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ICE and IC services suspended today Storm Fredereike


Foulounoux
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Bad day for DB today

 

We were on our way back from Baden Baden to Frankfurt and the chaos first hit us at Manneheim where the ICE to Cologne we needed was terminated

First talk of a fire then realised it was damage to the high speed line

So back onto the Hamburg Altona service and change at Frankfurt Hbf. All good so far

 

Then at Frankfurt directed to Pl 5.... No train. It was moved to 1a

Get on train RegionalBahn and wait to depart ....suddenly display in train changes to S22 and Limburg. Lots of confusion and I and colleague left the train. Asked DB staff for help and point blank ignored

 

Choice now find another train ICE on 6. Or S Bahn. Chose the latter and we eventually made the flight with minutes to spare

 

Then saw that they had stopped ALL long distance trains.

 

 

Just wonder what happened to the 100+ people hoping to get to the airport who stayed on the Limburg train :-(

 

 

All in all bad day for DBahn and really bad customer service experience as all staff headed for the restroom to avoid dealing with passengers

 

Colin

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Bad day for DB today

 

We were on our way back from Baden Baden to Frankfurt and the chaos first hit us at Manneheim where the ICE to Cologne we needed was terminated

First talk of a fire then realised it was damage to the high speed line

So back onto the Hamburg Altona service and change at Frankfurt Hbf. All good so far

 

Then at Frankfurt directed to Pl 5.... No train. It was moved to 1a

Get on train RegionalBahn and wait to depart ....suddenly display in train changes to S22 and Limburg. Lots of confusion and I and colleague left the train. Asked DB staff for help and point blank ignored

 

Choice now find another train ICE on 6. Or S Bahn. Chose the latter and we eventually made the flight with minutes to spare

 

Then saw that they had stopped ALL long distance trains.

 

 

Just wonder what happened to the 100+ people hoping to get to the airport who stayed on the Limburg train :-(

 

 

All in all bad day for DBahn and really bad customer service experience as all staff headed for the restroom to avoid dealing with passengers

 

Colin

So all the flak directed at Britain's railways and its various operators when things go wrong, and then compared to "superior" Continental railways, is somewhat (on occasion) unfair.

 

Glad to hear you managed to catch your flight and hope the rest of your journey was "uneventful".

 

Regards, Ian.

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Quite striking and shocking to see DB suspending all long-distance services and NS virtually all services.We tend to regard our transport as falling over at the first difficulty, yet we seem to have kept a near normal rail service running across the whole country in the face of the same storm . If Greater Anglia were still running normal services from Clacton & Colchester south what were the problems on the Continent?

 

It can't have gained that much strength crossing the North Sea , surely - if anything western Britain should have extracted the sting from the storm? 

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Just seen a video from Holland and it does seem to have got stronger

 

The storm was it seems called Hurricane Friederike

 

 

It's the first time I've experienced turbulence whilst still on the runway :-0. And climbing away was "eventful".

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Quite striking and shocking to see DB suspending all long-distance services and NS virtually all services.We tend to regard our transport as falling over at the first difficulty, yet we seem to have kept a near normal rail service running across the whole country in the face of the same storm . If Greater Anglia were still running normal services from Clacton & Colchester south what were the problems on the Continent?

 

It can't have gained that much strength crossing the North Sea , surely - if anything western Britain should have extracted the sting from the storm? 

 

 

Rubbish it is a sensible precaution. Would you like to be on a train that hit a fallen tree or other obstacle at 130 KMPH ??

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Rubbish it is a sensible precaution. Would you like to be on a train that hit a fallen tree or other obstacle at 130 KMPH ??

 

In darkness there may well be a case. But as I say why a total shutdown on NS while Greater Anglia (who, come to think of it are an NS subsidiary) run on a near normal basis?? Both are overhead electric railways. I'm not sure NS run that fast across most of their network

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I was in Antwerp today and it was very windy, apparently gusts up to 80kph. Trains seemed to be running well enough though, by the time I took the train to Brussels the wind had fallen back to normal levels.

 

On DB, I was in Germany for the first half of the week and got time to ride a few trains and do some train watching and I have to say that if you take the very excellent ICE services out of consideration then the other DB services are nothing special and certainly don't shame our railways. Plenty of locomotives though.

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I was in Antwerp today and it was very windy, apparently gusts up to 80kph. Trains seemed to be running well enough though, by the time I took the train to Brussels the wind had fallen back to normal levels.

 

 

So SNCB was running near-normally while NS was shut for the day (and DB was going the same way) . Curiouser and curiouser....

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Quite striking and shocking to see DB suspending all long-distance services and NS virtually all services.We tend to regard our transport as falling over at the first difficulty, yet we seem to have kept a near normal rail service running across the whole country in the face of the same storm . If Greater Anglia were still running normal services from Clacton & Colchester south what were the problems on the Continent?

 

It can't have gained that much strength crossing the North Sea , surely - if anything western Britain should have extracted the sting from the storm? 

 

Winds across Germany were at hurricane force and have caused chaos right across the country, with six deaths so far reported. Trees blown over, roofs torn off, autobahns blocked by blown-over trucks and signs, trees blocking main lines and many stretches of overhead wires down. This wasn't a normal day and DB were quite right to stop the entire sytem for the safety of passengers and staff. Nothing more really to needs to be said.

 

David

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42731505

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In early October our ICE failed to reach Hanover, due to congestion, and we eventually detrained (by choice) at a suburban station. The Germans on board asked if this was an early Brexit? We had already struck one fallen tree, and it became clear that train services throughout Northern Germany were simply all stopping or being stopped due to exceptional weather conditions. The autobahns fared a little better, and a planned coach was diverted from Hanover and took us south to the Harz.

 

It happens.

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So SNCB was running near-normally while NS was shut for the day (and DB was going the same way) . Curiouser and curiouser....

With weather a few miles difference makes all the difference!

 

One day I went north up the A19 and by Thirsk it was heavy snow and down to a single lane at 25 to 30 mph all the way to Teesside but returned back via the A66 and A1 and by leaving Stockton on Tees there was no snow so a very fast retur trip an hour later!

 

Mark Saunders

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Bad day for DB today

 

We were on our way back from Baden Baden to Frankfurt and the chaos first hit us at Manneheim where the ICE to Cologne we needed was terminated

First talk of a fire then realised it was damage to the high speed line

So back onto the Hamburg Altona service and change at Frankfurt Hbf. All good so far

 

Then at Frankfurt directed to Pl 5.... No train. It was moved to 1a

Get on train RegionalBahn and wait to depart ....suddenly display in train changes to S22 and Limburg. Lots of confusion and I and colleague left the train. Asked DB staff for help and point blank ignored

 

Choice now find another train ICE on 6. Or S Bahn. Chose the latter and we eventually made the flight with minutes to spare

 

Then saw that they had stopped ALL long distance trains.

 

 

Just wonder what happened to the 100+ people hoping to get to the airport who stayed on the Limburg train :-(

 

 

All in all bad day for DBahn and really bad customer service experience as all staff headed for the restroom to avoid dealing with passengers

 

Colin

 

There was a severe storm, people died.

Yet you are more concerned about trains being late.

Get real.

Bernard

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There was a severe storm, people died.

Yet you are more concerned about trains being late.

Get real.

Bernard

Actually at the time we weren't aware of the deaths. Only the ICE and IC had been stopped at that stage

So before making judgments on my character I'd appreciate if you understood the context

 

I was more concerned that DB staff seemed to think it was appropriate to allow passengers to board trains that were ending up in a different destination from that advised and now given the storm potentially putting them in a storm location with no route back

 

Everyone understands now why trains were suspended but at Manneheim there was no indication of the storms strength so the lack of effective communication caused more problems

 

Colin

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To be honest I think everybody is guilty of feeling outraged about things that affect them directly that are pretty much insignificant compared to what other people people in the world world suffer on a daily basis. I'll admit to it, not especially commendable perhaps but human nature. Adam Smith summed it up with his famous lines about the relative impact of a disaster in China and the prospect of losing a little finger. Were it to be otherwise people would probably either go insane or become one of those perpetually outraged people who go through life in a permanent state of anger which isn't especially healthy.

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...It can't have gained that much strength crossing the North Sea , surely - if anything western Britain should have extracted the sting from the storm? 

 Actually such a storm can easily increase in power: it is the energy difference between air masses that produces the power that drives wind speed and precipitation rates among other things. Relatively warm humid airmass coming from the West over the UK may have slightly cooled and dropped some water there, but will yield much more on encountering a continental interior airmass which is very much colder than what it ran into in the UK.

 

(As a child/young teen I used to be surprised that our wet cold winter in the UK was so different in character to the consistently much colder but drier experience in the Netherlands and Western Germany, and also at the rate the snow would come down and settle there. Only in 1963 was the UK's weather 'continental winter' in character. But dear Jimmy Riddell put me right in understanding that.)

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