Recent content by stut

It's only 450m from Hendaia Euskotren station to Ficoba Irún.

Don't think I have any pictures of the outside, but I do like this one. In Kolkata.

I agree on the comments about short platforms - Baldock is really bad for this. It's not really mentioned in advance during the journey, but, because it's only 3 minutes from Letchworth, and because the warning isn't immediate on departure, you don't get the "doors will not open" signs until...

To be fair, the A428 dualling at Caxton Gibbet is doing a fine job of the massacring in its own right...

Many years ago on a particularly bad District day at Earls Court. "Ladies and Gentleman, the dispatcher seems to think that this train will now be going to Ealing Broadway, despite the fact that there hasn't been a Wimbledon train in 15 minutes, and this is where we're meant to be going. I...

That's it - so it can often be cheaper to get a Super Off-Peak Day Return from the next (non-Oval) station up the line, than to pay the contactless fare. Though (and this is drifitng OT) the big saver with Oval is of course the ability to use a Network Railcard for the return portion.

Understood. Project Oval seems to have opened up a lot of starting short journeys (which station staff are very aware of and happy to work with). For Advances, I've had quite a few split Advances recently (simple ones - Advance to Advance, same train, same split point). You'll understand why...

Thanks!

Let me explain. Sorry if this is obvious one way or another, but I'm not sure. Stations changed to protect the innocent. Let's say I want to travel from Milton Keynes Central to London. I've got dizzy from all the roundabouts. I'm going to get a train that stops at Bletchley and Watford...

Kolkata is an odd one. The main long distance station is Howrah Jn, but the main city terminal is Sealdah, split into two stations at 90⁰ to each other, though there is a nearby halt for occasional through services. Kolkata station, however, is used only for the (very infrequent) circle line...

It harks back to the old days of Eastern European travel where you had to get off on the border line (no platforms to speak of), wait for the immigration people to come and check your passports, then all rush to a single counter at a ticket shack that only takes local currency (that you can't...

The stress of being waitlisted, waiting for that waitlist to clear, looking at the various sites which will tell you the likelihood of that waitlist clearing (which are rarely that accurate), then discovering you haven't cleared, but you need to travel, so you buy a general ticket and try and...

There's also the Yukikagaoka Line, also in Chiba Prefecture, which was built by the corporation that built the town it serves. It doesn't accept IC cards, but does have a facial recognition system instead. I've a feeling there's a People Mover somewhere in the Northern Suburbs that basically...

While there are *some* non-refundable, discount tickets available on some routes (Tokaido Shinkansen, for example) they are very much the exception, and hardly anyone uses them. I have been caught out in the past in the week leading up to Obon, trying to head from Kyoto down to Hiroshima. All...

Japan almost makes it, but not quite. The IC system is amazing. As well as the regional JRs, there are countless private railways, tramways, metros (and bus services) and almost all of them accept IC cards, whoever issued them. You can load them on to your phone if it has FeLiCa, and it...