Re: Wonderful, Customer-Responsive GSR

[crookesp@aol.com (Crookesp)]

In article <34C0F0FC.73FC04FC@ozemail.com.au>, David Johnson
<trainman@ozemail.com.au> writes:

>> For instance, we can go on the Melbourne Sydney overnight express with a
>> sleeper leaving at midnight.
>
>From where?

No idea. The timings etc are what we have been told by UK agents. Apparently
there is a night train from whatever is the  Melbourne equivalent of a Grand
Central (Flinders Street?) to which a car with eighteen sleeper berths is
attached. I've no idea whether this is part of an XPT (a variant of the UK HST
I have been told) or not. 

The fares quoted compare very favourably with air fares, not least because
there is no hotel to pay, but also because there is no costly and annoying
travel from an airport.  I have no wish nor need for a car in Sydney, and I'm
certainly not about to start my stay there driving on the 'wrong' side of the
road in heavy traffic, trying to find somewhere to park and all that crap. 

>From a traveller's point of view, I much prefer airports that have a
straightforward and manageable direct public transport link downtown,
preferably rail based so that the traveller is not held up in commuter traffic.
Airports like London Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted are all on rail links. So
is Manchester, with a main-line connection and a new tramline being built. So
are Frankfurt, Rome, Schipol, Dusseldorf, Brussels...

The worst possible way for travellers like me to go to or come from airports is
by car. It's expensive, annoying, stressful and slow.

Allowing a flight to Sydney leaving at, say, 0900. Let's suppose for the sake
of argument that it takes an hour reliably to get to Melbourne airport, and
that checkin is half an hour gefore flight departure. So that means up and out
of the hotel at 0730 at the latest.

Let's suppose the flight lasts an hour and a half temrinal to temrimal. Another
half hour to gert baggage and leave the airport, another half hour downtown in
Sydney. It's 1130, maybe 1200 before I'm where I want to be - half a day of my
trip spent getting form one place to another.

No way is that better for me than a night sleeper.

If there's not one, or it's been taken off, then more fools the railway
adminstrations that take these decisions.

If I were me I would put on to classes of sleeper cars - couchettes sold
cheaply to all who want them (a couchette is a sort of bunk bed, usually six in
a compartment - you sleep in the clothes you're wearing) and one and two berth
sleepers with showers and toilets, piutched at buisiness people and travellers
like me.

Looking at the money that European railways make on sleepers, I would be
surprised if yuch a thing could not be marketed in Oz.

*Philip*

(there are lots of people who really don't want to drive)