Not the train (although we had the idea of going very fast ages before them, and abandoned it rather sooner too) - just the name...

I do admire the two bridges built precisely fifty metres apart to avoid having to cut a minute off the travel time to Nice and Avignon...



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I do not know if you know this, but Eurostars are in fact TGV's, just squeezed a bit to fit on our @#$%& railways, and the new line now being built from Dover to St Pancras is a French Ligne a Grand Vitesse in all but name .... and when they have reached St Pancras, do you think the crafty francaises will stop there? Mais non! It is a dastardly plot to build French railways throughout our green and pleasant land!

And what should we do about this?

We should welcome them with open arms and tell them bon chance, mes amis, because *their* railways work, and *ours* don't. Salaud.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Hmm, and so well does the Eurostar work that it got 15 minute sout of Waterloo and broke down for five hours, with no air con. Perfectement!

There is actually an argument that the TGV system would make more economic sense in this country, though God knows why.



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Well, to qoute Ken MacLeod:
"The Brits just din't do trains.
They'd invented them. They had a couple of centuries' experience with them. The had more actual enthusiasts for trains per head of the population than anywhere else. They'd invented trainspotting. And they still couldn't seem to figure out how to make trains run on time."
he's always very quoteable ins Mr MacLeod

Well, I suppose if you spend all your time ticking off numbers rather than designing better buggers to carry new numbers, then you aren't going to get very far.



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Hah, well, there you go, that's your problem right there. If there's one body of people who should never be allowed to run trains, it's trainspotters. (At any rate we in the bus industry have long ago learned to keep bus-spotters well away from anything to do with running buses ... mind you the buses don't work, either). Les frogs, being pas de trainspotters, didn't worry about all the non-essential gubbins train enthusiasts get excited about, but instead concentrated on making the bloody things work.

I could tell you why TGVs work better in France than they ever would in the UK, but I'd run the risk of sounding like a trainspotter ....



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

The BIG difference, of course, is that the French just build the bloody track and worry about what it went over afterwards, whereas over here there's a whole load of planning enquiries to go through. I think we might actually have ogt a better deal there...



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Na, the BIG difference is that en France people stage protests and small riots if the line *isn't* going through their town .......



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

And large riots if anything threatens, erm, pretty much anything...

Mind you, when they were building the Old Worse and Worse near me (150 years ago this year) there was a riot over who got to build a tunnel.

They had a straightforward attitude to awarding contracts in those days....



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

He been doing research!

And d'you know what's really sad? ..... I know what Old Worse & Worse means .....

more scurrilous names for railways here;

[www.rodge.force9.co.uk]



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I haven't been doing much research, I travel along the bugger every day, and do you know, it still lives up to it?



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Trains? Haven't seen any of them. Seen lots of tracks, but never a train on them...



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

Well, I think French trains are better than UK ones, because they don't have to deal with Richard Branson and bl**dy Virgin!

It was rather sad - I was on a train coming back from Worthing over Xmas, and at my connection in Southampton, we got redirected to the opposite end of the station a minute before the train was due. (only platform 1 to platform 4, but still...) The problem was that there was no tannoy system, that having broken down earlier in the day. So they didn't bother telling anyone! And this Indian girl, who was on her first visit to the UK (and spoke excellent English) said, "I know that the trains are bad in India, but this is ridiculous!"

I actually got *sympathy* from her!



I drink to drown my sorrows. Unfortunately they've learnt how to swim.

Sorry? Is this the same India that saw 1,500 people go on a riot after they all missed their train when it left on time for the first time in history?

Having said that, I can see the same thing happening in Reading...



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

You should be happy you get trains at all...



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

Well, I say 'Trains'...

Can I just defend Virgin "On THe Ridiculous" Trains? The new ones are damned funky, even if you can't stick your head out the windows... Okay, so they don't often run on time, but this is rather more due to Failtrack than to Virgin. Except when they run out of drivers, obviously.

Thames are actually far worse - they managed to lose a whole train last week - and the conductor thought his train was going somewhere else entirely, so he had to give out a message explaining that passengers for Stratford should get out at Oxford with him, and he'll try to find their train for them.....



Post Edited (02-11-03 22:54)

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I had fun in Birmingham around Xmas and New Year. One of the trains I was on had difficulties going past Oxford due to flooding (track was submerged). It was also covering for another train, which was over 3 hours late. So many people try to get on the train that no-one can physically fit onto it, even with the station masters pushing! So they then announce that this train is not going to stop at the local Birmingham stations (NEC and one other - can't remember the name), and they were laying on a special train for anyone going to those stations. However, they didn't bother telling the driver, who sat at each station for a good 10 mins wondering why no-one was getting on the train!



I drink to drown my sorrows. Unfortunately they've learnt how to swim.

I got caught by all that as well, cut my losses and phoned for a lift from Oxford. One problem was that the flooding of the line occurred after all the comuter trains had gone past that morning, so they were all stuck in London, meaning there were less trains above Oxford to carry people...



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.