TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

Nick, on January 18, 2007 @ 4:19 pm

I’m surprised there isn’t any aliance with any of the UK’s railroads. The GNER Line is HSR btwn London and Edinboughrough and with Eurostar extending to Saint Pancres Station, there will be a literal cross platform HSR Connection.

Marcel Marchon, on January 18, 2007 @ 10:54 pm

I don’t think that would be necessary - Eurostar themselves do still have traffic rights to points north of London. That is actually a very interesting subject that I had intended to write something about for a while - so I finally went ahead and did it.

Claus Kopp, on July 4, 2007 @ 3:21 am

I am a teacher who frequently takes children aged from 12 - 18 from UK to Germany or Austria. I am also very concerned about the environmental damage I am doing if I am responsibible for 50 people to fly within Europe. I would very much like to use high-speed rail services for all these European journeys. I took 45 people from Stratford upon Avon, UK, to Wuppertal, Germany recently and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the journey. More important still, the young people from my school (Alcester Grammar School, B49 5ED, Warwickshire, UK) enjoyed in the vast majority of cases their first long distance train journey and as a result would be more likely to consider this type of journey in their future lives. I would now like to take a party of 16 people from the UK (e.g. Birmingham) to Schruns in Austria on 19th January 2008 and return on 26th January 2008. Zurich would be the nearest hub to our final destination. Initail research suggests that the total cost per person for this journey would be in excess of £300. Yet last year I did the same journey flying from Stansted to Friedrichshafen and continued on by train for a cost of approximately £100. Obviously I would have to repeat last year’s journey arrangements unless I can find a rail journey that at least challenges the air/rail option in economic terms.
I was delighted to hear about railteam’s formation and that part of the brief is to challenge low-cost airlines. I am very keen to use rail services and to introduce young people (future customers) to the possibility of rail travel. I am hoping that railteam will include more economical fares for groups of young people as part of its pricing structure.
Is there anyone out there who could give me good advice on accessing fares for school groups using high-speed rail links across Europe. I am prepared to pay a little more than for equivalent grotty flights, but not 300% more.
Any ideas? Please contact me at clauskopp@hotmail.com or at Alcester Grammar School on 01789762494.

Looking forward to some replies

Claus Kopp

anon, on October 12, 2007 @ 5:27 pm

“Initial research suggests that the total cost per person for this journey would be in excess of £300.”
Your students are presumably under 26, and so qualify for ‘youth’ fares on Eurostar and TGV services. Voyages-sncf.com is able to find youth fares from Paris to Zürich for under €40 each way, and Eurostar has youth London-Paris returns for £49. Virgin Trains has £10 each way fares Birmingham-London, bringing your total cost to about £125 (plus whatever it costs you to get from Zürich to Schruns, but this probably isn’t much). Of course, getting the cheapest fares is hit-and-miss, but the same is true with air travel.

Frankie, on November 26, 2007 @ 1:54 am

In the meantime, RailTeam set up a website: http://www.railteam.eu

There’s also a wikipedia page about railteam.