Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Railways

Bratislava to Vienna – Rail Journey

The journey between Bratislava and Vienna is relatively easy, it’s a train that runs every hour which doesn’t require a prior reservation and there’s only one class of ticket available. There are delays at the moment electrifying the line in central Bratislava, so that meant that I had to take the REX6 train from Bratislava Petrzalka station.

The whole thing did seem a little dated and as if it was last restored in the 1980s, but it was clean and the signage was clear. I purchased a single ticket from the ticket office and managed to somehow get a return ticket (maybe they just wanted me back), but that has worked out well. They could ideally use some ticket machines though to smooth this element out.

Mine was the 15:16 train.

My train was departing from Platform 1 and I realised that it arrived early, so I thought I’d go and have a look at it.

In a typical European compromise, half the train is Slovakian and the other half in Austrian. This is the Slovakian bit.

And here’s the Austrian bit.

The Austrian half had no tables, no power points and no air conditioning. It was also noticeably dirtier than the Slovakian half, but that must have been bad luck as I can’t imagine they have different cleaning teams (or maybe they do….).

Which meant that I went to sit in the Slovakian half. There’s nothing decadent about either half of the train, neither have First class and neither have catering.

I’m not convinced that this is the best place to put the power outlet, but there we go.

Safely into Vienna’s main station on time. It was a smooth journey, costing just under £10 and taking just over an hour. There are no ticket barriers, but my ticket was checked en route and the staff member seemed friendly and personable, with the whole arrangement feeling organised with announcements in Slovakian, German and English. Crossing borders has never been so easy…..

June 30, 2025
Gdansk to Warsaw Rail Journey – PKP Intercity

I’ve done this rail journey before, but since I was enthused by my trip on Lithuanian trains last week, I thought I’d compare and contrast how the Poles do it. There are two main types of Intercity service in Poland, I went on the cheaper one of the two as I can’t afford to be too decadent, but that is relevant to bear in mind. The two are the Express Intercity Premium (EIP) using Pendolino trains and the more standard Intercity. I started from the rather glorious Gdańsk Główny railway station which has recently gone under a major overhaul. It was built in the early 1900s and has that glorious Neo-Renaissance look, all a bit Prussian with a touch of Hanseatic drama, like it’s trying to impress its then German parents.

The main hall has been faffed about with quite a lot, but it remains an impressive structure and numerous people were taking photos of the interior. Obviously including me.

They’ve put a lot of seating into the railway station and plenty of power points, although these departure boards weren’t working.

The tracks and the city’s coach station is nearly visible in the background. Integrated transport and all that, all very positive, especially as the trams and city buses sweep past the front of the station.

The restoration work doesn’t seem to be complete as two of the large halls are empty and the track is still fenced off at this point. I’m not quite sure what the plans are, but they’ll likely involve some more shops and eating options as there aren’t a great deal in this station as opposed to somewhere like Krakow’s main railway station.

One of the empty grand rooms. There isn’t a luxurious first class lounge here as there was in Vilnius, or at least, not one that I could use.

Also not working, but the yellow posters with all the train times were up, so that’s all that I needed.

And I found a working departure board, my train was the 15:57 to Łódź. They like to advertise the platform numbers in advance in Poland, unlike the UK where they like to keep it a secret (unless you use the third party app which tells you).

I like this system of giving a platform number, a track number and then a sector. Numbering on quite a lot of UK railway stations is confusing, somewhere like Cambridge is a case in point.

And since I’ve gone down that rabbit warren, here’s a map courtesy of Greater Anglia. Platform 1 is the same as platform 4 and the same as platform 4a, but 2 and 3 are up to the left and 4 and 5 to the right. Then platforms 7 and 8 are over the footbridge. The Polish system would be much better here, you’d have Platform 1 as everything from 1 to 6 (which are then individually numbered) and Platform 2 as both 7 and 8. They’d then be split into sectors.

Waiting on the platform, there’s lots of seating around.

Boarding in coach 10 which it stated during the ticket purchasing process would be at the front of the train, so I knew roughly where to stand.

The seats are 2*1, with every set of seats (whether a couple or individual) having its own power outlet and bin. It was all clean and tidy, not least because there were bins everywhere, it was all a delightfully neat setup that gave off strong “organised European” energy.

Settled in for the journey and Poland is another of those countries where the seat reservations just work. I witter on about this, but on nearly every UK train where people are forced to get reservations there are arguments, often quite bad arguments. Many people ignore the seat reservations and there is tension when they’ve asked to move after they’ve settled in. In Poland, everyone sits where they’re supposed to sit. Many UK rail companies have given up with seat reservations entirely, not least Greater Anglia, but they might as well all give up if they’re not going to actually make them reliable. As an aside, as a top tip, I never sit in my reserved seat in the UK, I find the carriage which has no reservations (usually marked on certain third party apps) and sit there, it’s usually nearly empty as other people are trying to sit near their reserved seat.

Crossing the river at Tczew, which I visited in 2022 because I wanted to see the bridge. We also went past the impressive Malbork Castle although no photos of that as it was on the other side.

I had opted for the single seat and it was all sufficiently spacious with plenty of leg room. There was a small victory that my fluent Polish (mainly counting from 1 to 100 so I know when they call out the order number at fast food locations and also knowing the word for Wednesday) seemed to fool the guard that I was Polish. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

And safely into Warszawa Centralna railway station which I’ve written about many times, this photo is of the train whilst I was on the travelator thing. I then discovered it was a Public Holiday (Corpus Christi) and the supermarket I planned to go to was shut. But I went to a Żabka convenience store instead and nearly broke the self-service scanner trying to buy a pistachio mullermilch.

This first class rail journey was around £17, which seems reasonable value to me. UK rail trips of the distance can be this price, but you can routinely get £17 fares on the Polish rail system for this journey even booking on the same day, which don’t require you to book three weeks in advance and go via their equivalent of Crewe (I’m not sure where that would be actually, maybe Kutno) with six split tickets. I do like the Polish network, it wasn’t quite as decadent as the train that took me from Vilnius to Kaunas, but it was still a very positive experience. Also, people on Polish trains don’t seem to feel the need to play music loudly from their phones or put their feet on seats…..

June 20, 2025
London – Turn Up Rail Fares in East Anglia in 2008

I’ve just found this old scan when clearing down my Evernote archive and I vaguely remember these prices when One Anglia ran the rail network in the East Anglia region. These are back from 2008, just before One Anglia was rebranded and this was when they were trying to make the walk-up fares seem affordable. It was still of course much cheaper at the time to book tickets in advance, although I note that the prices for accompanied kids has soared since then.

May 12, 2025
Little Gifts from Network Rail

Interrupting my riveting series of posts about concrete, thank you to Network Rail for these 🙂 I shall carry them both about and the bug thing might well appear in a few photos until I get bored of it or its head falls off.

December 12, 2024
Little Thameslink Debacle

I like to break into proceedings for a little complaint, it makes me feel better.

Here I am with a rail ticket to board the 15:36 at London St. Pancras to Bedford and two Thameslink gateline staff have rejected the ticket saying it’s invalid with their service, refusing me access to the platforms. The Thameslink staff said that my ticket wasn’t valid on their service, only the EMR service. The details on my ticket read:

“Board the 15:36 service to Bedford (Thameslink). (G50426 service details)”

Now, I always fear I’ve made a mistake, as I do that quite a lot, so I thought I’d better check first with the ticketing company, Trainsplit. They’ve already checked for me and they’ve told me that Thameslink are in breach of the National Rail Conditions of Travel and the information they were supplying was wrong.

Here’s the details of the 15:36 train that the gateline staff said wasn’t an actual service. After claiming the 15:36 was definitely an EMR service, the gateline staff did let me through in the end (I think one of the staff had a moment of realisation that the only 15:36 service departing the station was their Thameslink service) but warned me that my ticket wasn’t valid and I might be asked to buy another one. I haven’t heard so much piffle since listening to Liz Truss prattling on about something she didn’t understand, but the railway wonders why people get confused. If I had followed the instructions of the gateline staff I would have been liable for a fine from EMR for travelling on a service that I didn’t have a ticket for which feels very sub-optimal given all the confusion over ticket prosecutions at the moment.

Merrily on board the 15:36 (albeit delayed).

December 9, 2024
Rail Journey : Liverpool to Luton (with changes at Crewe, Long Eaton, Leicester, Kettering and Bedford)

I have a slight problem at the moment with rail travel and that’s trying to keep the fares down whilst I’m travelling around the country. I’m simultaneously too young and too old to have a railcard and the fares can be challenging without using some ingenuity of split ticketing. I’ve also been hitting delay repay claims with some frequency recently and have had three turned down or refunded at a different amount, but all three fully reinstated on appeal due to ‘operator error’ or similar phrases. They don’t really have much choice as the Conditions of Carriage are very clear and it’s a bit of a faff, but we get there in the end.

So, mostly for my own amusement, here’s the story of today and endless changes of trains….. It’s actually evident to see why rail operators are struggling to unpick some of these delay repay claims and today’s will be another one when East Midlands Railways get it this weekend.

That’s not a great photo of Liverpool Lime Street, although I was taking photos to remind me at what time I was at each station. Half of the station has gate lines, the other half doesn’t and this was one of those tracks, track 6. Incidentally, on the way into Liverpool, we stopped at Broad Green railway station and I looked at the station history on Wikipedia (yes, I do this a lot) and discovered that it’s the oldest railway station in the world that is still operating, having opened in 1830. On that theme, Liverpool Lime Street is the oldest still operating grand terminus mainline station in the world, opening in August 1836.

The first train of the day was on time, the 10:08 West Midlands Train service to Crewe.

I liked this train, relatively empty and there were power points which are useful for journeys such as this. There was a passenger on board telling his friend Tony (he said the word Tony at the end of every sentence so I soon got to know Tony’s name) who gave a near constant verbal flow of railway facts on our journey. To be honest, I found it all quite interesting, so fair play.

Crewe, it’s not my favourite place in the world if I’m being honest, but I wasn’t leaving the railway station and so it didn’t much matter.

Here’s the EMR train service to Long Eaton.

More power points and an annoying customer who was playing music loudly sitting opposite. I’m generally quite immune to these things, but when it’s so loud it’s over the volume of my headphones, it probably is a bit much. Someone else sat opposite and stared at him, which meant he later on stopped, so that was a relief for us all.

Only here briefly, but a quick photo at Stoke railway station to send to Łukasz who sometimes meets me here. The train was delayed into Long Eaton, but this didn’t much matter as the one I needed to connect to was also late and was coming in on the same platform.

Long Eaton railway station which was opened in December 1888 as Sawley Junction.

An information board about Midland Railway Sheet Stores.

Right, I can still get the 12:40 because it’s going at 12:46.

Here it comes sweeping in to take me to Leicester.

And there’s Leicester in all its raw beauty and there’s been a railway station on this site since 1840.

This train into Leicester was busy and I couldn’t get photos inside and it was running fifteen minutes late, meaning I’d miss my connection. But, as luck would have it, the train I was connecting to was once again also late and coming in on the same platform. I boarded three different trains today that had an end destination of London St Pancras and all three had the seat reservations cancelled as the on-board computers had gone wrong.

I boarded the East Midlands train to Kettering and it was at this point that the network was entirely falling apart due to electrical cabling issues. There weren’t really enough staff to help at Kettering and no announcements to help passengers at the station, it wasn’t great for those who didn’t know their way around railway apps and the like.

I went to find someone (not pictured above) and she told me which train to connect, telling me to get on a train to Bedford.

I had a little walk around Kettering railway station which was originally opened in 1857. I find it very hard to be in Kettering and not think about James Acaster and the Kettering Town FC song. Incidentally, that bridge to the other platforms was only put in as late as the 1990s.

This is a nice reminder of how railway stations have been such important locations in times of war.

And here’s the canteen that it’s referring to. There are an awful lot of structures on railway stations, it’s a shame that more can’t be done with a great deal more of them, although at least this one hasn’t been demolished.

Aaaahh….

Another train boarded, this is the one to St. Pancras yet again. I was fortunate incidentally to get a seat on every service despite them being so busy. Most trains had power points and customers seemed to be generally calm and content.

And safely at Bedford. I thought it was positive that the train guard told anyone with flights from Luton Airport that they were fearing they’d miss to tell the platform staff so that they could do something about it. I’m not sure what the platform staff were planning to do about it (and even if they knew the train guard had been telling passengers this), but it was a nice gesture.

For reasons unknown even to me, I’ve started noting in this blog post when railway stations were first opened, so keeping that theme alive, this opened in 1859 although it’s moved about a bit. When I say that, I mean it’s moved down the line a bit, they haven’t relocated Bedford railway station from Truro or something.

I waited patiently here for the Thameslink train I was told that I could catch as they were accepting EMR tickets given the network issues. Of course, it changed its departure platform which involved more stairs. This is how I stay healthy I think.

But, it arrived on time and took me to Luton railway station and incredibly the only service of the day actually running to schedule. I arrived into Luton just under 50 minutes later, so that’s a 50% delay repay of the ticket and I thought I did well to actually get to the final destination not that late.

I am perhaps one of the few people who likes this kind of adventure, I’ve also been suitably productive working on trains and also in numerous waiting rooms that I didn’t take photos of today. And now, I’m safely in Luton. I can’t say that this is exactly a Michael Portillo Great Rail Journeys type of post, but it amused me and maybe in my old age I’ll relive the excitement all over again and return some fancy destinations as Crewe, Long Eaton, Kettering and Bedford. Incidentally, I should add, there are more direct ways of getting from Liverpool to Luton, this was just the cheapest one for me, even if not the most convenient.

December 5, 2024
Greater Anglia – I’m Home

This is the outcome of Greater Anglia’s latest little debacle. It has also transpired that one of the largest taxi companies in Ipswich wasn’t contacted by Greater Anglia and they could have got a fair number of people back to Norwich in shared taxis. They’d better be reimbursing this promptly.

Brilliant taxi driver incidentally, very friendly and I got water and crisps since Greater Anglia hadn’t provided either. We had to go via Bury St Edmunds so it wasn’t a quick journey, but some roads are blocked.

October 21, 2023
Liverpool Weekend (Day Four) – Crewe to London Euston

With no disrespect to Crewe, but I couldn’t find much to excite and delight me on the Monday afternoon that I was there. There were no museums, Good Beer Guide pubs or craft beer bars open, although there was a micropub which looked marvellous if it had been open. There wasn’t even a JD Wetherspoon pub in the town, it’s shut. It meant the limit of my expedition, and it’s over a mile to the centre from the railway station, was a sub-optimal Poundbakery visit. Also, apologies for the slightly blurry photos, that’s partly a result of the greasy bakes from the aforementioned location.

As an aside, and it was rebuilt in 1880, but the Crewe Arms Hotel was built in 1838 and is the first specially built railway hotel. Queen Victoria stayed there on numerous occasions and it’s still in use as a hotel today.

There’s a pleasant waiting room at Crewe railway station. There was no town at Crewe until the railway boom built a junction here and the railway station was first constructed in 1837. It was rebuilt in 1867 and then extensively remodelled in 1984.

The interior of the railway station and this was nearly all shut down around fifteen years ago when there were plans to move to a new building which would be nearer to Crewe. There were meant to be HS2 services from Crewe, but the whole project is currently up in the air.

As a fun fact, there are seven rail operators which operate services to Crewe, which is the joint highest in the country.

The West Midlands Train service that I was booked onto arrives.

Seats were shoved in, it wasn’t overly clean and there were no power points. However, the journey was on time and only cost £10.20 which all felt quite reasonable. I moan quite a lot about this trying to five seats in across, not least on this blog, and I’m sure my two loyal readers are tired of hearing about it. But it all feels sub-optimal, it makes the aisle quite narrow and the seats are hopeless for anyone who is slightly larger.

Happy memories of Rugeley from a previous GeoGuessr expedition with Nathan.

And safely into London Euston with its shiny new boards. I still liked the old ones as I could read them more easily, but maybe I’m just old fashioned now I’ve reached 24.

I’m going to bring the Liverpool weekend story to an end here. I had a marvellous evening in London with a visit to the Craft Beer Co at Holborn, before getting the train back to Norwich. All tired at the end of it, but it had been a really quite marvellous weekend. Thanks to Steve, Susan and Bev for their company and I’m already looking forward to the next set of adventures. The trip to Bucharest with Bev and Steve, amongst others, is already booked and I hope that Bev in particular will be well behaved.

October 3, 2023
Liverpool Weekend (Day Four) – Liverpool Lime Street to Crewe

After a marvellous weekend, it was time for me to meander back to Norwich and I was doing this in a number of stages. Firstly, it was getting a London Northwestern Railway service from Liverpool Lime Street to Crewe. The reasoning for this relates to split ticketing and making my train journey back as cheap as possible.

My morning started with a debacle, which at least gives me something else to write about. I use my Chase debit card to buy nearly everything, as I get 1% back and that’s entirely optimal as far as I’m concerned. However, there’s a glitch with Chase that for security reasons they garble the card number and so it’s not possible to pick up the tickets at the station as the machine doesn’t recognise the card. Recently this hasn’t been a problem, I just get e-tickets and so there’s no need for a pick-up, but it seems that London Northwestern Railway don’t have that facility.

After the machine failed, as I expected, I went to the ticket office with some moderate concern that my train was leaving in 25 minutes. That sounds a lot of time, but these things often take a while to resolve and I was sensing a problem. Fortunately the ticket office was entirely empty and the staff member there was very polite, but said that she couldn’t do anything about it. Now, when this has happened before, the ticket office has been able to print the ticket, but she said that wasn’t possible now. Her suggestion was to contact GWR who issued the ticket.

Now, I was mightily impressed at GWR. They have a WhatsApp contact where you can just message them and my problem was resolved by them within two minutes of my sending it to them. They changed the ticket so that it could be picked up by any card and that meant I could collect my ticket. They queried why the ticket office hadn’t done this or tried to contact them directly and it feels sub-optimal that there’s confusion between the rail company and the ticket office. I don’t know who is right, but I was fortunate to have booked with GWR as their customer service seems on point.

The train pulled into the station on time.

I wouldn’t say that it was spotlessly clean, but it was comfortable and there were plenty of seats.

There weren’t any power outlets though which was a little disappointing. The young lady sitting in this seat later on in the journey had the wrong ticket, she was travelling to Birmingham and had a ticket for later on in the day. The conductor was polite, but firm, telling her that he wouldn’t issue a penalty fare notice but saying that she would have to get off at the next station. The lady explained that she couldn’t afford to buy another ticket, but the conductor said if she disembarked than she could board a later train with the ticket that she had. The lady’s story was true as when the conductor had gone she phoned her mother to ask her to transfer money onto her card so she could buy the £30 or so ticket that she needed to stay on the train. She went off to find the conductor, asking me to look after her bags (which is something I don’t like doing really as if someone comes to steal them then I’m hardly going to fight them) and she merrily returned with a ticket which let her stay on the train.

And safely into Crewe with the journey running on time. The fare was £13.80 from Liverpool to Crewe, which felt entirely reasonable.

October 2, 2023
Liverpool Weekend (Day One) – And Another Delayed Train

I walked relatively quickly from Cloudwater to Manchester Oxford Road railway station, as I’m always slightly nervous about being late for pre-booked services of any kind. It’s a slightly odd railway station, constructed in 1849 and reconstructed in 1960, now looking and feeling dated and it feels like it is ready for a major refurbishment.

They’ve put quite an attractive frontage on the building at least.

I arrived with eight minutes to spare until my train departed, with the boards showing that it was running on time. Marvellous, I would be in join Susan, Steve and Bev for the evening meal and still have time to get to my hotel to check-in. The signage at the station was clear and it was a fifteen second walk to the platform.

The 16:46 train to Liverpool Lime Street via Urmston cost me around £3.50, this was not an expensive train.

The Northern train pulled in on time, it all boded well after the delays of earlier on during the day.

It wasn’t particularly busy and I’ve moaned enough times before about how they shove seats onto these services with minimal thought for comfort. There was though a USB power supply which was useful to top my phone up a little.

The view from the train window, just as there was an announcement that trespassers on the line at Warrington had caused a delay to the service. This felt sub-optimal as we sat there for ten minutes. Pesky interlopers.

We got to Birchwood and there was an announcement that the service was delayed and might be cancelled.

On the bright side, a more promising announcement was made and once again my train was likely to arrive something like 33 minutes late so I would get 50% off the fare. Given how cheap the fare was this was hardly a big bonus, but nonetheless, it would pay for a drink.

We arrived safely at Liverpool Lime Street. Taking into account the Delay Repay refunds, it meant that my journey from Norwich to Liverpool had cost just over £15, which is hard to complain about. I felt that the delays were just perfect insomuch as getting a partial refund, but without being majorly delayed and eating into my time in Liverpool.

The delights of the station concourse and it was great to be back in Liverpool once again. I haven’t been travelling much recently, so I’ve been very much looking forwards to a weekend away and it was rather lovely to finally arrive. I then just had to head to my hotel and then go to the Indian craft beer bar that I suggested we all meet at, a plan was coming together.

September 9, 2023