Frédéric Jacobs

A French train coming from Lyon arrived 3 hours late, at 1:40AM, in Geneva on Sunday night.

Having missed all connections, a train driver of the Swiss rail company, asked all 80 stranded passengers where they needed to go, took an unused train, specifying that at that time during the night it was easy, and dropped them off at various stations across Lake Leman. Like a taxi, but on rails.

It's not for nothing that people love the Swiss railways 🇨🇭🚞

https://www.blick.ch/fr/news/suisse/derniere-course-insolite-quand-le-train-des-cff-se-transforme-en-taxi-id18355518.html

Un convoi CFF extraordinaire a ramené des voyageurs en pleine nuit

Blick
Feb 28, 2023 at 9:37amIvory for Mac
Show threadcynicalsecurity Feb 28, 2023

@fj had the exact same thing happen on the EC from Milan except that, once we got to Brig at some ungodly hour (pas midnight), the CFF personnel came through the train asking where people were going and turned the EC into an RE. Nobody complained in the least, we were already so late it would make little difference.

Oh, and we also got taxi vouchers to get us home as in Lausanne and Geneva we were well past the "last bus" times.

Show threadAndrew Lewis WorkshopFeb 28, 2023
@fj many years ago, the train I was on came to a halt on a narrow section of rail cut into a rocky cliff next to the ocean. I heard shouting coming from the front of the train, getting closer and closer to my carriage. I assumed that there had been a rock slide, or some catastrophic damage. It turned out that the train was running early, and the driver spotted a pod of dolphins playing in the bay and stopped, sending the conductor out to tell everyone to look out of the window!
Show threadFrédéric JacobsFeb 28, 2023
@LewisWorkshop 🚃 😍 🐬
Show threadNemo_bis 🌈Feb 28, 2023
@LewisWorkshop I read backwards and I
was momentarily confused trying to understand which Swiss lakes might possibly contain dolphins.
Show threadJaminFeb 28, 2023
@fj I admit I had read 80% of this post before I realized I there wasn't another train coming from Vienna running 30 minutes late travelling at 120kph, and that I wasn't going to have to do any math.
Show threadJoe StrainFeb 28, 2023
@fj really great to hear about this. Usually goes completely under the radar. What a lot of companies don’t realize is that this is the type of thing that separates from the pack. If I had this experience I would go out of my way to use the same train company simply because they went the distance when it mattered. I truly hope they rewarded this driver for their efforts and are promoting these types of actions internally. Thanks for sharing!
Show threadCatherine LouisFeb 28, 2023
@fj customer service extraordinaire!
Show threadJohn G FitzgeraldFeb 28, 2023
@fj 👏👏👏👏👏
Show threadsxpertMar 1, 2023
@fj it would be doable inFrance too at the time the SNCF was the sole operator on it’s own network… not anymore, the idiotic neoliberal “competition” BS came through here