3 ms·

> So within 5-10 minutes, your train has arrived, people have disembarked, you have boarded, and your train has left Isn't this pretty standard SOP for how lon

> So within 5-10 minutes, your train has arrived, people have disembarked, you have boarded, and your train has left Isn't this pretty standard SOP for how long-distance trains stop at intermediate stations around the world? I've recently travelled in Germany and Austria and their ICE and Railjet trains, respectively, have stops of only 2-3 minutes at a majority of intermediate stations.

Symbiote 4y ago
GP seems to be from Australia, where a random timetable I found shows a Sydney-Canberra train has 10-25 minute stops at various stations -- I assume the larger ones. I've experienced the same on trains in the USA. It's called "dwell time" if you want to Google, but in Europe I'd guess - at many stations it's around 1 minute - at large towns it can be 2-3 minutes, especially if it's likely many people will board/alight - at the very largest through stations it can be 5-10 minutes. That would be somewhere you might expect half the passengers (or more) to change, like Berlin or Madrid. Metro and commuter trains have more doors to make boarding/alighting faster. Long-distance trains have fewer doors to make the interior quieter and more comfortable.
- logifail 4y ago
  > That would be somewhere you might expect half the passengers (or more) to change, like Berlin or Madrid (From experience) I would suspect it's more about train crew changes, restocking the restaurant car, and/or allowing extra time to recover from any delays.
- ehnto 4y ago
  They also still get delayed, even with such large dwell times. So simply increasing dwell time isn't enough to cater for the different requirements. Such low dwell times work for the Shinkansen because of the organisation of the passengers and the limited ways in which boarding can go wrong. There is an element of ruthlessness to that, the margin of error for you the passenger is small.

Symbiote 4y ago

GP seems to be from Australia, where a random timetable I found shows a Sydney-Canberra train has 10-25 minute stops at various stations -- I assume the larger ones. I've experienced the same on trains in the USA. It's called "dwell time" if you want to Google, but in Europe I'd guess - at many stations it's around 1 minute - at large towns it can be 2-3 minutes, especially if it's likely many people will board/alight - at the very largest through stations it can be 5-10 minutes. That would be somewhere you might expect half the passengers (or more) to change, like Berlin or Madrid. Metro and commuter trains have more doors to make boarding/alighting faster. Long-distance trains have fewer doors to make the interior quieter and more comfortable.

logifail 4y ago
> That would be somewhere you might expect half the passengers (or more) to change, like Berlin or Madrid (From experience) I would suspect it's more about train crew changes, restocking the restaurant car, and/or allowing extra time to recover from any delays.
ehnto 4y ago
They also still get delayed, even with such large dwell times. So simply increasing dwell time isn't enough to cater for the different requirements. Such low dwell times work for the Shinkansen because of the organisation of the passengers and the limited ways in which boarding can go wrong. There is an element of ruthlessness to that, the margin of error for you the passenger is small.