Help on a European Voyage :-)
 

Evening to you all

I am a UK Railwayman and I am planning to do a 9-10 day tour of Europe by rail (mostly sleeper services) and I was wondering if anyone could help me with a few things.

Basically my itiinary is........

18th of June 0909 Waterloo to Paris, 2032 Paris to Barcelona (Elipsos)
19th of June 2040 Barcelona to Milan (Elipsos)
21st of June 11:10 Milan to Zurich, 22:40 Zurich to Vienna
22nd of June 22:33 Vienna to Prague
24th of June 21:18 Prague to Warsaw
25th of June 23:30 Warsaw to Berlin
27th of June 21:35 Berlin to Basel
28th of June 09:05 Basel to Geneva
29th of June 12:57 Geneva to Paris
30th of June Eurostar back to Waterloo

Does anyone know the standard of the sleeping accommodation on any of the trains and what tracton I can expect on the non Eurostar legs i.e ones to stay up and enjoy the thrash or ones that should be used for sleeping :D

Also if there are any rail staff out there! How do I stand with the FIP coupons on sleeper services and are there any which I should upgrade to 1st (the Polish legs sound a bit dodgy) or perhaps any of the others which offer a reasonable upgrade to 1st? :)

Any help would be appriciated, doesn't seem to be any resources to show you the stock they use and as for rail staff travel :mad: having to fill in forms just to get quotes for the trip let alone actually getting reservations :eek:

Anyway thanks in advance

Tom C

Can't help you at all Tom, sorry. Looks like one hell of a trip though. Enjoy it. :)

The more hardend of European Railway Gricers can be found on www.groups.yahoo.com/groups/europeanrail

Tom, that is one heck of a journey. You should certainly see a good selection of trains on your travels.
I am not an expert on night trains in Europe but a quick look through the timetables and websites on the internet reveals the following details. Your "Elipsos" journeys from Paris-Barcelona and Barcelona-Milan will be in Talgo trains. These are high quality hotel trains consisting of rather strange dumpy coaches which share the same single axle truck. "Elipsos" have a website here
Your daytime Milan-Zurich journey is over the scenic Swiss Gotthard line and will be an Italian/Swiss "Cisalpino" tilting electric unit (like this one) "Cisalpino", the operating company have a website here
Your night journey from Zurich-Vienna is on the EuroNight "Wiener Walzer" which as far as I know uses OBB Austrian Railways standard sleeping cars. Motive power from Zurich to the Swiss/Austrian border will be a Swiss SBB Re4/4 ll electric loco (like this one). An Austrian electric loco will take over at the border for the rest of the journey through to Vienna.
I don't know anything at all about the Vienna-Prague-Warsaw-Berlin part of your journey but I suppose this could be your only chance of diesel haulage but even then I doubt it.:mad:
You will return from Berlin-Basel on a "CityNightLine" service. This is another high class service and some of their sleepers are actually double deckers. "CityNightLine" have a website here Loco will be a German DB electric.
Your Basel-Geneva daytime journey is on a Swiss SBB ICN tilting electric unit (like this one) and the leg from Geneva-Paris is on a French SNCF TGV high speed train.
As you can see most of the motive power is guaranteed to be electric so there will be more sparks than thrash:D
Hope this helps,
John.

Errr?

The date of the original post was Nov 2005 for a trip in June 2006, or three months ago.

So either Tom C is still stuck in Eastern Europe waiting for a train home:D , or he is back and not telling us about the trip.

I would love to hear all about it.

Hi ShedCat,
Tom C joined the Forum in Nov.2005. His post is dated 20th Sept 2006.
I am assuming that he is planning his journey for next year...........I hope:D
John.

Trip is for June next year :)

Thanks very much John for that info it is very much appriciated, I was using www.bahn.de for the timetable details and all the night trains seemed to be nachtzug so couldn't tell them apart but thanks for the clarification :)

Looking forward to it even more now :)

Tom C

What a silly mistake for me to make....
:o :o :o