German Railways

Patrick Crozier has written a long piece on his impressions of German railways. Some notable quotes:

German trains can be late. Bit of a shocker, I know, but on plenty of occasions I saw trains running 5, 10 and even 20 minutes late. Again, it was difficult to tell whether this was normal or just my bad luck.

On my trip to Switzerland earlier this year, the only late-running services I were those that started their journeys deep within Germany. I have a (possibly false) impression that German punctuality has deteriorated in recent years. I noted in the Swiss regular interval timetable that trains originating in Germany often slot into the regular pattern replacing an internal Swiss train that hour, but trains from Italy don't do this, running as extra workings outside the interval timetable. I always assumed this was because of poor Italian punctuality

Although the trains seemed very modern, I was very surprised by the number of suburban services operated by push-pull trains. I had thought that push-pull was a thing of the past but according to our hosts it had the advantage of being extremely flexible - it being possible to roster them on regional services at short notice. Push-pull trains are also (ahem) rather more reliable than some of their more modern competitors.

Actually we have a lot of push-pull trains in Britain, but on inter-city routes rather than local commuter services. The almost universal use of multiple units in Britain is the exception rather than the rule. I believe what survives of American commuter rail is largely operated with push-pull formations, at least on non-electrified lines.

One of the big things on German railways is connections. On Inter City trains you will, usually, find a list of connections on your seat. Very useful if you are travelling off the beaten track.

That's currently the big bugbear of the British network. There just doesn't seem to be any attempt to plan sensible connections, even between two services by the same operator. A ludicrous example; on Sundays the hourly branch line service from Falmouth to Truro arrives just after the train to Plymouth, leaving passengers with a 59-minute wait for the next train. Who on earth came up with that one?