onto another IC train for Amsterdam, but of course by the time we got there I’d missed it.
I waited for perhaps two hours on the station at Osnabruck and nothing seemed to be happening. There was no information posted and those in Information, told me to wait for the next Amsterdam train. But they had no idea of when it would arrive.
One lady, who lived locally, had told me that the hotel by the station wasn’t at all bad, so as I had nothing to do I took the precaution of seeing if they had any rooms. A pleasant fraulein told me they had a few at €80 including breakfast.
So about ten, I put myself out of my misery and booked into the Advena Hotel Hohenzollern.
Advena Hotel Hohenzollern
It was a decision I didn’t regret.
I thought that I might regret going to McDonalds for a bite to eat, but the fries and Coke had no effect. The trouble was that the information on the back of the paper on the tray is unreadable because it’s so small. So I assumed that they were as in the UK, and gluten-free! I did think though, that McDonalds were showing some very unsuitable adverts for their target clientèle.
On the other hand, breakfast in the hotel of fish, scrambled eggs, juice and coffee was excellent.
I would certainly use this hotel or one of the other, Advena hotels again. Also as a lot of the trains seem to go through Osnabruck, this hotel is a convenient place to break a journey.
The Anonymous Widower 