Norwegian State Television channel 2 just had a pretty cool TV documentary for a rail fan - a 7 hour 16 minutes long TV show documenting every minute of the journey of passenger train 602 from Bergen on the west coast of Norway, up along the fjords, across the mountains and down the valleys into south-eastern Norway, before ending up at the Central Station in the capital city of Oslo in SE Norway.
Show was broadcast live on NRK channel two Friday November 27th, from 8 pm until a little after 3 am, and at the same time available for streaming from the webpages of NRK TV.
According to the ratings info about 150 000 viewers watched the entire show, all 7+ hours of it, from the El-18 Electric Locomotive pulled its B7 passenger cars out of Bergen station, until they arrived, a little embarrassing 10 minutes late at Oslo Central (due to signal trouble on the last mile of the journey - how is that for luck when you have a film crew aboard ?).
If anyone wants to have a peek, the show can be viewed, in three pieces, at this web address:
The video taping is cheaper, however I had already bought the DVDs of the journey from “Ticket to Ride” in the UK. I am surprised the NSB didn’t just buy the rights to the film shot by Tim Martin and TTR. As they had given him access to the locomotive for his filming and he shoots with a broadcast quality camera. They could have removed his English soundtrack and substituted their own in Norwegian.
Had a quick look around to see what you were talking about - found www.tickettoride.co.uk and their DVDs no TTR54, 55, 56 and 57.
I am sure the TTR production also looks great, even though I noticed a few odd things on their web page, like the weird hybrid spelling “Flåmbahn” (which seems to be a mix of Norwegian and German) for the side line from Myrdal to Flåm, ie Flåmsbana), and the reference to “Agenda Units - the NSBs latest”.
Agenda was a fancy marketing name for “regional train” or “corridor train” a while back (between 1999 and 2005). Some marketing droid came up with the brand names “Signatur” (Signature in English) for long distance train, “Agenda” for regional/medium distance trains and “Puls” (Pulse in English) for local trains, the idea being that the first would be marketed for tourists, the second for business people and the third for commuter operations.
Organization droids were starting to split up NSB into three different divisions that would handle the various “products”.
The audience remained somewhat underwhelmed by the marketing names, and kept referring to the trains as long distance trains, regional trains and commuter trains. Eventually NSB figured out that it is not the name that matters - it is the train frequency (number of departures and time between departure), and the predictability.
I thought there were a lot of dark seconds in the compressed version…also notice the train waiting to meet a freight or two…so Amtrak isn’t the only passenger hauler that gets delayed by freight.
Most freight trains are scheduled over here. So meets were probably also scheduled.
Passenger train was on schedule until 5 minutes before the end station in Oslo - it arrived in the last station about 7-8 or so minutes late, due to a balky entry signal just before Oslo Central - took a little time to work around that one.
On the other hand - the last couple of days has been bad train wise. It is a little on the chilly side - about 0 Fahrenheit, and we have just had a fire in signal cables in a tunnel just west of Oslo.
So the train from Bergen to Oslo (and the train in the opposite direction) is re-routed north around Asker to reduce congestion there (and some local commuter trains are replaced by busses), while they rebuild the burnt out cables and signals.
They got most through traffic going again in a few hours, but it will be a pretty cold and crappy job for the signal maintainers from the Railroad Authority (jernbaneverket) to get signaling for the commuter operations fixed good enough to resume a normal schedule - it will probably take several days to fix.
Hope they both get their things fixed quickly, so we can get trains back on schedule - people will not take the train instead of their cars if the train doesn’t have reasonably frequent and predictable departures and arrivals. Fortunately, most people is off from work until Monday January 5th.
The 29th also was a bad day - there was a three hour delay on the Kongsvinger line on the 29th - signal malfunction. And NSB trains also had a passenger train break down on the main line between Trondheim and Oslo on the 29th - 350 pax stranded for 4+ hours (mo
Mmm - I’d think about as many as there will be Republican presidents of the US of A during the next couple of years.
May I ask you a question in return ? Why do some conservative Americans react as if they are suffering from a cultural inferiority complex the size of the great and noble states of Texas, Alaska and Montana combined, whenever anyone mentions anything about passenger railroading in Europe?