Sunday 17 September - A Chapter of Accidents

The concourse of the Copenhagen station is a beautiful large wood and steel structure

The day started badly when the city bus that was supposed to take us from the hotel to the train station didn't turn up and we took a taxi instead. 

Our train to Gothenburg left on time and we were quite comfortable in first class. The plan was to travel to Gothenburg and catch a train to Oslo with a two hour transfer. However, at Lund there was a delay caused by signal problems and after a long wait the train was declared a complete failure. We were turned out onto the street, several hundreds of passengers, in the promise that buses would take us on to destination. No Buses turned up. Groups wandered this way and that way backwards and forwards and there was no railway officer available to even discuss or to find out what was going to happen. We were told to wait two hours for the next train. This was cancelled

We had now been in Lund for about three hours. We got talking to two ladies from BC who were in the same predicament as us, they needed to get to Gothenburg and then on to Oslo. Because there was no information whatsoever coming from the railway we went to a taxi and hired a taxi to take us to Gothenburg which took about three and a half hours. 

At Gothenburg there was nobody to talk to to find out whether our tickets would be valid on the one train left which could take us to Oslo. In the end we decided to cut our losses and by bus tickets to get us to Oslo this evening. It was a three and a half hour bus ride after a three hour taxi ride but at least we got to Oslo, even if much later than planned and very tired.

An Emergency Brake Application

I should have mentioned yesterday that on the trip to Copenhagen we experienced an emergency brake application. It was just after we had passed into Denmark when the brakes went on hard and stayed on hard until the train had practically come to a halt. I have only experienced this twice before, the first was on the Thurso Railway, the second was in the middle of the channel tunnel. 

We were in the first compartment behind the locomotive and I shouted to Paul to hold on to something. After a very short pause the bricks with kicked off and we went on again. However, when the brakes go on like that and they don't come off in a hurry it is always cause for concern.

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