Wrong Way Train - 31 March 1970

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Willbridge

50+ Year Amtrak Rider
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A thread on missed stops got me to thinking about trains that missed stations.
https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/missing-a-stop.82810/#post-970936
While I have heard or read about such events. there was one that I experienced in person. It began by my outsmarting myself on my second trip to France. Instead of departing Paris to Freiburg, Germany on Easter evening, I booked the trip to depart on Easter Monday evening, not knowing that the French celebrated Easter Monday by making a mad rush to train stations on that Monday night. This was at the very dawn of computerized reservations. Few trains required or offered them.

Paris, naturellement, was wonderful. One never runs out of obscure streets full of history, or strange piles of things. I mention this because it explains a certain lack of clear-headedness.

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Gare de l'Est was a madhouse. A station clerk cranked a chain driven sign system, hanging large sign panels that listed destinations, train names for some, numbers for all and track numbers. Every so often, he would advance the string of panels. On the departure of one on the left of the chain, a new train would appear on the right and a stampede toward that track would occur.

It quickly became apparent that in response to the rush, the SNCF was running extra trains in addition to the evening and night trains listed in the Indicateur Offficiel for Grandes Relations. We were there in time for the 22:15 departure of the real Orient Express but 2nd class was crammed with people heading to Central and Eastern Europe. As it departed, we saw that a second section made entirely of 2nd class cars followed it out of the station.

Providing much of the rush was the French military. For unpleasant historical reasons they had major training facilities in the east of their country, as well as forces in southern Germany. That meant that the extra trains were not going as far as we wanted; they were relieving the potential load on the two scheduled night trains.

Even though the Orient Express had been an interest since childhood's colorful Great Trains of the World, missing it gave me a chance to watch how the station operation worked. As the station emptied out, we placed our baggage on a trolley, positioned ourselves back far enough from the gates for now empty tracks where we could still watch the chain signs pop up. And waited. Ready!

A little before midnight, a long string of dusty green coaches was backed in. Set!

The chain jerked into motion and a panel for the 00:10 express to Strasbourg emerged. The proverbial "last train from Paris." Go!

We rushed ahead of the crowd to the train and secured window seats. Yes, there was a second section following, but that was it for scheduled trains that night. We would arrive in Strasbourg at 07:00. There was not much countryside to see on that schedule, but stations were busy. At dawn I stepped across sleeping French soldiers in the vestibule in order to reach a restroom for a quick shave.

More to come.
 
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A thread on missed stops got me to thinking about trains that missed stations.
https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/missing-a-stop.82810/#post-970936
While I have heard or read about such events. there was one that I experienced in person. ..

... We would arrive in Strasbourg at 07:00. There was not much countryside to see on that schedule, but stations were busy. At dawn I stepped across sleeping French soldiers in the vestibule in order to reach a restroom for a quick shave.
On selected winter days our overnight train from Paris was extended across the border at Kehl to Offenburg, Germany. From there it continued to Innsbruck via the Schwarzwaldbahn. As this was not one of those days, we had about a one-and-a-half hour wait in Strasbourg, time enough for breakfast on the platform level. We would take the next train to Offenburg and wait a few minutes for a Rhein main line train to our destination, Freiburg im Breisgau.

Not long after we were served, a string of non-descript green rolling stock was brought in next to us. The cars displayed printed signs indicating "Strasbourg - Offenburg" and the French soldiers who had been drifting around the station began converging on it. We abandoned our paid-for breakfasts and hurried aboard. It appeared to be ready to run on the time slot of the not in service ski train.

I began to wonder when I realized that there was only one other civilian on the train, from what we could see. Were non-military passengers permitted? At the Kehl border crossing, she left the train. Now, instead of the usual 15 minutes scheduled for customs, we waited and waited. The border guards did not comment when they checked us. My Army paperwork included authorization for travel in Germany and France and "alles ist in ordnung!"

https://www.google.com/maps/place/A...fe28413c31f806a8!8m2!3d48.5413943!4d7.9735157
Finally, we were rolling the 14 kms toward the main line junction at Appenweier, where we should see the station on the left side of the train as we turned south. We saw the station on the right side of the train as we turned north. I still supposed that things would turn out okay when we pulled into a siding. Perhaps the direct curve to the south was out of service for some reason and we would reverse direction. Soon a through train overtook us and then we pulled onto the main northbound again, stopping at what seemed like every small station.

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I wanted to ask the conductor what was going on, but we kept plodding in the direction of Karlsruhe with no information. In observing and trying to converse with the French passengers, it seemed that some of them were informed and were on the right special train back to their units. Perhaps the other half like us had believed the signs. More bailed out at each stop. I saw some heading to the highway to hitchhike south.

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Next: the conductor appears!
 
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The Deutsche Bundesbahn conductor appeared after the train had already disgorged some of its French Army passengers. I pointed out the paper signs that indicated that this train was going to Offenburg, a city that we were steadily getting further away from. To summarize, he said that the crazy French had made a mistake and that his train was going to Karlsruhe. He recommended that we stay on until Baden-Oos (today Baden-Baden). There we could catch D94, the Metropolitano, which would quickly whisk us through Offenburg to Freiburg. He didn't try to collect a fare for the side trip and suggested that we tell that train's conductor what happened.

In Baden-Oos we had a bite to eat and then boarded the Milan-bound express. That train's conductor proved to be the classic German bureaucrat (beamter), strict but fair. After hearing our story, he wanted to collect the fare for the side trip from Appenweier (the junction) to Baden-Oos and return. However, he -- to be fair -- calculated it as an optional routing on our international ticket rather than as a simple round-trip. This required researching it in a big tariff book of fine print.

Juggling the book on the moving express took a while; I wondered how many fare evaders were on the long, crowded train. As I recall the extra fare was around $5. He explained that I could apply to the Bahndirektion Karlsruhe for a refund.

I was not surprised at this. My father liked to quote the timetable: "In cases of dispute with conductors... pay fare requested, take receipt and communicate with Auditor Revenue Accounts, S. P. & S. Ry., Box 671, Portland 7, Oregon." I have never been able to carry on an exchange of correspondence in business German, might have been told to contact the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français instead and so the Bundesbahn retained the revenue from the SNCF's error.

Freiburg im Breisgau was wonderful.

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