The Off Topic Topic

[Grey Fox]

What does the pop noting like 1:21 h mean?

That it takes 1 hour 21 minutes to reach that place?

Which can't be correct. Not that far from say Gatwick Airport to Horley which is 1:02

Google says that Gatwick Airport to Horley is 2 minutes.

There seems to be an extra 1 hour added to times.

[Duque de Bragança]

Madrid-Lisbon by direct train such as the good ole Lusitania night train is suspended I think.

[The Brain]

Night train sus.

[garbon]

What does the pop noting like 1:21 h mean?

That it takes 1 hour 21 minutes to reach that place?

Which can't be correct. Not that far from say Gatwick Airport to Horley which is 1:02

Google says that Gatwick Airport to Horley is 2 minutes.

There seems to be an extra 1 hour added to times.

[The Larch]

Local trains around here have their times correctly shown, no extra hour added.

[Maladict]

Seems to be correct for the stations I use regularly, although some of these direct connections are not really useful as the trains only run a few times a day.
For international travel that might be fine, but trains run so frequently for most of my domestic destinations I don't bother to look up departure times anymore

[celedhring]

Thanks to this page I just found out that the Barcelona-Zurich line - which I took many times as a gateway to other parts of Europe - is no longer in operation 

[Sheilbh]

Thanks to this page I just found out that the Barcelona-Zurich line - which I took many times as a gateway to other parts of Europe - is no longer in operation 

I genuinely think the next great project of European integration should be trains: integrating timetables, ticketing methods (machines, apps etc), forcing open API platforms for data to make it easy to plan pan-European trips and the return of night trains

[The Larch]

Thanks to this page I just found out that the Barcelona-Zurich line - which I took many times as a gateway to other parts of Europe - is no longer in operation 

I genuinely think the next great project of European integration should be trains: integrating timetables, ticketing methods (machines, apps etc), forcing open API platforms for data to make it easy to plan pan-European trips and the return of night trains

IIRC the German Greens already introduced a plan for that, focused on long distance night trains across Europe:

[Sheilbh]

One of many reasons I really like the German Greens

[Josquius]

Ich bin ein gröner!

[Maladict]

Amsterdam connections to Barcelona, Milan and Warsaw. Not great, not terrible.

[Habbaku]

Why are night trains so good that you want them returned? Why did they go away?

[Maladict]

Very cool:
https://direkt.bahn.guru/

Type in a train station in Europe and see where you can get direct trains to. This is also genuinely little bit useful - though I'll spend most of my afternoon dedicated to working out where all the central London stations go (what is a Marylebone?)

Vienna has direct links to 13 countries.   Is ÖBB still run by the Habsburgs?

[Sheilbh]

Why are night trains so good that you want them returned? Why did they go away?

They are coming back - it's not just me

But they went away because of the rise of low-cost airlines, I think. But I love them - to me there is no more efficient way of travelling than going to bed in one city and waking up in another, plus they're fantastically civilised. Nothing like getting something from the whisky bar on the Caledonian Sleeper as a night cap.

The other, wider, factor is that anything four hours or under, I want to get a train. Beyond that I'll fly - and night trains are in that sweet spot. Paris-Berlin, Berlin-Vienna etc.

Plus it's intensely romantic in a weird way - both redolent of pre-WW1 Poirot, Ruritanian Europe and, of course, modern post-war re-building Kraftwerk Europe. I'm not saying that, Plato to NATO, it's the peak of European civilisation, but maybe it is

Vienna has direct links to 13 countries.   Is ÖBB still run by the Habsburgs?

Yeah and lots of night trains