Switzerland - railway services, facilities, improvements and incidents (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[Red Squirrel]

...Swiss Railways are State owned. Maybe we could try their model in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). 

Joking aside, I can never let that one pass without pointing out that there is very little of the British railway system that isn't either state-owned or state-controlled. Our privatised railway is as deep as a coat of paint.

[Bmblbzzz]

Perfectly clear TV^▸ (Thames Valley) displays (consistent across operators) giving next stop and destination information, accompanied by clear bilingual announcements.

Shouldn't it be trilingual in Switzerland? (Or even quadrilingual if you include Romansch.)

[John R]

No bilingual (i.e. French/German) signage anywhere in the German speaking part we were in.  We didn't venture across the rostigraben to see what the norm is in the French speaking parts.

[ChrisB]

In some respects, the superiority of Swiss railways is due to high taxation and greater public spending on railways.
Not however in all respects.

Indeed - you forgot to mention the timetable has nowhere near the number of services per hour on most routes that the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) generally does (in the south east, at least), so far easier to keep to time

[stuving]

Perfectly clear TV^▸ (Thames Valley) displays (consistent across operators) giving next stop and destination information, accompanied by clear bilingual announcements.

Shouldn't it be trilingual in Switzerland? (Or even quadrilingual if you include Romansch.)

If only it were that simple!

When I was in Biel/Bienne a few years ago (on business), I was told it was the only bilingual town in Switzerland. However, that uniqueness might be apply only to its name - which is officially Biel/Bienne. The town is also officially bilingual, though I heard little French when I was there. It is in the canton of Bern, though administratively semi-separate; Bern the canton is bilingual though the city is Germanophone.

Federal institutions are in principle tri-(or more) lingual, but in practice they seem not to try very hard to achieve that. If you remember the last major train accident we saw there, the report on that was in german only (it happened in a German-speaking area). Italian is often used only in names and letterheads, and Romansch/Ladin hardly at all.

[IndustryInsider]

I remember the wide opening windows when I was there back in the early 90s and thinking then that you would not get away with it in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), and of course since then we've got even stricter with H&S^▸ (Health and Safety)!

[SandTEngineer]

Well, on Saturday evening last (02/09/2017) I travelled on a UK^▸ (United Kingdom) train where the windows were big and dropped wide open and the seats lined up with them.  It was on the Welshpool and Llanfair narrow gauge railway

[johnneyw]

Ah, might be off up there soon. Recommended?

[SandTEngineer]

Ah, might be off up there soon. Recommended?

Well it was GALA weekend and I travelled both ways almost in the pitch black (no train lighting).  It was a fireworks special and apparently the first attempt in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) to have fireworks let off at various sites along the line.  Seems a nice friendly line though 

...whoops; thread drift.  Moderators watching....

[Adelante_CCT]

...whoops; thread drift.  Moderators watching....

On certain other forums you would be shot down for doing such a thing.

Luckily we have very nice moderators who don't complain and quietly get on with any moving or merging that is required. 

[Bmblbzzz]

Would it be correct to assume from the wide opening windows that the services are also slower than typical in UK^▸ (United Kingdom)? (This refers to Switzerland not Llanfair!)

[John R]

One of the ones we travelled quite a bit on (the Bernese Oberland Railway) is privately owned. One of the things that struck me was the consistency across the network, no matter who the operator.  As an example, the information screens onboard. Contrast that with the UK where the operators seem to take pride in doing things differently (font on stations signs, yellow line to denote 1st class etc)

As for speed, I'd judge the BOR reaches speeds of up to 100kph, so certainly not high speed, but neither slow enough to make throwing your child out of the window a game for all the family to play. 

[Trowres]

Perfectly clear TV^▸ (Thames Valley) displays (consistent across operators) giving next stop and destination information, accompanied by clear bilingual announcements.

Shouldn't it be trilingual in Switzerland? (Or even quadrilingual if you include Romansch.)

In the Berner Oberland Bahn area, bilingual announcements were in German and English (although Wikipedia suggests that Portugese is the second most common native language after German in the locality)

Wilderswil Station (first stop outside Interlaken) had a ticket office signposted above the door simply "Rail Travel Office".

[Trowres]

To illustrate some of John R's points, here (attached) is a picture of Wilderswil, with passengers disembarking from a train on the Schynige Platte Bahn and crossing the tracks of the BOB line, on which (on the day shown) there were half-hourly trains each way of 12 or 13 coaches.

The line on the left is actually set into the (rather low) platform. It is the passing loop for Wilderswil but isn't used as a crossing point in the regular timetable.

[broadgage]

I hope that proper medical treatment is available for any UK^▸ (United Kingdom) health and safety managers who suffer fits, heart attacks, or mental distress as a result of viewing these arrangements.
I wonder if any such visitors from the UK have ever called the local police to report the "mass trespass" onto the tracks ! It would be a major incident in the UK, probably requiring closure of the line for some hours.