Hello Darren,
I don’t know about trains in Britain but those in Romania are great. The main reason for that is that the highways are really bad. We only have about 250 km of highway so the best solution to travel cheap andd fast is by train.
There are 4 types of trains in Romania:
- ”personal” (local train) – small distances , very, very cheap and with a lot of stations.
- ”accelerat” (regional train ) – medium and large distances, the price for a trip from Bucharest to Cluj Napoca (500 km ) is about 14 euros.
- ”rapid” – inter-regional train , the same speed as ”accelerat” but with fewer stops. The price for the sam trip is 17-18 euros
- ”inter- city” – a business class train travelling in style and at greater speed. The price is 20 euros
The problem is that the network is quite old and a 500 km journey will take about 8 hours.

The best thing is that you can have the chance to end up in a compartment with 4-5 interesting people and will start a good conversation.

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Darren, the phrase British Transport System has long been an oxymoron in my opinion.

The improvements needed to the UK rail network are, imo, substantial merely to provide an adequate service for daily life of the inhabitants and this needs to be done before thoughts of tourism can be entertained. Investment in basic infrastructure, such as rolling stock, signalling as well as station and network plannign has been pitiful for many years.

Back in the day when I was also a British resident, many jokes were made about the current state of the leaves etc and, it seems, not much has changed.

Which is a real shame.

One of the major reasons I’ve remained in Switzerland is the excellent Swiss Travel System which runs a punctual service with (more often than not) more carriages than I can shake a leaf at.

Punctuality and capacity have both been achieved through very long term (some say 20-year) planning and maintenance of and investment in improvements of the infrastructure.

Scenic Alpine journeys and themed trips – a journey through William Tells homeland or Chocolate trips for example – were made possible by providing the facilties which made such trips generally hassle and stress free. I’m sure that journeys to (not in!) the Lake District or parts of Scotland (Whisky train on the Whisky trail) would be interesting to both locals and tourists alike.

While straight single or return tickets are by no means cheap, several passes are available, but I’ve never doubted that I get what I pay for. It is the experience-at-price which makes the real difference between the two networks.

While the British trains have a long way to go, they would do a lot worse than take a look at the Swiss model. Not only has it provided better basic transport for the general populace, but that has enabled numerous other opprtunities which I’m sure would be attractive to a semi-privatised system such as Britains.

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The UK is not the only country that has problems. When I was in Chamonix, France in January. Free train travel in the Chamonix valley came included with a pass from the accommodation provider. One day there was no service at all and when I used it the next day the train broke down and I was forced to take the Ski Bus to get to my destination.
Reading yesterday’s news, the UK train operators are unhappy because the RPI is likely to go into negative figures later this year . The regulators have told them that they must cut prices in line with the RPI.

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@John, while the UK is by no means the only nation with problems and I don’t think thats the point Darren is making. That problems occur elsewhere doesn’t mean that should also occur in Britain. Quite on the contrary – it’s an oppurtunity for the British to learn from both their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

Although different nations have different issues – investment in the UK railway systems has always given the impression of being abysmal especially given it’s comparativly high population density. This means that even small glitches in the system have an effect on a disproportionatly large section of the populace in general. For the purpose of comparison, France and Britain have comparable populations, roughly 62 millon vs roughly 60 millions respectivly, while France occupies a much larger area. Spain has a smaller population (40 million) in roughly twice the surface area.

The differences in population density also has the impact that there is limited oppurtunity to expand capacity to meet current or expected demand. In the UK, much of the land surrounding rail lines and stations (especially in the south east) is already put to alternative usage. This is where the owner of the tracks really needs to think about capacity.

If you contrast this with the current Swiss setup, where much of the population resides in a central plateau between the Alps in the South and Jura mountains in the north, it is not unusual for the Swiss Federal Railways to own land surronding the actual tracks and stations which can, in turn, be used to increase capacity accordingly. That spare capacity can be used, in turn, to allieviate problems as and when they occur. It’s not uncommon in Zurich, for example, for trams / buses to be redeployed to alternative routes when problems occur while still maintaining a respectable service on other routes. This does, however, require advance capacity planning which I would expect to problematic in the UK for reasons outlined above.

What is also missing from the British setup is the lack of vision that rail could be used for tourism. Here, rail is not only an integral part of daily life but many will also take rail trips domestically and holiday in the country as it is often less stressful to travel by rail than car – especially over peak periods such as the Easter break.

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we pump more money into our rail network and it is improving, large amounts of tracks are being or have been replaced (hence bus service). But that now leaves us with a patchwork system, the local trains round here a on time good and mostly clean (if you catch one before 6pm) all in all a good service. Our main line however is not, ( old and outdated not up to main line standards, but due for replacement) but it is still faster than using the main roads and less stress, price wise, cheaper than a car even if 2 people travelling. (return booking about 2 weeks in advance 12 quid, booking a day or so 18 quid, for 2 1/2 hour journey, petrol about 40-50 and 3 hour drive)

But I still remmeber a comment from a former Bristish rail Director who said something like, if the goverment had given us the money that they have given to the private compaines we would of had a network running on gold rails that you could set your watch by in your first class seats at cheaper prices.

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@Mark Sukhija Rail Travel in the UK has never had massive investment because road transport has more voices in the form of Haulage Companies for business leaders and employees in the case of the Unions. From the 1980′s onwards the French State invested heavily in railways while leaving the Auto route financing, building and operating to private companies. The UK on the other hand financed their motorways with State money. Then in the late 1900′s decided to put the railways into private ownership. As oil runs out the road transport costs will escalate as fuel costs rise. France will have a high speed rail network running on 80% nuclear generated electricity.
As for rail investment, I worked for a short time on the West Coast modernisation. The main problem with the UK rail network is not the space but the tight turns trains have to negotiate. The building of new relatively straight high lines is the only way to be able to run high speed trains effectively. These would not be placed close to existing tracks in the main, more like;y adjacent to motorways. I don’t think there is the will to do it in the UK though. The West Coast Mainline was eventually upgraded to handle train speeds of 125 mph while Richard Branson went and bought Pendolino trains capable of 186 mph, I bet he wasn’t happy about that.

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Commuting to work everyday is usually a journey from hell and more a matter of “Will i get to work today without any delays, signal failures, leaves, wrong type of snow, weather, cattle, gnomes and aliens on the line “rather than, ” oohh I’ll have an hour to relax on my lovely restful, hasstle free train journey to work!!”

I am usally exahusted and stressed out even before I get to work. Delays are a daily occurance on my journey to work, not only that, I rarely get a seat. Instead I am crushed like a sardine (I’m only 4ft 11!!) next to someone who either has an odour problem or breaks wind and then pretends it’s not them..

Then when it comes to the weekend, I find that 6or 7 of the tube lines are closed and at the same time the rail is also running on “a replacement bus service that goes all round the houses.. service due to “essential engineering work”
So we now virtually have a no weekend rail/train service. What’s the point of paying for a monthly travelcard when in fact I can hardly use it for two of those days each weekend and during the week I have a half -hearted train service…
aHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH it drives me mad!!!! I can feel my blood pressure rising as I write this!!

I can’t wait for the time when I will no longer have to rely on commuting as I do feel we have a shockingly expensive and unreliable service which I think will take years to improve, if at all….

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try being in the US … train service is non-existent unless you are in a large city and even then it doesn’t compare to what Europe provides

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@Roxy what you describe sounds like my daily commute in Sydney (apart from the snow) – for such a big city, the rail system is pretty bad – high prices, rate hikes, late trains, overcrowding, lack of air conditioning (probably not an issue in the UK!) are all too common. Toronto however have it worked out – I found the trains there very efficient, fast, clean etc They also advertise on their trains so tickets are relatively cheap.

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UK and Europe have much better trains than in New Zealand. Long-distance there are just a few routes. Even between the capital city (Wellington) and the largest city (Auckland) there is less than one train a day. The few passenger services are geared to tourists (some stunning scenery on all the lines).

Flying, on the other hand, is commonplace with 27 main domestic airports serving just 4 million people.

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Light relief (sums up British Rail) I will always remember, when we had a rail agency, receiving a missive from British Rail “Agents must remember that you cannot take bicycles on the 06:15 Manchester to Hull” … and you thought we only had to worry about finding the cheapest fare combination!

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I would agree about buying two singles when booking in advance, but not when booking closer to the day. There are so many tickets where a return is only a few pence more than a single, and even if you aren’t planning on using it at the time, you will get totally shafted if you then decide you do want to return on the same day. Leisure travellers should also watch out for peak-time restrictions – I saw several customers complaining about this at St Pancras yesterday, but the T’s & C’s are out there.

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My main problem with my local provider SWT is that whenever I travel with them I feel I am being cheated in some way.

I get a headache from searching through reams and reams of ticket prices often with chasms of price differences between trains travelling minutes apart from each other. I am currently looking for work and am restricted to public transport.

The trains are the only direct “service” between my home and chosen work places, and these offer little value for money with a recent price hike and the cost of a single being mere pence cheaper than a return. Also the only return ticket offered is a day return so one has to pay almost the equivalent of two return tickets (give or take 60p) to travel on one day and return on another regardless of how long you spend there.

Faced with a possibility of needing to travel on a daily basis for a night shift I calculated that the cost of a season ticket was almost 2/3 of my proposed weekly wage and if I bought the tickets on the day it would cost a fraction of the cost of a season tciket, which in my mind defeats the purpose of a season ticket.

A rail card was another option to reduce travel costs but even this presented problems. The only card I was eligible for had so many travel restrictions that I would have to make several social trips to justify having the card. None of which would be in concordance with my travel wishes in purchasing the card.

Do South West Trains care at all about securing customers or are they taking the attittude that since there are no other providers for this particular route they can treat their customers with as much contempt as they like, even patronising us to such a point as to thank us for choosing South West Trains when the aforementioned ‘no other providers’ statement gives us no choice whatsoever in travelling on their trains.

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