Reflections on travel in Germany

[Austriantrain]

The Swiss are very efficient and well practised at dealing with German delays. If the incoming train delay exceeds 20 minutes then the train is without hesitation cancelled beyond Basel, and a replacement train of SBB stock is used to do the trip to Zurich/Interlaken/Chur and back.
Given how often it happens it's not hard to see why they would want to just make the replacement trains the official ones.

The problem is that even 20 minutes delay wreaks havoc on a service where the base frequency is now half-hourly and will, in 2035, go down to quarter-hourly on several busy long-distance routes.

As far as I know, whenever a Munich - Zurich EC arrives in St Gallen more than a couple of minutes late (and that happens all the time), it gets bumped behind a domestic service, which adds an additional 15-20 minute delay (same with RJX services from Vienna at Sargans).

But as I wrote above, there seems to be some back-tracking going on, with the TGV to Zurich (which are mostly on time) probably remaining. I am pretty sure some ICE will too - the tourism industry will insist on that.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Jul 2023 ==

That's normal. Due to either lack of stabling space(no idea where you could park an 14-coach ICE in Interlaken) or lack of servicing facilities, the ICE services which appear to be stabled overnight in Chur/Interlaken in fact return to Basel/Zurich disguised as domestic services and then return the following morning. So the 07:28 Basel to Interlaken IC service is in fact the ICE set needed for the 10:00 ICE service from Interlaken.

Using a different set would also be very inefficient, since an additional one not needed in the base service would have to be sourced.

 

[The exile]

The problem is that even 20 minutes delay wreaks havoc on a service where the base frequency is now half-hourly and will, in 2035, go down to quarter-hourly on several busy long-distance routes.

As far as I know, whenever a Munich - Zurich EC arrives in St Gallen more than a couple of minutes late (and that happens all the time), it gets bumped behind a domestic service, which adds an additional 15-20 minute delay (same with RJX services from Vienna at Sargans).

But as I wrote above, there seems to be some back-tracking going on, with the TGV to Zurich (which are mostly on time) probably remaining. I am pretty sure some ICE will too - the tourism industry will insist on that.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Jul 2023 ==



Using a different set would also be very inefficient, since an additional one not needed in the base service would have to be sourced.

Although having a “hot spare” at key nodal points is a very good idea in terms of maintaining a service when something goes wrong. DBAG certainly used to do precisely that (albeit with loco-hauled rakes).

 

[Austriantrain]

Although having a “hot spare” at key nodal points is a very good idea in terms of maintaining a service when something goes wrong. DBAG certainly used to do precisely that (albeit with loco-hauled rakes).

Of course, and SBB always have „hot spares“ in Basel precisely because trains from Germany are often late.

But having one in Interlaken just so as not to use the ICE-layover for the domestic service would be a waste of money.

 

[Jan]

Well, however bad it is, it can't be worse than this country's fares set up.

It can be, in so far as there is no ticket interavailability at all between competing long distance operators, and also unlike the UK split tickets give no passenger rights by default. The only saving grace is that so far there aren't very many of those competing operators around, though if you happen to live on the wrong line it can already be a bit annoying (like in the recent timetable Flixtrain I think snapped up one path originally operated by DB, so long distance commuters with a DB season ticket were out of luck; there were definitively some teething troubles regarding passenger rights for passengers connecting between DB and Nightjet or vice versa…).