1. Martyn Read

    Martyn Read TrainBoard Supporter

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  2. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Martyn-

    The article speaks of a "fourteen carriage" train. I know what a carriage is. But I'm trying to get an idea of the train size, as compared to what we have here.

    What is the passenger capacity of each carriage? Or do you have some external dimensions?

    :D

    Boxcab E50
     
  3. Gats

    Gats TrainBoard Member

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    Bob, have a look at the following site. It has the specs on the Eurostar and TGV trainsets.The normal Eurostar is 20 cars including the locomotives at each end. The test train is a shortened version of that fitted with the various recording instruments in one of the lead cars. [​IMG]

    http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/tgv/tgvindex.htm

    [ 31. July 2003, 07:47: Message edited by: Gats ]
     
  4. Alan

    Alan Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Gary, that link gets a 404 error :confused:
     
  5. Martyn Read

    Martyn Read TrainBoard Supporter

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    It lost an l of the end.
    http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/tgv/tgvindex.html

    These are articulated trainsets, so the cars are fairly short, but I reckon they are a little over half the length of an Amfleet car, if you are talking US terms.

    http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/tgv/formations.html#eur
    gives the details of a standard Eurostar half-set (2+18 car trains), the seven 2+14 car sets were built for travelling from France to various parts of the UK north of London, this service never happened, and most of them are now in service with GNER between London and Leeds/York. I believe the test set was one of these seven regional sets.

    The half-set design was specifically for Channel Tunnel usage, as in a dire emergency the train could theoretically be split in two and half of it exit the tunnel. Not sure how practical in real life this feature would be though!

    The French sets often run with two units coupled together, which explains why they are much shorter than Eurostars on the diagrams on that website.

    [ 31. July 2003, 12:06: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
     
  6. Gats

    Gats TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks Martyn for picking up the missing 'l'.
    I must have missed it in my hasty cut and pasty (or is that pastie?) this morning! :D
     
  7. Martyn Read

    Martyn Read TrainBoard Supporter

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    Anyone want a Pastie? :D

    [​IMG]

    [ 31. July 2003, 20:05: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
     
  8. Ben

    Ben E-Mail Bounces

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    That looks rather like Truro Station, Martin? - but then maybe other Cornwall Railway stations are similar.

    I will be travelling to Paris on Eurostar on Monday as the first part of a journey to Barcelona (all in one day - European rail travel really is the sensible alternative to flying these days - and SO much more interesting (and less frightening!)) - but unfortunately not on the high speed CTRL (we are about a month or so too early); we will have to crawl along in between all the slam door Kent Coast stock.

    I love the contrast between the speed of the journey through leafy Kent, then through the tunnel and out onto the flat plateaux and plains of Picardy and the Somme at ultra high speed (well, usually - last year we ground to a halt somewhere in the middle of that countryside and stood stationary for so long that we missed our overnight connection to Italy and had a nightmare journey finally arriving at 6.00 pm the next evening! However that is the only time we have been let down).

    Ben
     
  9. Martyn Read

    Martyn Read TrainBoard Supporter

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    Hi Ben, It's the rather less attractive (but much busier!) location of Newport. These Ginsters units are run by Wales & Borders, but get around a big chunk of the country (Waterloo, Birmingham, Penzance, Brighton, etc) on Alphaline services.

    I haven't managed to get through the tunnel yet, maybe I should suggest a romantic weekend in Paris to my wife, which would be a good excuse!
    I'll have to wait till they open the new bit of line I think! ;) :D
     
  10. Alan

    Alan Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Yeah, we are waiting for the new bit of line to open before sampling Eurostar for the first time. Been to Paris a few times, so will probably go to Brussels. Also been there lots of times, but the are plenty of trains to watch ;)
     
  11. Alan

    Alan Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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  12. Ben

    Ben E-Mail Bounces

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    Am back now from Barcelona - sad to say the performance of the various European rail companies transporting us was not stunning (with the honourable exception, this time, of Eurostar) and our journeys were delayed, stressful and inefficient.

    Outbound, we reached Paris without incident, crossed the city, caught our TGV and started off southbound at a rapid pace - only to grind to a halt somewhere deep in the French countryside for about 40 mins - there was an explanantion for the delay but of course it was in French, which I don't speak (other than asking for a beer, coffee or baguette!). Upon starting off we knew with a sinking heart that we would miss our connection in Montpellier - another announcement made us believe that our connection would be "assured" but now I think all they meant was that somehow or other a train would take us forward at some unspecified time!

    When we got to Montpellier we had missed the train by about 10 minutes and as the next one to Barcelona wasn't until the next morning we had to find a hotel and stay the night. Once we had calmed down and cooled down we actually had quite a good evening and night in Montpellier which is a really nice town but of course we had missed one of our precious nights in Barcelona (which we would still probably have to pay for!).

    Next morning we boarded the next train to Barcelona (a wierd Talgo train with articulated 4 wheel carriages) with specially indorsed tickets but of course no reserved seats - the French guard shrugged his shoulders and said HE was perfectly happy for us to travel but he couldn't say that his Spanish counterpart wouldn't put us off the train. As it happened, the supposedly full train was actually less than full and all we had to do was change seats a few times during the slow, late running journey (major track work on the Montpellier to Barcelona line which should have rung alarm bells for our return journey but didn't!) before arriving in a stiflingly hot Barcelona - a stressful journey!

    Coming back a week later we started off ok and ran up to the border at Port Bou where there is a very slow crossing of the border (by a shunter pushing the train across the border after the Spanish loco has come off and before the giant brute French electric loco comes on) to the nearby French station of Cerbere.

    At Cerbere we sat there - and sat there - and sat there - for about 50 minutes - no announcements - silence - before mysteriously starting off and running slowly (with 15 minute station stops where 2 mins would have been more than adequate) to Montpellier; one French official said something about "work" causing the delay and right as we were getting off we found a poster telling of an intensive summer programme of work causing delays of 50 to 60 mins to most trains!

    With a sinking heart I went to queue up at the ticket office to try to get our tickets indorsed for travel on a later train - getting heartily sick of all this by now - until some organisation at last - an official handed out tickets for the next TGV with seats allocated; so after a beer we boarded and had a fairly uneventful journey up the high speed line to Paris (apart from the undisciplined toddler crying at earsplitting volume in the next seat for most of the journey) although of course we knew we would not make the Eurostar we were booked on.

    At Gare du Nord we were lucky - there were spare places on the last Eurostar of the day to London, which was delayed anyway, and we finally made it indoors at midnight 30, about 2 hours later than we should have arrived.

    So another stressful and worrying journey - and now I will never again be able to persuade my wife to do another long European journey by rail and unless travelling by myself I will have to steel my nerves and travel by aeroplane - the ultimate betrayal for a railfan - but at the moment the services are just not reliable enough.

    By the way, while writing this have been downloading one one of the Eurostar videos - still only 61% complete - I have a very slow computer!

    Ben

    [ 15. August 2003, 23:31: Message edited by: Ben ]
     
  13. Alan

    Alan Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Ben, what an appalling tale! And the reason I fly everywhere ;) Travelling overland can use up too much of the precious holiday time.

    On one holiday in Sorrento, Italy, we left Stansted airport early morning and were sunbathing in the hotel roof garden at lunchtime, drinking a cold beer :D Much as I like trains, I shudder to think what the same journey by train would have been like!
     

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