August 20-21 Travel Ottawa to Olten, Switzerland

 

The beautiful clock tower on the Gare de Lyon in Paris 
We decided to cross the Atlantic by the Air France direct flight from Ottawa to Paris rather than be messed around by Air Canada with its dreadful performance record. Air France are not really much better than Air Canada. The flight out of Ottawa was almost two hours late although we did manage to pick up about 20 minutes on arrival in Paris however it took a long time for the plane to get to the apron and then we had to wait a long time to get off the plane and then we had to take a bus to get to the passport control.  There was a wait in line to buy the tickets for the RER line B train into Paris which was dangerously full. At the Gare du Nord there was a quick platform transfer to line D which took us to the Gare de Lyon. We had plenty of time for the TGV train to Basel.
However the Gare de Lyon was a complete mess. The SNCF insists on keeping the platform departure details a deep dark secret until the very last moment which means there are a lot of people waiting in the concourse and then there is a mad rush to get to the ticket barrier in order to get on the train. What was really annoying was that we had to show our tickets to get through the ticket barrier and as soon as we got on the train our tickets were checked again. The SNCF needs to rethink how it should handle the large crowds. The departure concourse was completely filled with people waiting for their trains. The only place to sit was on the floor.
The trip from Paris Gare de Lyon to Basel was delightful .The platform information was posted in good time and there was a great crowd clustering around the ticket scanning machines at the platform entrance - these had failed and the crew were forced to check everybody's ticket using the personal cellphones. Paris to Dijon to Mulhouse onto Basel took just about four hours the train was a double decker TGV running extremely smoothly and it was difficult to realize  how fast we were actually running. At one point we were doing 312 kilometers an hour which is 194 miles an hour and you can walk around there was no jerking, it was very smooth. We did have first class reservations sitting together on the top deck but when you look at the price 83 Swiss francs for this four hour trip it seems to be pretty reasonable.

At Basel there was just enough time for us to have our first Magnum ice cream and then we found a very pleasant seat on the train to Olton. Everything went according to plan and we arrived at Olton just as we had planned to all the way from Canada. After checking into the hotel we went down to the platforms at Olten
At Olten the Re 460s were very much in evidence on passenger trains, frequently with one on each end.

The Re 4/4s are still to be found on freight workings


An Re 4/4 on an empty stock passenger train



Comments

  1. MarkAugust 26, 2023 at 11:39 AM

    One certainly must have a lot of patience when travelling these days....

    ReplyDelete

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