Just Checking The Timetable?
Readers may remember when the seasoned passenger could buy one of the above. For a modest outlay, you had a whole enquiry office on your bookshelf. It never closed, did not run out of battery power and never needed a good WiFi signal.
It enabled you to plan your journey and, as a bonus, add back-up trains to your little notebook in case anything went wrong or if you changed your mind.
Your ticket would always be valid and would be a different colour to remind you if it were a special offer.
Nowadays the rail companies do, usually, admit that they run trains to a timetable and, with a diligent search, you can often find the timetable "leaflets" on-line.
But you cannot find them on paper.
So what about No 3 son seeking to take the train from Cannes to Nice St Augustin which, as is obvious from the map (NOT), is the stop at Nice Airport.
So, the simple question for fbb from No 3 Son; how frequent are the trains? What does the timetable tell us?
There isn't one.
The service is operated by KEOLIS (owned by SNCF), branded ZOU, for TER, a division of SNCF, the nationalised French railway operator.
fbb has found a ZOU timetable ...
... but not for trains between Cannes and Nice. He could find no others!
Elsewhere there appeared a variety of single journey "timetable columns" ....
Also available were lists of departures from Cannes with their arrivals at Nice stations (samples below).
After a slightly sweaty time, fbb was able to work out that TER trains ran every 30 minutes (approx), with extras, and the journey took about 35 minutes. Journeys were (again approx) at 08 and 38 minutes past each hour.
fbb was able to suggest suitable trains for a planned arrival at the Airport by 2000.
fbb further suggested that his boy would be well advised to call at Cannes station to double check. Which he did!
It turned out that fbb had found the right answer.
But, as the advert says ...
With A Proper Printed Timtable
So now, off he goes to Cannes station to buy a ticket.
Surely THAT will be EASY?
We will find out on the evening of All Saints' Day !
Meanwhile Mega Morphs Into Micro
Perhaps not quite - YET!
It has been known in the Industry for some time that Megabus is a bit of a disaster busuness-wise. It looks as is Stagecoach's new Corporate owners are beginning to flex their investment muscles.
How long before the rest of it goes? Falcon back to Stagecoach Southwest, Scotland to Citylink and the rest to the recycling bin.
It seemed a good idea at the time!
Next Nuclear Blog : Weds 30th Oct
Megabus isn't really anything to do with Stagecoach anymore, it was sold to ComfortDelgro owned Scottish Citylink (Stagecoach do still hold a minority stake in that but they aren't the controlling party) so this is already the company pulling back to its Scottish base. I believe Stagecoach had already lost the operating contracts for much of the network earlier this year except for the Falcon. How long the Falcon survives and in what form is the final question.
ReplyDeleteTwo thoughts on the National Rail Timetable. One is that it was always out-of-date - supplements containing changes were issued during the year, even sometimes on publication. If you didn't have those, you might find that your train times had changed! Second, the full national timetable is available electronically on the National Rail website, even (in many cases) with the traditional table numbers.
ReplyDeleteEngineering works were rarely advertised other than locally in the days of the printed National Rail Timetable. Weekend journeys could never be planned with certainty from the book alone.
ReplyDeleteI wondered why FBB was struggling to find the pdf timetable for Cannes to Nice, until I tried looking on the main Zou website. The “schedules” link tries to find a Cannes to Ventimille timetable, which doesn’t exist. Googling for “Zou TER” brings up a different website, which in a couple of clicks takes you to “fiche horaires”. There I found that SNCF had split the timetable into two fiches either side of Nice. So a timetable does exist, but in this case it’s not easy to find.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's on one "fiche" (I tried shortening the URL but it didn't work): https://ter-fiches-horaires.sncf.fr/publish/FH_04_Grasse_Cannes_Nice_Vintimille_du%2027%20septembre%202024%20au%2014%20décembre%202024_V20242910.pdf
ReplyDeleteYou just need to search in Google (other search engines are available) for "horaires nice cannes". Actually it works if you use "timetable" in place of "horaires". Seems quite logical and simple to me.....
ReplyDeleteAs others have said, the national rail timetable book was not really ideal; and anybody who just wanted to get from Southampton to Romsey wouldn't want a thick and heavy book with the whole network.
RC169
The risk when using Google to go straight to the timetable, rather than to find the website of the operator of the service, is you can't necessarily be sure you have the up to date timetable as Google caches old timetables and will bring them up higher up the search list (as they are older so have been visited more). It is not unreasonable, and in fact our customer services advise customers this, to go to the homepage and then find the timetable rather than go direct from the search engine to the timetable pdf.
Delete