Welcome to today's thread - #CrossBorderRail 2024 Extra Days – Warszawa Conference - Berlin - Erkner - Frankfurt (Oder) - Warszawa - Frankfurt (Oder) - Erkner - Berlin

Crossing these borders:
Frankfurt (Oder) 🇩🇪 - Slubice 🇵🇱 (but have crossed this before)

These borders on the borders map:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_935041#14/52.3303/14.5671

Today's routes on the routes map:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-extra-days-2024_1030682#7/52.982/16.166

#CrossBorderRail All The Borders

All of Europe's rail borders - categorised by type, and whether I (Jon Worth) have been to the location. KEY Black - #000000: visited in 2022 during #CrossBorderRail Project Dark grey - #222222: visited in since the 2022 project Mid grey - #555555: tramways and narrow gauge lines, visited Light grey - #999999: not yet visited Very light grey - #BBBBBB: used for tramways and narrow gauge lines ICONS Track with cross - track is missing or out of use Train with cross, and track - track is useable but no passenger trains Train and track - passenger trains run Map developed as part of my #CrossBorderRail project http://crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/

uMap

#CrossBorderRail 2024 Extra Days – Warszawa Conference Train 1 of 8
S 42
04:46 Berlin Hermannstrasse - Berlin Ostkreuz 04:55
DB S-Bahn Berlin

Train type: Stadler-Siemens S-Bahn 483/484, 2x 4 carriages
⚡️
🚲: ✅
🦽: ✅ (step free, gap free at Hermannstrasse)
🛜: ⛔️
🍽️: ⛔️
🧳: 🙂 (lots of multi use spaces)
🧽: 🙂

S 42
04:56 Berlin Hermannstrasse - Berlin Ostkreuz 05:05

Distance: 5.3km
Average speed: 35km/h

4 stops:
Berlin-Neukölln
Berlin Sonnenallee
Berlin Treptower Park
Berlin Ostkreuz (S)

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-extra-days-2024_1030682#14/52.4853/13.4505

#CrossBorderRail Extra Days 2024

uMap

#CrossBorderRail 2024 Extra Days – Warszawa Conference Train 2 of 8
S 3
05:02 Berlin Ostkreuz - Erkner 05:31
DB S-Bahn Berlin

Train type: Adtranz and DWA (later Bombardier) 481 EMU, 4x 2 carriages
⚡️
🚲: ✅
🦽: ✅
🛜: ⛔️
🍽️: ⛔️
🧳: 🙂 (not quite as good as the newer 484, but still v good)
🧽: 🙂

S 3
05:12 Berlin Ostkreuz - Erkner 05:41

Distance: 21.6km
Average speed: 45km/h

10 stops:
Berlin-Rummelsburg
Berlin Betriebsbf Rummelsburg
Berlin-Karlshorst (S)
Berlin-Wuhlheide
Berlin-Köpenick
Berlin-Hirschgarten
Berlin-Friedrichshagen
Berlin-Rahnsdorf
Berlin-Wilhelmshagen
Erkner (S)

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-extra-days-2024_1030682#12/52.4656/13.6109

#CrossBorderRail Extra Days 2024

uMap

And why the hell am I going to Warszawa this way?

Because there are engineering works on the main line between Berlin and Erkner, and the EuroCity only starts in Frankfurt (Oder)

Were the Ostbahn Kostrzyn - Berlin electrified trains could divert over that #CrossBorderRail route. But that hasn’t happened and won’t happen soon…

And I’m in Warszawa to speak at #Eurotrans2024 https://eurotrans2024.sgh.waw.pl/en/agenda Luckily my panel is early afternoon, allowing me to make a day trip to Warszawa

It’s not the most interesting day in terms of the borders - I know Frankfurt (Oder) 🇩🇪 - Slubice 🇵🇱 all too well. But it’ll be interesting to see how the Faeser-trashes-Schengen controls work later on. Will they control everyone, or only minorities?

Meanwhile passing Rahnsdorf (towards Erkner)

Not to be confused with Rangsdorf (south of Schönefeld Airport)

Just as Lichterfelde is not to be confused with Lichtenrade or Lichtenberg. And Mariendorf and Marienfelde.

After all these years in Berlin I still mix them up

#CrossBorderRail 2024 Extra Days – Warszawa Conference Train 3 of 8
RE 1 (73754)
05:50 Erkner - Frankfurt (Oder) 06:31
Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn GmbH

Train type: Siemens Desiro HC EMU, 6 carriages
⚡️
🚲: ✅
🦽: ✅
🛜: ✅
🍽️: ⛔️
🧳: 🙂 (I like the single-double deck mix)
🧽: 😐 (graffiti on some windows)

RE 1 (73754)
05:50 Erkner - Frankfurt (Oder) 06:31

Distance: 56.7km
Average speed: 83km/h

8 stops:
Fangschleuse
Fürstenwalde(Spree)
Berkenbrück
Briesen(Mark)
Jacobsdorf(Mark)
Pillgram
Frankfurt(Oder)-Rosengarten
Frankfurt(Oder)

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-extra-days-2024_1030682#11/52.3752/14.0834

#CrossBorderRail Extra Days 2024

uMap
I don’t know how the train manager is so cheery before 6am on this train to Frankfurt (Oder), but good morning! 😀 Apologies if I couldn’t quite match the energy with my Guten Morgen!

#CrossBorderRail 2024 Extra Days – Warszawa Conference Train 4 of 8
EC 41
06:49 Frankfurt (Oder) - Warszawa Centralna 10:57
DB Fernverkehr AG, PKP Intercity

Train type: Siemens Vectron locomotive, 6 carriages
⚡️
🚲: ⛔️ (used to, but now doesn’t 😡)
🦽: ✅ (needs lift or ramp on platform)
🛜: ✅
🍽️: ✅
🧳: 😐 (very limited space in compartment carriages, high steps)
🧽: 🙂 (spotless)

EC 41
06:49 Frankfurt (Oder) - Warszawa Centralna 10:57

Distance: 477.9km
Average speed: 116km/h

8 stops:
Rzepin
Świebodzin
Zbąszynek
Poznań Gl.
Konin
Kutno
Warszawa Zachodnia
Warszawa Centralna

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-extra-days-2024_1030682#8/52.255/17.775

#CrossBorderRail Extra Days 2024

uMap

Szczaniec

No we weren’t meant to stop here…

Damn, how has PKP IC messed this up?

EC 41 is now *only* compartment carriages - not ideal in itself! - and that means no bike transport

PKP IC has these decent 2nd class open carriages with bike spaces. Why not use those here still? They used to run them

Thanks @mattfullerton for alerting me to the problem, that I can confirm

Also ALL EuroCity trains Berlin-Warszawa now are timetabled to run without bike spaces. WHY?

Trains without bike spaces I’ve encountered. But ones that used to have them and now don’t - that’s absurd!

Also all compartment carriages isn’t good either - end up with the wrong people in your compartment and that can be grim.

All you need for Berlin-Warszawa is 160km/h DE and PL approved carriages. PKP IC has loads of these with bike spaces.

There can’t be an approval problem to run the ones with bike spaces to Germany as they used to run (unless some permission were revoked, but is that really the case here?)

So on balance of probability this is just a crap management decision - to deploy the newest compartment carriages on Berlin-Warszawa, but then they forgot about cyclists.

At least there’s still a @diningcar though!
Retro EP09 at Poznań
When the sign in the train says you’re going to Warszawa Gdanska, but DB and Portal Pasazera still think the train will serve Centralna (final stop Wschodnia)

Kutno

Typical Polish modern station. Not super charming, but functional and accessible

So it went to Centralna. Not Gdańska. With a little delay. So I’m now in sunny Warszawa

Oh. And I get to #Eurotrans2024 and who’s here: Bogusław Liberadzki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogus%C5%82aw_Liberadzki?wprov=sfti1#

The MEP who - as Rapporteur for the Rail Passenger Rights Regulation in 2021 - bears more political responsibility for the mess we’re in with ticketing and rights than more than anyone

Bogusław Liberadzki - Wikipedia

We’ve got a dude called Sönke Reise presenting at #Eurotrans2024

Perfect name 🙂

Sadly Sönke Reise’s presentation went downhill from his name onwards. #Eurotrans2024
Ahhh finally a good speaker. Daniel Hörcher from Imperial. Sharp guy #Eurotrans2024 https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/d.horcher
Now they’re trying to talk about #RailBaltica. It’s horrid. At least I know what I don’t know about Rail Baltica, which is better than this. #Eurotrans2024

Here’s my post about #RailBaltica after travelling a big part of the future route earlier this year #Eurotrans2024

https://crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/rail-baltica-better-informed-but-none-the-wiser/

Being at this #Eurotrans2024 conference is weird. It’s another one of these situations where I don’t know if I’m enlightened or if I’m stupid.

I can cut through the bullshit in these speeches like a knife through butter. But the people here have roles, responsibility, income *massively* higher than I do.

Ah. Megaprojects often don’t get the traffic they expected when they started building. We know that. “We need a better assessment control framework from the EU”. Laughing darkly here. What EU politician gives a 💩 about that? #Eurotrans2024
Top Zoom tip: if your face is too bright / low contrast, make your fake background likewise 🙂 #Eurotrans2024
So I didn’t make a fool of myself at Eurotrans. And people understood my points - as I’ve got useful examples to make what I’m talking about real and relateable. Quick 10 mins on a bench in the sun and now back towards Berlin… #Eurotrans2024
Passed the infrastructure ministry on the way back to Centralna. Busy road and no cycle path there 😡

#CrossBorderRail 2024 Extra Days – Warszawa Conference Train 5 of 8
EC 40
17:01 Warszawa Centralna - Frankfurt (Oder) 21:09
DB Fernverkehr AG, PKP Intercity

Train type: Siemens Taurus locomotive, 6 carriages
⚡️
🚲: ⛔️
🦽: ✅
🛜: ✅
🍽️: ✅ (and it’s good)
🧳: ☹️ (busier than this morning, and it’s inadequate)
🧽: 🙂

EC 40
17:01 Warszawa Centralna - Frankfurt (Oder) 21:09

Distance: 477.8km
Average speed: 116km/h

8 stops:
Warszawa Zachodnia
Kutno
Konin
Poznań Gl.
Zbąszynek
Świebodzin
Rzepin
Frankfurt(Oder)

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-extra-days-2024_1030682#8/52.255/17.775

#CrossBorderRail Extra Days 2024

uMap
That this train - that can do vMax 160km/h with 8 stops averages 116km/h is quite something. Ok, the terrain is flat, but there’s not much slack in this timetable.
Ha. Passenger next to me here has “Zugbindung ist aufgehoben” on her DB Ticket. So she can take any train. Polish train manager doesn’t know what this means 🙂 We’re not sure if the Deepl translation “Wiązanie pociągu zostało anulowane” is right!

So then. Heading back to Germany first time since Faeser gave up on #Schengen. My train doesn’t run all the way to Berlin but terminates at Frankfurt (Oder). What will happen there?

(Or if you think something else will happen, reply to say what!)

Police will just observe everyone alighting
8.2%
Police will demand ID from minorities only
76.7%
Police will demand ID from all
3.4%
There’ll be no police
11.6%
Poll ended at .
Golden hour, PKP version

I’m really melancholy here tonight.

Warszawa - Berlin on EC 40, with the sun fading over the fields of Poland is one of my very favourite trains. A genuine journey thtough the country. And Poland was always there, just an hour from Berlin, both familiar and unknown.

But from next month it’ll no longer be an hour away, but 11 hours away. I’ll miss it being so accessible.

And I know this is silly. I speak English, French and German, and odds and ends of Swedish and Italian, nothing Slavic. I’d not survive professionally in Poland. I can’t see how I could live there.

But to visit it I’m so fascinated always. I suppose I know it well enough to know how to navigate it, but it’s still different enough to surprise me still. And there are aspects of it that repulse me too - the strong Catholicism, the car dependency, the coal burning…

@jon
My feelings exactly.
@jon Hope this cheers you up a bit.
@jon coal burning has dramatically changed (at least in some places). Krakow today is nothing compared to Krakow 20y ago where being outside with asthma in winter was close to impossible!
@jon avoid Bavaria then as well

Hey Donald Tusk!

You were swift to criticise Germany’s blatant disregard of #Schengen

So why are Polish armed police prowling around the EuroCity train between Świebodzin and Rzepin? 🤔

Didn’t check anyone in my compartment though

So the Polish police took a black guy off the train in Rzepin in handcuffs.

Whether there were any white passengers doing anything untoward we can’t know - as they didn’t get checked.

@jon 11 hour?? What are we doing ...
@julienw Ravières to Poland is min 11 hours by train.

@jon

I'm planning to be in Berlin tomorrow and Wednesday, returning to Munich Thursday. I had worked out a nice itinerary via Warsaw and a sleeper train, but alas, there's bustitution between Berlin and Frankfurt a.d. Oder Thursday, so I elected to come straight back by the direct train.

@jon (she didn’t give up, IMHO. She actively sabotaged it, giving far-right parties/politicians all over the EU an excuse to go even further)
@jon I voted the second option but additionally somewhere in town a teenager dies of ennui without ever knowing what ennui is.

@jon definitely not right, "wiązanie" here would be something like a chemical bond, or an action of tying things together

we doesn't really have a word for this kind of concept, but i guess you could say "przywiązanie biletu do pociągu"(??); sounds very clunky, but would get the point across in Polish

@jon ( the rest, "zostało anulowane", sounds correct )
@jon "Połączenie kolejowe zostało anulowane" is better.
@rysiek @jon I mean it would be "pociąg został odwołany" if at all

@rysiek @jon but it's not about the rail connection! Zugbindung is a German term for when your ticket allows you to travel only with the listed train ( https://www.bahn.de/faq/was-bedeutet-zugbindung; and we don't really have anything like Flexpreis in Poland for long-distance trains, thus Zugbindung is also a somewhat unknown concept )

Zugbindung gets invalidated when your train is delayed enough => you can travel with any train

Was bedeutet Zugbindung?

@ptrc @rysiek but while the concept of Zugbindung exists in other countries, the vocabulary to explain it is totally different. “Ticket can now be used on any train”
@jon @rysiek to be fair, it's not like something such as Flexpreis is completely foreign to Poland, but it's mostly used with regional trains - and then, the window is smaller ( a few hours, instead of the entire day ) + a ticket for a specific train is often not even an option with those rail operators
@ptrc @rysiek btw I encountered a new one today. I was on Interrail but booked seat reservations with DB. They were reserved correctly but the reservation had no QR code. The PKP IC staff had no idea that was possible! 🙂

@jon @ptrc I think in Polish "Zugbindung" would be "skomunikowanie".

As in, two trains are "skomunikowane" if there is a passenger that has a ticket sold with an itinerary involving both trains.

If the second train then leaves before the first one arrives, the passenger is the train company's problem until they arrive at their desitination.

@jon we always plan with an extra hour of buffer when taking this train to visit relatives in eastern Poland. It used to be late basically every time, though things have notably improved just recently.
@xylakant I’ve had mixed experiences - mostly good, and a few absolute catastrophes with >4 hrs delay!
@jon the worst we had was that the train didn’t start in Berlin, people were told to take the Regio to Frankfurt just to find no connecting train there, no info, no nothing.
@xylakant today the train only goes to Frankfurt (Oder), bus from there to Berlin. Polish crew haven’t announced that though!
@jon it’s been like that on and off for a while and it seems to come as a surprise to the polish staff just about every time. Cross border communication is not their forte.
@xylakant Right. It’s a very Polish train that has a small international bit 🙂
@jon I understand the train selected for the Edinburgh - Glasgow shuttle was not the fastest available. It had a lower top speed, but it had better acceleration so was able to complete the route faster than the “fast” train.
@peterbrown On a route with many stops, yes. But this isn’t that! It’s simply timetabled tight - short stops, get up to max speed quickly, cruise at 160km/h. No messing!
@jon
Then there is counterexample of projects cut down in order to please Jaspers assessors even though the reduced-scope projects have insufficient capacity for fulfilling EU goals (@meme12555 has a lot of examples to this in his archive)
@djasa oh sure, and also even some that might justify the title suffer this too. Which is more pernicious though I wonder - projects de-scoped, or projects that could, technically, but never do in reality, reach their expectations. @meme12555
@djasa @meme12555 also don't read too much into that toot - I was just annoyed by a poor quality panel!
@jon Keep up the good work. Someone needs to tell the Emperor he's proudly showing his Freikoerperkultur credentials.

@jon >But the people here have roles, responsibility, income *massively* higher than I do.

Dunno how you got into my head during the meetings I attend where I work, but you nailed my thoughts exactly.

@jon In times like these, integrity trumps expediency
@jon oh, now I'm interested to know what mosconceptions they have
@ignaloidas the central question is this: WHAT is #RailBaltica for? WHO is it for? Everything flows from that. But lots of people never asked themselves that!
@jon, hello from rainy flooded Bratislava! 👋