Posted by Jock on November 29, 2005 at 01:24:13 from 84.64.108.217 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Planning Rail Routes posted by Peter Ceresole on November 29, 2005 at 00:46:02:
My purely personal experience is that such a schedule would never hold together and would come unstitched after one or two changes. But maybe they've changed since they got me to Chester two hours late.
I'm old enough to remember the days when trains were held waiting for advertised connections. These days trains leave on time to meet government performance targets and b*gg*r the passengers. In the old days a blacksmith working in the workshops of some narrow gauge railway in the top left hand corner of Wales could stagger home late to the arms of his beloved and say, "I had to go to the pub to warm up, Jones wouldn't take the train up the valley till the Cambrian came through and that was two hours late because of a derailment at Bicester."
I once was involved in organising a sea shanty festival in Poland. (Don't ask me why Poles are passionate about sea shanties, just accept that they attend these in their tens of thousands all over the country.) One of the performers, Jim Lucas, came all the way from Sweden. He asked me to arrange his rail route from Swinouscie on the Baltic Coast to Tomaszow Mazowiecki miles from anywhere. The journey across Poland took FOUR different trains. One of the key connections allowed only six minutes between arrival and departure. I advised Jim to leave a day early fully expecting him to end up spending the night on one of the intermediate time. No one was more surprised than I was when he duly arrived at Tomaszow on the train that he was supposed to be on.
I had almost forgotton that, although the rail network is crumbling in Poland, in that country published connections are still held.