France - railways, public transport, services and incidents (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[Rob S]

 I hope they don't start installing one on Alpe d'Huez, Mont Ventoux or the Tourmalet 

[stuving]

You may have worked out this is chassé-croisé weekend, so there must have been a massive disruption of the trains. This year it was not (or not yet!) due to the heat itself, but the violent storms that the heat has set off. A lightning strike near Paris took out the signals on the LGV^▸ (Large Goods Vehicle in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), or Lignes à Grande Vitesse (high speed rail lines) in France, depending on context) from Paris-Montparnasse (again!) yesterday afternoon, and while it was declared fixed by 19:30 there was by then a big backlog.

SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) say that no trains were cancelled as a result, but they were leaving an hour or two late and where staff ran out of hours some were far later than that arriving. Still, not so bad for one of these panne géante things. And if your trip is the start of a three or four week holiday, a few hours delay will soon be forgotten.

[grahame]

From The Independent

Why is it so difficult to change trains in Paris to reach the south of France?

Rail travel to the south of France should be the norm. But a significant impediment to luring airline passengers is that most journeys from the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) to the French Mediterranean coast require a change of trains – and stations – in Paris.

Eurostar from London arrives at the Gare du Nord. High-speed TGVs^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) for the south leave from the equally magnificent Gare de Lyon.

[stuving]

From The Independent

Why is it so difficult to change trains in Paris to reach the south of France?

Rail travel to the south of France should be the norm. But a significant impediment to luring airline passengers is that most journeys from the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) to the French Mediterranean coast require a change of trains – and stations – in Paris.

Eurostar from London arrives at the Gare du Nord. High-speed TGVs^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) for the south leave from the equally magnificent Gare de Lyon.

Well, of course. French railways have always been, obviously enough, built for .... Parisians.

[ChrisB]

And as Simon Calder was told, many times, on x/Twitter when he launched this article, the clever people change at Lille for the south of France, rather than Paris.

[grahame]

Well, of course. French railways have always been, obviously enough, built for .... Parisians.

Indeed. the British equivalent is arriving into Waterloo from ... Portsmouth or Southampton or Salisbury ... to continue on via Eurostar.  The same is many huge cities which were there before the railways came and they terminated outside the built up area.    On that basis why is HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) coming in to Old Oak rather that terminating at Amersham with an onward TfL^» (Transport for London - about) service?

[ChrisB]

There is an onwards Tfl service from OOC^▸ (Old Oak Common (depot))

[Worcester_Passenger]

I'd go along with one of the quotes in the article that recommends bus 91 as a way of getting from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon - without the nastiness of the RER.

And indeed, after Gare du Lyon, it continues to Gare Montparnasse. But it looks as if RATP have been thinking about the needs of the station-to-station traffic because it calls at Gare de l'Est on the way.

[infoman]

When I travelled from the U.K. to Marseille in 2016,I changed at Lille,not sure if the service still runs though.

[Mark A]

If time and luggage allows, there are several easy walks to be had. Gare du Nord and Est are practically in each others laps. Saint Lazare isn't quite straightforward to find, and Montparnasse is a bit of a hike, but for the others, from the Gare du Nord, one approach is to head in the direction of the Gare d'Est, go a bit further, pick up the canal and then track that south to the Place de la Bastille.

Gare de Lyon is easy from there, while for Austerlitz, keep on through the Place de la Bastille, pick up the canal as it emerges from underground, and head down to the Seine, across the bridge and there's the station.

Mark

[eightonedee]

Following the posts above,  I do urge anyone thinking of taking the train to the south ( or even the west) of France to investigate changing at Lille. My wife and I have had three trips to Avignon and one each to Bordeaux and Lyons and it has "worked a treat". You simply take a lift or stairs to the upper level and descend to the departure platform when your onward train is due.

We once had to walk from Lille Flandres to Lille Europe for a return connection,  but compared to the hassle of crossing Paris on the Metro that was a small inconvenience.

[Kempis]

We had to transfer from the Gare du Nord to the Gare d'Austerlitz in August, to catch the night train to Briançon. Line 5 of the Métro is direct (there's a bit of a walk at Austerlitz, perhaps because of the building works there), and you can buy Métro tickets from the buffet on the Eurostar.

[stuving]

If that thunderstorm didn't count, then this is this year's pagaille à la gare Montparnasse - and it's a bit late for the holiday season, or even its heatwave extension. So yes, once again it was the line out of Paris Montparnasse that was affected, with no electricity for all of Sunday afternoon. A break in a cable at the entrance of a tunnel at Massy was blamed,  though it's not clear what sort of cable or tunnel was meant.

Massy is a kind of Old Oak Common about 12 kn from Montparnasse, and 10 km further down the line (Marcoussis) there was a train stuck in a tunnel for five hours. For some reason this was not only evacuated (on foot) but a rescue train was needed for the passengers. That may be a consequent or separate train failure, but in any case it was a mess inside due to five hours enforced occupation by the passengers (who were somewhere else by then).

Services recovered during Sunday night, though some were very late arriving. Monday morning services were predicted to be all OK, but in fact significant delays have been reported. This sort of thing has now happened so often that "SNAFU^▸ (Situation Normal: All Fouled Up (I have toned down the F word))" describes it exactly. Do the French use a literal translation of that? No, apparently it's still Snafu.

[stuving]

I wonder why SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) have been making such a big fuss about their new mid-platform signals at Rennes, permitting "two trains in the same platform" (2TMV). This appears, from limited evidence, to be fully signalled platform sharing. There are also platform markings, of course, and rather complicated ones by the look of it. After Rennes, this will be rolled out across other suitable stations - not just short of capacity, but with long platforms and a suitable mix of train lengths and  movements. They seem to be aiming at two trains that depart in opposite directions, so either one or (more likely) both must be originating.

Apparently at Rennes they could previously manage to share platforms only seven times a day "for safety reasons", presumably because of the extra times and staff needed to supervise the permissive working. This kind of signalling is described as already in use in Germany and Switzerland, and the Rennes project has cost 12.6 M€.

Only French reports so far; here's a couple of older ones from 20 Minutes and SNCF, and a new picture from Le Parisien.

[Noggin]

Ummm, isn't this what they do many, many times a day at Temple Meads?